5 Tips to Reduce Returns on E-commerce Purchases
Great news: you made a sale, you ship it out, and you’re thrilled that you’ve got a customer! And then . . . you get the dreaded return request. Returns can be incredibly frustrating when you’re running your own fashion startup. It’s important to start thinking about how to reduce returns on your e-commerce sales right away. Once you add up your shipping costs there and back, re-packaging, customer service time spent, and customer acquisition costs, returns can really add up to cut into your profits.
While returns are not entirely unavoidable as a fashion startup, there are absolutely things you can do to minimize the number of returns you get.
First, let’s address a few of the top reasons that customers return their purchases. If you’re seeing returns due to customers getting the wrong item or damaged items, that’s a problem to solve with your operations department. If you dropship or have a warehouse pick and pack for you, then you need to discuss quality control with that third party. On the other hand, if you’re shipping out of your own space, you need to enact some quality control steps in your own packing and shipping process.
However, if the returns are primarily coming from customers who say the product didn’t fit or didn’t look or feel like what they expected it to, we’ve got a few tips for you to reduce returns. (more…)
