Online retailing has had its finger on the pulse for some time now. Retailers worldwide realized the potential that online retailing presented, particularly throughout COVID-19, that in-store retail just wouldn’t be able to provide. Despite the popularity of online retailing, what more and more retailers have come to understand is that returns from online purchases can never be avoided. Customers will never be above making a purchasing error and retailers will never be perfect enough to send out every order correctly. No matter the nature of the mistake, they often result in returns. These returns often result in retailers having to pay additional operational costs to resolve the issue. While this issue will never be entirely resolved, every retailer should work toward reducing the mistakes that result in returns. This post and accompanying infographic will breakdown the ways that retailers can limit these returns and teach them about different types of fraud associated with returns.
In the case of customer returns, retailers need to make their best effort to reoptimize product pages including product descriptions and product images. There are plenty of customers that cite their returns as a result of their orders failing to match the images or descriptions provided on a retailer’s website. It’s hard to blame any customer for wanting to return their orders if they don’t match the description or images provided by the retailer. The same can be said about the sizing information given by the retailer as sizing accounts for upwards of 52% of all returns in retail.
Returns from customers can also be predicated on the return policies that retailers offer. While it may seem as though a retailer’s profits can tank by offering free returns, the opposite is actually true. It’s clear that free shipping and free returns are massively influential, but research indicates that 96% of shoppers consider free shipping the most influential on their willingness to purchase, with 79% of shoppers saying free returns are more important. While it may seem like customers could take advantage of these polices, more often they order products intending to return them if they don’t enjoy them but will keep them instead leading to additional retailer benefit.
Over the past two years, online shopping saw incredible surges, so much so that the volume of orders clearly led way to additional returns. Over the course of 2020, retailers reported almost a 70% increase of returns compared to 2019. Such a stark increase led way to additional unique scamming methods that retailers must protect themselves against. Through “wardrobing” and “bracketing,” customers would purchase products online and hope to get a bit of use out of them prior to returning them.
The importance of defending themselves against fraudulent purchases becomes much more clear realizing that these fraudulent attempts can be never ending. This is why third-party anti-fraud tools are so much more important to invest into. These tools can help any retailer identify a stolen card the moment its swiped. After these fraudulent purchases are detected, the transaction can be blocked and refunds to the original card holder can be made.
This is only one of the anti-fraud tools available to retailers struggling with these different fraudulent attempts. Every retailer needs to be prepared against these attempts, failure to do so could put any retailer in jeopardy. For more information surrounding these return rates and the ways to defend against them, be sure to continue reading on to the infographic paired alongside this post. Courtesy of Signature Payments.
