Let’s ask a question, how much more expensive have your campaigns become? Especially everything related to paid actions. Can assume you’re paying more for the same campaign you ran last year. In fact, according to studies, campaigns have become 222% more expensive over the last 9 years. Put simply, with the same budget as last year, you’ll get lower results.
Acquisition and sales that are generated from those new customers you obviously receive, but what about loyalty from the customers you already have? Perhaps it’s time to pay much more attention and strategy to enhancing recurrence rather than acquiring new customers.
In building customer loyalty, if your product and the shopping experience is strong, it’s much easier for your customers to buy from you again in the near future. Therefore, acquiring regular sales from the same person that you’ve already secured. There you have recurrence. So why dedicate increased budget to get new customers, you strategise your actions to keep the ones you have by providing the best possible experience.
Now that you know how important loyalty can be for your eCommerce store, offering a good product and shopping experience are fundamental, but what about the post-sale experience?
Sendcloud's recent Ecommerce Delivery Compass 2023 revealed the main reasons why users abandon their shopping carts and do not complete their purchase. The first reason is logistics and in fourth is sub-par returns policies and processes.
Apart from the fact that logistics plays a key role in the post-sale experience, returns are undoubtedly playing a greatly increased role in a customer’s decision to buy or not. Having a flexible, simple and transparent returns policy that allows the customer's expectations to be met is fundamental.
So what are the options ecommerce stores need to consider in offering this?
- Opt for a solution that allows the customer to choose which return option they prefer. For example, did you know that the refund period is one of the reasons why users decide not to buy from an ecommerce site? If the customer can choose instant refund and get their money back in as little as 6 seconds, or they can choose in-store credit, it is a huge confidence boost for them.
- Offer all the necessary information about returns: costs, deadlines, requirements... The clearer the information is and the easier it is to access, the more comfortable the user will be.
- Let's leave aside obscure policies that only aim to make the returns process more difficult.
Returns are inevitable and will always be a problem but it is this last point that allows some opportunity for retailers to start to consider returns as an opportunity in parallel.