Ecommerce platforms are more convenient than in-person stores and often have larger inventories, but they suffer from one significant downside. Usually, consumers who buy online cannot try products out before making a purchasing decision. As a result, many customers return items if they do not look or function as advertised on the app or website.
While shopping online is easy, returning is a different story. Since packing and shipping a product for a return can be a hassle, customers tend to visit brick and mortar stores for refunds or exchanges. This trend may seem to benefit physical locations but can cause them to suffer more than retailers realize. For retailers to avoid the adverse effects of customer returns in their store locations, they need to implement product data management into their ecommerce strategies.
The Relationship between Ecommerce Returns and Physical Stores
As mentioned, more customers return unwanted items to the store because shipping products via mail can be a tedious process. The latter requires packing, printing labels, and finding time to go to the post office, while the former only involves driving to the store to get a refund at the sales desk.
While the volume of returns grew before 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the issue. For example, retailers predict that in 2022, Americans will return over $761 billion of merchandise purchased in 2021, accounting for approximately 16.6% of total U.S. sales that year. This increase in returns has several significant implications for retailers, including:
- Decreased profits as customer conversions become refunds
- Heightened shipping costs for return processing with USPS, UPS, FedEx, and other shippers
- Elevated labor costs as employees attain and process returned items in warehouses, shipping centers, and physical stores
- Diminished profits at brick and mortar locations already impacted by the retail apocalypse
Returns are inevitable for any retailer, whether they conduct business online, in-person, or both. However, this reality does not mean you have no control over return volumes. With the proper ecommerce strategy, retailers who operate physical and virtual facilities can reduce returns and boost the customer experience.
How Does Product Data Management Enhance Customer Satisfaction?
Inadequate product descriptions are among the leading causes of returns. When customers receive items that do not live up to the attributes listed on ecommerce sites, they lose faith in the retailer. One of the most effective solutions to this problem is utilizing a product data management strategy.
At Virtucom Group, we know that product data management can augment consumer satisfaction, but many retailers either do not employ the ecommerce strategy properly or utilize it at all. If you fail to clean and normalize data, you leave product details in the hands of your customers. When they receive a product that does not meet their expectations, they are sure to visit a brick and mortar location for a return.
With product data management, you can establish a set of reliable protocols that ensure customers understand key details of any item on your ecommerce site. This strategy provides customers insight into a product’s primary functions and aesthetic features, enabling them to make educated purchase decisions. As a result, you secure more conversions and increase your number of satisfied customers. Data cleansing and normalization also help you develop an effective taxonomy structure, allowing customers to sort through and compare products with ease.
How to Mitigate Returns with Product Data Management
Since comprehensive data management is multifaceted and comprises numerous elements, it may take a while to reap the benefits at your store. However, the following tactics can help you enhance accuracy and consistency quickly to curtail your volume of returns:
Thoroughly Review Product Attributes
Many people can attest to the frustration of installing a product with inaccurate dimensions. When dealing with appliances and furniture with exact measurements, ensure all the vendor-supplied data you receive contains the same information and has no discrepancies.
Focus on Uniformity
Paying attention to dimensions is crucial because manufacturers express them in multiple ways. For instance, a product description may say a blender’s capacity is 6-1/2 cups while its feature bullets say 52 ounces. Even though these values are the same, they can cause needless confusion for customers. More importantly, this inconsistency can lead a consumer to misuse the appliance and later return it.
Utilize Visual Aids
In some cases, a high-resolution picture is all the customer needs to decide if they want the item or not. Images help people make more informed purchases, ultimately minimizing the possibility of returns. If the manufacturer sends you a grainy or pixilated photo, reach out to them until you attain a quality picture for your ecommerce site.
Find Ecommerce Solutions at Virtucom Group
Relying on unprocessed vendor data diminishes customer satisfaction, but maintaining a staff that can standardize data is costly and challenging. Because of this dilemma, many retailers continue to deal with a heavy burden of returns that harm their brick & mortar stores.
If you need a cost-effective ecommerce strategy for product data management, look no further than Virtucom Group. Our experienced staff of writers and editors produces accurate and relevant ecommerce content, enabling you to enhance the customer experience without needing to spend more on labor costs. We can write a large volume of SKUs in a short amount of time and improve product descriptions with keywords for search engine optimization (SEO), giving your store an advantage against competitors.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you enhance product data management and reduce returns with ecommerce solutions.
