The second incentive for online shopping is free returns and exchanges. Customers may have many reasons to return or exchange a product, and while it may represent a cost for retailers, your return and exchange policy speaks volumes about your customer relationship management.
Not offering these kinds of rules can also lead to unnecessary expense and time wasted dealing with customer mail and complaints. That’s why it’s essential to have clear, easy-to-understand rules for product returns and exchanges to streamline the customer experience.
Your return and exchange policy also helps improve your conversion rate.
According to Jeff Moriarty, marketing employment data manager for Moriarty’s Gem Art , free shipping and returns helped increase his conversion rate: “Our conversion rate went from 1.1% to 1.9% when we started offering free shipping and free returns,” Jeff says.
Add local delivery and pickup options
Local delivery and curbside pickup offer Free returns and your customers the best of all worlds. They can choose how they shop with you and don’t have to wait for long delivery times. This is important because 13% of customers would never order from a retailer again if their delivery was late. You may have converted a customer once… but if they have to wait too long, you risk not converting them again.
Offer local Free returns and delivery
Local delivery means that you’ll be the one delivering customer packages within a given radius. It reduces shipping and possibly packaging costs for you, gives customers a set day to expect their package, and strengthens the personal connection with your store.
If you want to offer local delivery, consider doing so:
- How far do you want to go? You probably shouldn’t offer local delivery outside of your hometown—you (or an employee) have to get to customers, after all!
- How will you deliver the packages? Will you be responsible for delivery? Will an employee do it? If an how voice search is changing inbound employee is responsible for local delivery, how will you compensate them for the mileage traveled?
- What day of the week will you deliver packages? Choose one or two days a week for local delivery to make it easier to manage.
- Do you want to charge for local delivery? While you’ll save on shipping costs and encourage local customers to convert with this service, you’ll incur shipping costs. However, free shipping is a big plus, as mentioned above.
- How will you inform customers about your local delivery service? You’ll need to clearly state the areas where you offer local delivery, the delivery day(s), and the potential cost of the service.
Offer a pickup service
Did you know that 68% of US customers Free returns and have made multiple click-and-collect purchases? Curbside pickup allows customers to shop online and pick up their purchase whenever they want. Like local delivery, it reduces shipping costs for you.
To offer curbside pickup, implement a new taiwan lists shipping method that’s free and allows customers to pay upon pickup if they choose. Inform customers of pickup times and how long curbside pickup orders will take to process, either at the register or in an email, or both.
Consider implementing a contactless payment method when customers pick up their purchase.