We increase the redemption of goods in the online store

Ordered through an online store, but not redeemed goods at times increases the cost of logistics, Internet marketing, the work of a call center, etc. And since the prepaid system for ordering in Russia is poorly developed, you have to look for other ways to solve the problem. Gleb Nikulin, Development Director of TopDelivery, explains how to reduce the failure rate depending on their causes.

In the segment of online clothing and footwear trade, the percentage of returns for purchases made without prepayment is 5 - 25%, and for purchases for which you have already paid - from 0 to 1%. Considering that the majority of online stores in Russia for a number of reasons abandon the principle of "money in advance", the increase in the bounce rate causes serious damage to the store. Identifying the causes of failures and eliminating them can save the owner tens and hundreds of thousands of rubles. What kinds of refusals are there and what to do with them?

Call Failures

We are talking about cancellations of goods at the stage when the courier service calls the client to inform about the arrival of the goods in the city. This type accounts for 15% of the total volume of failures. The reasons for refusal to the courier are usually named as follows: “I have already bought in another place”, “changed my mind to buy”, “I did not calculate the money” Most often, these refusals are associated with low customer loyalty to the online store and long delivery times. What can be done? First, work with loyalty programs for those customers who regularly buy back their orders. Secondly, to shorten the lead time. Thirdly, switch to prepayment. Yes, Russian e-commerce has itself led itself into a dead end of post-pay orders, but the experience of foreign online retailers, more than successfully trading with Russia for billions of dollars a year, shows that Russian buyers are not afraid to prepay for goods.

Failure to Receive

The most common reason for refusals when receiving is “the wrong product”. The warehouse is to blame, it's clear. But how many companies penalize their warehouse for such returns? Do they control the percentage of such returns? As long as the company does not monitor the number of returns by mistake and does not incentivize its warehouse employees not to make these mistakes, the number of rejections upon receipt is likely to be between 15% and 40%.

Another reason for refusal to receive, the most relevant for online stores of clothing and footwear, is the wrong size of the goods. For the most part, this problem can be eliminated by checking the compliance of foreign dimensional grids with Russian sizes and adapting them to the measurements of our buyer. Also, if you have such an opportunity, send several products to choose from, or prohibit opening the product before payment. The latter option is not suitable for everyone, but Otto works this way and does not have problems with customers in this regard.

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Finally, refusals in receipt also occur due to unsatisfactory quality of the goods in comparison with the characteristics described on the site. If you notice that the same product has been shipped 10 times, but returned 7 times, this product may just turn out to be such an “ugly duckling”. The problem can be solved by shifting part of the responsibility for refusals to buyers and introducing KPIs for them on the percentage of buybacks for each brand, category or article.

Failures due to the recipient unable to redeem the goods

The percentage of such failures is very low and usually does not exceed 2%. The main reason for refusals due to the inability to redeem the goods is that the delivery service does not take into account the wishes of the client in terms of time, place and date of redemption. The date is especially important if the purchase is made as a gift for a particular holiday. The problem of failures of this type can be solved by setting up SMS-informing and phone calls at all stages of delivery, as well as having worked with the delivery time.

SHOES report article #111, October 2013

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