How PIM Reduces Product Return Rates?
It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, if your business gets a high amount of product returns from consumers then it’s not a good sign. The rate of product returns is indirectly proportional to the business’s reputation and profitability. Product return is the biggest nightmare every business leader faces with consumers. Implementation of a PIM reduces product return rates significantly.
In today’s eCommerce world, product returns are inevitable and may happen for many reasons. Having a well-structured or optimized data management system will help businesses and brands to avoid higher product returns from customers due to incomplete products.
When it comes to data management, the most popular and highly recommended tool would be Product Information Management (PIM). PIM reduces product return rates dramatically; however, brands should consider other factors for reducing the impact of the product return.
Let’s take a look closely at product returns and how Product Information Management helps to reduce product returns.
What Is Product Return?
Product return is a process where customers return their purchased products to merchants and, in return, receive a refund or exchange for another product.
Almost all brands and merchants will accept valid reasons for product returns from customers. At the same time, every brand has its own set of terms for its product return policy. Reasons for customers returning the purchased product vary a lot and depend on the individual customer.
Among several reasons, some may cause troubles for the brands, and for some reason, brands need to worry. But it is mandatory for brands to have a good and effective return policy so that they can get a better user experience.
Common Reasons for Product Return
If you are running an eCommerce business, then surely you have come across a situation where a customer returns their purchased products. Encountering customer product returns is part of the business these days.
However, if your eCommerce business continues to experience a high rate of product returns or the returning of specific products from customers again and again, then you need to take some serious measures to overcome it.
Are you experiencing such a situation in your eCommerce business and don’t know what to do or how to overcome it? Well, this is the article you should read.
This section will brief you on the common reasons for product returns, and the next section will explain how to reduce the return rate. Of course, effective utilization of PIM reduces product return rates.
1. Product purchased with the intention of returning
Modern customers prefer to try our new things whenever they get the opportunity. This triggers them to buy multiple items and return them after spotting the difference and comfort they offer. Experts refer to this situation as “bracketing,” which is a bit common among all businesses involved in eCommerce activity.
The reports of the survey conducted among regular online shoppers suggest nearly 41% of online shoppers have purchased multiple items intending to return them later. However, brands do not need to be concerned because customers prefer to buy their products.
But if you notice a high number of customers returning multiple items, then you need to create a system for customers to return products promptly.
- Make certain actions that ensure returned products have labels in the box.
- Send automated emails with detailed instructions for returning the products.
- Have a clear FAQ section regarding product returns on the official website.
- This enables brands to receive product returns quickly from customers and resell the return at full price.
2. Unfit Products
Most businesses dealing with apparel would face this reason for a lot of product returns. Customers may make mistakes and return products that are the wrong size.
Unfortunately, brands and brand teams can’t do anything about this. However, they can assist buyers in finding the appropriate products by giving them proper and quality product information.
Also, make sure customers find it easy to return such misfit products. Doing so will create a trust bond between the brands and consumers. This will increase the customer experience and trigger future sales.
3. Wrong product description
Online shopping exclusively depends upon the quality of the product descriptions provided by the brands. If the information provided about the products differs, then it will trigger a high rate of product returns from the customers.
Moreover, customers would feel like they were cheated by providing wrong information, and this would have a negative impact on the brand’s reputation. Also, your sales rate will drop significantly if customers’ trust is broken.
To avoid such a worst-case scenario, brands should have proper data management systems like Product Information Management. Having PIM reduces product return rates by providing high-quality product descriptions to the consumers, this makes them buy the right products they looking for.
Product Information Management helps brands deliver products exactly as described in the descriptions. This will increase the user experience and meet the customer’s expectations every time they make a purchase.
To understand the basics of product information management platforms, don’t miss visiting What is PIM? Also, must-read Product Information Management – An Exclusive Guide to Understand the Product Information Management inside out with all its capabilities, features, functionality, and benefits.
Do you want to develop a product information management platform that empowers your business by reducing product return with complete & correct product information?
How to Improve Your Product Content with Returns Data?
Product content plays a crucial role in the customer conversion path. Well-optimized overall product content, which includes product images, descriptions, and other digital information related to products, can improve product sales.
Also, the well-optimized, complete product information will reduce the product return rate significantly, just as PIM reduces product return rates.
Optimizing the product content is not an easy task to do; it requires proper analysis of the return data. Because return data illuminates the other side of the customer experience, it provides comprehensive and valuable information that brands can use to improve their customer experience and reduce product returns.
Here is a list of actions you can take to improve the product content based on product return data.
1. Narrow down your focus on product opportunities
You must narrow your focus on specific products to obtain the most accurate and actionable insights into product opportunities.
Once you narrow down your focus, you need to look for the gaps in the product data. After identifying those gaps, spot where the product content needs to improve in the showroom to reduce the return rate.
If you are unable to identify the return rate of a product, you can do it by using the formula below.
Product return rate = The number of returned product units / The number of units ordered by consumers.
Brands can even group their products by filtering the relevant ones based on category. By doing so, they can make a meaningful comparison of the overall product sales and return rate.
Products with an extremely high return rate may require more attention. This can be accomplished by identifying the gaps between the return data and the store data over the product information.
2. Observe and isolate the problematic area
By narrowing the focus on products, you can easily spot the ones that require attention or investigation. So that you can figure out why those products have such a high return rate from customers,
Now, brands need to identify the areas of concern that trigger such high product returns. This is simply identifying the reasons for the return. In general, return reasons can be pre-defined reasons that can be established by merchants, allowing customers to pick the relevant reason for returning the product.
The return reasons enable businesses or brands to quickly summarize the basic issues that trigger customers to return the products. Some of the most common pre-defined product reasons set by the merchants are given below.
- Item/colour mismatch
- Too Big
- Too Small
- Poor quality
- Wrong products
These sets of return summaries from consumers will pave the way for brands to resolve the gaps between showroom and consumer return data.
3. Identifying the exact reasons from customer comments
Apart from those pre-defined return reasons, brands should consider giving users the option to enter custom return reasons. This will provide the most impactful information behind the product returns through direct customer comments.
Having precise data regarding the product return reason directly from customers via customer comments will assist brands in identifying the area that requires attention in order to reduce return rates.
However, without proper analysis and understanding of the customer’s behavior, extracting insightful information from a slew of direct customer comments is extremely difficult.
Brands, on the other hand, can make it through the word cloud. Word clouds are used to spot the most frequently used words. Introducing a word cloud option over the consumer-direct comments for return reasons will allow brands to spot the most frequently used words in all comments.
This will allow brands to easily extract insightful information from direct customer comments and identify the specific reason for a product’s high return rate.
Do you want to share the right product content with your target audience by deploying a product information management solution that allows managing product content effectively?
How PIM Reduces Product Returns?
Product returns are one of the worst nightmares a brand or business leader can experience. Product returns affect businesses in several ways, including reducing business revenue and breaking customer trust in the brands.
However, product returns may happen for several reasons, which we have already discussed briefly in the above section. But the point is that in recent times, there has been a significant increase in the return volumes due to the buyer’s behavior.
Yes! You read it correctly. Often, consumers who prefer to buy costly items prefer to use them at least once before returning them. This gives them the advantage of identifying the right color and size that work best for them.
On the other hand, having an inappropriate and poor product description also plays a major role in product return rates. So, to sort out the issues that are increasing product return rates, brands or businesses should take strict measures to optimize their product information.
When it comes to optimizing product data or efficient data management, no other tool can deliver better results than Product Information Management does.
Whether Product Information Management helps businesses reduce their return rates Well, yes! PIM Helps to Reduce Product Return Rates but how it does?
It would be a million-dollar question among the business stakeholders. Based on the survey conducted among the Product Information Management users, it is reported that after implementing the Product Information Management tool, they witnessed a 40% reduction in product returns.
Let’s see how Product Information Management helps businesses and brands reduce return rates from their consumers.
1. Top-notch product data quality
Every business and brand wants their product to get a good response in the market and a good rating.
To achieve that, brands should ensure their products have the best quality in terms of all aspects, including the product description. By doing so, brands can achieve a better customer experience throughout the customer journey.
Most often, buyers dislike and return their purchased products if the products fail to meet their expectations. This might happen if the provided product information is inaccurate and mismatches with the product’s functions.
When customers start noticing the mismatch, they immediately return the products. So, you need to make sure that you deploy products with up-to-date and accurate product information.
A good Product Information Management system does this job automatically. A Product Information Management system’s automated data enrichment capability ensures that your products always have high-quality data.
Also, the centralized database for data provided by Product Information Management makes things easier for leaders and data managers to update product information easily and quickly.
Moreover, the updated product information will reflect at the sales point instantly. This will increase the sales conversion rate and reduce the product return rates.
2. Delivering a complete product with appropriate visuals
Apart from wrong product data, inaccurate product details, and an incomplete product description, a product won’t attain a complete status without appropriate images.
Having relevant and high-quality product images will allow customers to easily find the products they are looking for. It also gives them an idea of how the product will look and how big it will be.
According to recent reports, approximately 75% of customers believe that accurate product images influence their decision to purchase online. So, providing compelling images for all products becomes necessary for brands to influence their customers’ purchase decisions.
Also, providing quality images and other visual elements related to products will mimic the in-store purchase experience for the buyers in a virtual environment.
Having a good Product Information Management system allows brands to deliver high-quality product images that offer a complete 360-degree view of the products to the buyers.
In addition, a customized Product Information Management solution for brands will take care of all the product management needs, including the visual aspects of the products. The Product Information Management system is capable of delivering 3D images and videos of the product that will give a real-world experience to the buyers.
3. Deploying complete product data with validation
When it comes to selling products on a digital platform, the ways of showcasing the product and the product description play a key role in gaining the attention of the target audience group. Even after the product data update and enrichment process, there may be chances of product data inaccuracies because of human error.
To get rid of such inaccuracies, proper validation techniques are required. Human errors are part of nature; whether small or large, these errors in product descriptions will affect data quality and have a significant impact on return rates.
Often, these kinds of human errors are bound to crop up during the enrichment process, but if they do not, they will have a significant impact.
To prevent such situations, brands should have a good Product Information Management solution with efficient validation features. With such validation features, business leaders can easily verify the accuracy of the human contribution to the product information and ensure the overall completeness of the product is above par.
If you are excited to explore the advanced capabilities of a product information management solution, don’t miss reading Essential Features of Product Information Management System. It introduces various cutting-edge features of PIM that help you attain sustainable business growth.
Do you want to unlock the potential of a product information management platform to reduce the number of returns and boost your brand reputation?
How PIM Manages to Have a Positive Impact on Business ROI?
Despite PIM reduces product return rates, it also plays a major role in inducing your business ROI. Product Information Management becomes one of the most essential tools for all businesses involved in eCommerce activities.
Reports from trustable sources suggest companies using Product Information Management tools experience 5 times more profit and more than 10 times growth in today’s competitive market.
Let’s have a look over the aspects of how Product Information Management creates a positive impact on your business ROI.
- Increases overall business productivity
- Helps businesses to launch new products to market much faster
- Significantly reduces the cost of data management and maintenance
- Enriches and maintains the data quality consistently
- Delivers a better shopping experience for the consumers
- Helps brands to achieve higher customer satisfaction
- Increases customer loyalty
- Reduces product returns rates dramatically
- Enables businesses to share high-quality product information across entities easily and quickly
- Provides a centralized location for storing all data
Do you want to avail all the above-listed benefits offered by the product information management platform that impacts your business and drives better revenue and sales for your brand?
Bottom Line
PIM tool has all the essential features that can deliver the best customer experience to a brand and increases ROI. Also, PIM reduces product return rates by enriching the product information. This helps businesses to experience a positive impact on ROI, increase brand reputation among the target audience, and improve the sales ratio dramatically.
Having the right tool like Product Information Management at the right time in your business will do wonders and you can witness spectacular results.
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