Retailers are missing out on sales by not making returns policies clear, with nearly a fifth hiding their policies on their website.
It means that retailers are losing an estimated £5.2 billion a year on average, according to a new survey from Sendcloud.
The survey of the top 100 retailers in the UK suggests 17% of retailers are making returns policies hard to find and more than half (67%) of UK consumers said they wouldn’t order at an online store if the return policy wasn’t easy to find.
Short returns periods also put customers off with one in four (24%) UK consumers saying that they wouldn’t buy online if a return period is less than 60 days.
It also showed that consumers wanted refunds quickly, waiting a maximum of six days ideally. Yet almost half of UK retailers (45%) take up to 14 days to arrange refunds.
58% of UK consumers claim returns are a big hassle to them, yet just 53% of online stores offer their customers online returns.
Adding to this, only 9% of stores offer consumers the possibility to get their returns picked up at home, whereas 31% of UK consumers would prefer this option.
“Retailers often preconceive the returns process to be a real headache and are sometimes tempted to make their return policies more complicated in an attempt to reduce returns,” said Rob van den Heuvel, CEO, Sendcloud.
“However, the exact opposite is true as our research has proved that a simple and clear return policy is actually key in driving conversions. In fact, what we’ve found is that retailers which offer a longer return period result in fewer returns because customers are less concerned with the product that still has to be returned.”
