Want to Improve Your Customers' E-commerce Experience? Revamp Your Return Policy.

In a previous blog, we focused on a few big challenges associated with e-commerce fulfillment, which requires a higher level of flexibility and scalability compared with traditional fulfillment. Additionally, there’s one more sizeable obstacle that can take retailers by surprise if they’re not prepared: Returns.

According to the latest research from Forrester, on average 33 percent of e-commerce orders are returned compared to about 9 percent for in-store purchases. The same research found that 81 percent of customers were more likely to make an online purchase if the retailer had an easy-to-understand return policy.

Despite the high percentage of returns, the majority (up to 68 percent) of all e-commerce fulfillment centers don’t have a long-term reverse logistics strategy. With that in mind, here are four best practices every e-commerce retailer should include in its reverse logistics strategy: