Getting a handle on your Returns Rate

With January wrapping up, most of your holiday returns will have been sent in by now. That makes this a good time to dig into how your returns and exchanges went for the year.

Figuring out how many orders resulted in a return can be straight-forward. For this you'll want to use your Returns Rate.

Divide the number of returns by the total number of orders. It'll be a decimal number from 0 to 1.

1,000 returns
-----
10,000 orders

= 0.1 which is 10%

Did 1% of your orders return an order? 5%? 10%?

10% might sound high but you need more information: how has that changed from the year before?

Going from 1% to 10% in a year is a clear sign of a problem. Going from 20% to 10% is a clear improvement. Same measurement (10%) but it's the degree of change that matters.

Handle the returns right and you can still keep the customer.

Eric Davis

Retain the best customers and leave the worst for your competitors to steal

If you're having problems with customers not coming back or defecting to competitors, Repeat Customer Insights might help uncover why that's happening.
Using its analyses you can figure out how to better target the good customers and let the bad ones go elsewhere.

Learn more

Topics: Returns rate