A practical checklist for your returns policy

It is rarely the thing that gets a project approved, and often the thing that decides how it goes. Run through this the next time your returns policy comes up.

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

The checklist

• A clear policy increases conversion more than it costs in returns
• Hiding it does not reduce returns, only trust
• Link it from the product page, not just the footer
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

Why this earns attention

A clear policy increases conversion more than it costs in returns. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

What this looks like day to day

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. Three things worth confirming about your returns policy before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A clear policy increases conversion more than it costs in returns — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.