Getting started with your returns policy
We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. A short on-ramp to your returns policy for teams who have not touched it before.
In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.
Why it matters
A clear policy increases conversion more than it costs in returns. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Hiding it does not reduce returns, only trust
- Change one thing and measure it
Link it from the product page, not just the footer. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.
In practice
Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Three things worth confirming about your returns policy before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Link it from the product page, not just the footer — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.