Signs it is time to revisit your returns policy

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. A few signals that your returns policy is due some attention.

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• A clear policy increases conversion more than it costs in returns
• Hiding it does not reduce returns, only trust

How we handle it

Link it from the product page, not just the footer. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

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
• Hiding it does not reduce returns, only trust — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Most of the value here comes from doing the first two things, not all of them.