Shopping online is very different than shopping at a store. When at the store you can easily compare items, try them on if necessary, and physically see and hold what it is your purchasing. Online, this is not the case. If you order something, you don’t truly know what it will be like until it gets shipped. This makes it difficult to shop online.

A great way to make a consumer choose you over someone else is to make them feel at ease while shopping with you. Having Risk-Free guarantees or Return Policies (that are reasonable) will ease the worry of ordering from you. Alex Cohen discusses how  a Return Policy that doesn’t suck is:

1. Friendly
2. Findable
3. Understandable

1. Friendly

A Friendly return policy doesn’t include unneccessary or inappropriate charges, a small window of time to try the product, or worse, no return policy at all. Granted, all businesses need to have a profitable policy, but keep your consumers in mind and be reasonable.

2. Findable

Prospects do not dig for information. You have mere seconds to provide the information someone is looking for on the internet. Why make it harder for them? Try including in the FAQ, having its on link at the bottom, or on the shopping cart page.

3. Understandable

The person who will be reading the Return Policies or Gaurantees will more than likely not be a lawyer, so why write it as such? Make sure that your prospects can understand what they are reading and that it answers all their questions (How long do I have to evaluate? Is there a return fee? Where do I send it to? etc).

By ensuring your return policy is friendly, findable, and understandable, a shopper will trust you. And with that trust, confidence is gained, leading to more sales.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 10:43 am and is filed under E-Commerce Guide | . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.