How 3D visuals decrease the return rate on your e-commerce website ?
The growth of the digital market and the democratization of internet have changed how the customers buy their consumer goods, design their living rooms alone or improve their decoration with 3D online plan.
The rate of return has become a financial and logistical problem. Do you know 20% of e-businesses declare that they increase the price of products to cover the returns cost ?
How do the customer 2.0 issues and desires affect their order taking, their return frequency ? Discover how 3D visuals reduce your return rate with 3D visuals.
Customer 2.0 : volatile, multichannel and undecided
Customer 2.0 — The new consumption patterns for X and Y generations
The time factor have affected our consumption methods. In 2018, one out of five French people spend 90 minutes by day commuting between their workplace and their home. Workers, digital mums or dads, no longer have the time to physically go to the stores, especially with the increasing distances between workplace and place of residence.
Some purchases are easily made online : clothes, food. But, if I need to do over my living room, do I really need to go to a store ?
For retailers, Hubstairs is a perfect example of a digital company that answers to this customer question. Thanks to their 3D visual solutions, you can get quality visuals and 3D plan online (kitchen, living room, room or bathroom) by incorporating any couch, table of your product range. Moreover, you offer to your customers online advises from their community of interior designers.
A compulsive buyer profile has been reinforced by these new communication methods. With the development of Fast Fashion — a segment of the clothing industry which is characterized by the very rapid renewal of clothing, created by the clothing shop Zara — the decoration market is also driven by brands like Maisons du monde or IKEA. How many times do customers thought “Oh, it’s cute or nice or fun, I need this new blanket for my room, this new chair for my living room or theses new plates for my kitchen !” even if they were just innocently scrolling a news feed ? The digital and physical buying impulses are increasing in our daily lives.
A compulsive returner profile has been also developed. 30% online consumers order too many products and return items they do not wish to keep. Barclaycard has defined the profile of the compulsive returner as a consumer who deliberately orders too much in order to keep only what he likes and returns the rest of his purchases.
Customer 2.0 — Brand behaviors
The brand image and reputation are really important for the company’s sustainability. The brands have understood that “by 2025, 5.8 billion people will own a smartphone.” (GMSA-2019). They encourage customers to buy not only through television ads, but on search engines. The high return rate or the low conversion rate of website are influenced by the credibility that users are giving to the online shop, the work ability of tools and the quality of visuals.
Brands reconnect with their customers by becoming experts and by giving advices. By creating an accompanied, immersive and interactive experience, your website visitors can find online all the codes of the physical consumption that reassure them. For example, Hubstairs offers solutions to visualize furniture in static or dynamic scenes, before buying it. You can add any furniture you want, choose your wall color or customize any item. These brands offer you to become the architect of your own home.
Returns: an expensive investment for the company
Shopify reveals that 41% of consumers now buy in the prospect of a possible return. — This new trend allows to order multiple sizes, to satisfy a hedonistic urge or to repair customers mistakes.
The rate of return has become a financial problem for businesses. Indeed, these returns cost $ 550 billion per year in the United States (Statistica-2018).
With this new consumption trends, brands are forced to adopt an adequate strategy to balance out the investments required by this unavoidable and important return policy. 20% of e-businesses declare that they increase the price of products to cover the returns cost. Indeed for consumers, the fact of making pay a return can have a dissuasive effect. They will more likely choose a company who offers a free return. It remains a loyalty tool for companies too.
The rate of return has become a logistic problem too : Retailers receive the package, repack the package, refund the package, resend the package when someone else order it... However, it is not just about of sending and receiving parcels. The entire Supply Chain must be studied : reinserting all products in the sales chain (the faster it is put back on sale, the less it is out of fashion/trend, the faster it will be sold again), the price of product storage, tools for geolocate all products, and reducing the costs shipping.
A new question appears : Do retailers have any solution to reduce the return rate of e-commerce sites?
3D: the essential tool to lower your return rate
Why are we reluctant to buy online table, sofa, carpet…? Because we have trouble seeing how the products look like in the real life.
3D is better than 10 photos
E-commerce sites showcase often their products with 2D photos, usually on a white background, and with an average photo quality. For your customers, it can be difficult to know how it is represented, and the visuals can be misleading.
3D tools offer to your customers visualization as entering a physical store : you can turn the product, examine it from top to bottom, have a perception of it in space, and understand its specialities. Textures and materials also become much more realistic than on photography : this way you optimize the sales of your product while improving the user experience on your website.
Moreover, it brings a young and modern image of your company, and improves your credibility as a provider with a large product range! Thus, your clients know what to expect when they are buying your furnitures.
With 3D interior design, customers can not only visualize the product, but they visualize how the new sofa will be and also to integrate it with other furnitures, or even in their current living room!
3D is better than a long speech
With 3D tools, you don’t give too many information : a 3D visualization of the product avoids the overload of text, the technical explanations and the infinite descriptions.Moreover, the 360 ° vision of your products allows them to reconnect with a responsible and concrete purchase.
Do you know that 22% of the returns are due to photos that do not correspond to the product at all ?
By creating a perfect visualization of the product, you already reduce by almost 1/4 your returns!
3D, a competitive advantage
One thing we did not talk about 3D? The technical, logistical and financial advantages that it brings !
- Easy integration — 3D elements can easily be integrated into your websites, either with the help of the webmaster who manages your site or with automated modules on Prestashop and Magento sites.
- Simplified Logistics — When planning a 2D shooting session for your products, you must anticipate all poses of the product. And yet, despite all this prediction, you will always miss an angle of the product! Thanks to 3D, you can turn the product both at 90 ° and 180 ° in a finger snap !
- A possibility of change — If you make a 3D product, and want to change a border of the product or a text message, you do not need to do shooting: you just have to refresh the file!
- The multiplication of media — With 3D, you can decline your product on several communication media : video promotion, declination paper, 3D printing
- Live in the future — First, 3D, and then … ?
3D visuals permit to decrease the return rate on your e-commerce website in multiple ways :
- 3D visuals allow customer to visualize the product on the website in a 360 vision or directly in their living room with a virtual reality application to see if it fit their house.
- In 3D, you can easily return, edit and improve your products online by avoiding four different photo shootings for any product change. Textures, colors and materials are better seen by the customer.
- In 3D, we avoid excessive returns by allowing the customer to conceptualize his purchase in a concrete and responsible way
- With 3D, you reduce the integration time of your photos to your website.
- With 3D, you appear as a modern, young and connected brand that reassures and interests customers.
Bring to your customers the elements to make a purchase is an innovative way to lower your return rate, while getting new clients and improving your cross-channel strategies. 3D visuals allow you to reduce your costs, improve your brand awareness and develop a competitive advantage.What are you waiting for?
