At Loop, we pride ourselves on making our merchants—and merchants like you—successful. That’s what drives us to survey thousands of consumers to produce multiple Consumer Reports every year.
This time, we shared important findings that you can use to optimize your post-purchase experience without spending an arm and a leg. One of those findings, interestingly enough, revolved around how the average consumer feels about product quality guarantees and warranties.
Learn more about what your shoppers are looking for in their returns experience. Download our 2023 Consumer Report here.
While offering warranties isn’t always the best choice for every ecommerce business or product category, it can be immensely helpful in certain industries. This is especially true when shoppers are investing in higher-ticket items and want to feel reassured that if something doesn’t meet their expectations, they know they can easily get a replacement or other compensation.
In this blog, we’ll discuss our findings from our 2023 Consumer Report related to warranties, and why offering warranties might be something to consider for your ecommerce brand:
- Most shoppers care about warranties
- Why your brand might consider offering warranties
- What to know about warranties and returns
Most shoppers care about warranties
According to our most recent Consumer Report, a vast majority of consumers (93%) say they’re more likely to purchase from retailers offering product quality guarantees or warranties. Not only this, but 1 in 4 consumers reported that they now expect retailers to provide some sort of quality assurance when it comes to their products.
The reasoning here is simple: shoppers that feel confident in their purchase are more likely to make that purchase, especially when it comes to buying from a brand new merchant for the first time.
And with added reassurance around a purchase, comes higher customer satisfaction and an increased likelihood of repeat purchases in the future. If your brand offers warranties, you’re able to showcase your commitment to making high-quality products and maintaining customer satisfaction.
Outside of the reassurance that warranties provide, items with a warranty are often perceived by shoppers as worth more, since they’re of a higher quality and more reliable. That means that you can often justify a higher price point with a warranty in place, so long as you intend to honor that product guarantee in your brand’s return policy.
Why your brand might consider offering warranties
But how do you know if warranties or product guarantees are right for your store? Aside from these clear indications that customers feel more confident in brands that provide product quality guarantees or warranties, you might be wondering if it’s worth your time and effort to set up and maintain a warranty program for your shoppers.
There are many things involved in setting up warranty programs for your products. If you have a clear and consistent use case for things like general wear and tear, product malfunctions or defects, or if you’d just like to give a set time limit on when you can accept damaged items as a return, then setting up a warranty policy is a good idea. Warranties can also help you with internal product quality assurance, and can assist you in furthering your product research and development, if you’re invested in improving the products your store offers. You can do this by collecting data on the most common return reasons, collecting items sent back to repair, and more.
What to know about warranties and returns
If you don’t already manage your returns through a returns provider, warranties can contribute to additional manual overhead and operating costs, slowing down your internal processes even more. This can also be true if you’re working with a returns provider to automate your returns—if that returns provider doesn’t also allow for the automated processing of warranty items.
Luckily, Loop is cooking up an exciting enhancement to our product that will allow merchants who offer warranty or product quality guarantee programs to enable their customers to self-serve those requests via our portal. This means a more streamlined customer experience and even more automation and time savings for our brands. Not only that, but Loop will also capture the data and customer insights involved with warranty returns—and generally keep the entire returns process more consistent across the board.
Automate your returns through Loop, whether or not you provide warranties.
Book a demo today.