Our quantitative research reveals that 26% of e-commerce users who access their e-commerce account, do so to initiate, manage, or complete an order return. Furthermore, we’ve found that 58% of users returned at least one item in the past year to an e-commerce site, and we found that 15% of users have abandoned at least one purchase in the past quarter solely due to an unsatisfactory returns policy.

Despite the importance of order returns, during our large-scale usability testing of the returns processes and the return UIs at e-commerce sites, we’ve found this to be the single feature (related to “Self-Service & Accounts”) that generates the most frustrations and usability issues for users.

Indeed, our quantitative study of 818 US adults documents that 12% of users would never purchase from a particular e-commerce site again, while an additional 11% would be unlikely to do so — solely due to a negative order return experience.