Aussie Consumers Increasingly Comfortable with Online Returns

As the rising cost of living starts to bite, and Australians turn to eCommerce in record numbers, local shoppers are also starting to return items more than ever before.

Key points:

• Since the start of 2020, visits to the refund and return pages of Australian e-commerce brands have more than doubled.
• Searches for the returns pages of Australia’s top e-commerce brands far outpace searches to refund pages.
• Leading retailers promote their returns policies with Paid Search advertising to stand out from the competition.
• Over the last few years, people have shopped online more than ever before. This started when pandemic lockdowns removed the option of shopping in stores, but continued when people discovered the simplicity and convenience of buying items online.

With increased activity comes increased comfort with completing the entire shopping journey online – and an increasingly important part of that journey is the returns and refunds process.

Between January 2020 and January 2021, there was a 15% jump in visits to the return and refund pages of local e-commerce sites. This was followed by a staggering 97% surge in traffic to these pages over the following year.

Combined with the two percent increase to January this year, there has been a 131% increase in visits to the refund and return pages of Australian e-commerce brands over the past three years.

Rather than seek a refund, the majority of Australian consumers who find themselves with items that don’t fit, aren’t as described, or otherwise don’t live up to their expectations prefer to return the item for a replacement.

Between April last year and March this year, there were 290,000 searches for refund policies, which pales in comparison to the more than 1.3 million searches for returns.

Further, some of Australia’s most popular retailers – ASOS, The Iconic, Cotton On, and David Jones – invest in promoting their returns policies and pages as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition.

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Methodology

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