Product Information ChartBII
One of the greatest hurdles to online shopping is that customers cannot actually see the product in person before they buy it.
This fact places tremendous pressure on the retailer to completely and accurately describe the product so that the shopper knows what he or she is getting. But these descriptions often vary across different channels, so a user might read three separate descriptions on a manufacturer's website, third-party sellers' sites, and the actual product box.
This lack of consistency is having a detrimental effect, as 42% of U.S. consumers have returned something they have purchased online, according to a Shotfarm report.
This problem is most pronounced among online apparel retailers, as 25% of U.S. consumers have returned an item in the last year because the product information provided did not match what they purchased. For comparison, just 9% did the same with consumer electronics, and 7% did so for household goods.
Perhaps more damaging is the fact that inaccurate product descriptions turn off consumers from ever shopping with a retailer again. In fact, 87% of consumers are unlikely to ever buy from a retailer if they buy an item that did not have a correct product description.
Most of the time, consumers reported that the manufacturer's website had the most accurate product descriptions. So when a retailer ultimately posts the descriptions, they can alter them somewhat. To prevent this, retailers and third-party sites could simply duplicate the manufacturer's description, which would have the added benefit of reducing employees' workload because they would not have to write and post their own descriptions for each product.