Magento’s prominent rise to premier ecommerce shipping cart has an interesting tale. It all began back in 2007 when UCLA students Roy Rubin and Yoav Kutner began work on a project called Varien. The pair had identified a gap in the ecommerce market by studying osCommerce, so they launched a Google AdWords campaign to secure funding to build a new competitor.
Their efforts were rewarded, and they released the open source platform Magento in 2008. By early 2009, Magento was already more popular than osCommerce and had caught the attention of eBay, which staked a 49% claim in the company—then fully acquired it—in 2011.Magento’s history since the eBay acquisition is a bit shaky.
The platform announced plans to shut down many of its SMB services in 2014, affecting an estimated 10,000 users at the time. Many thought Magento would be gone for good, and there was a mass exodus of small businesses from the platform. BigCommerce, once a competitor, was even named eBay’s integration partner for offloading Magento users. However, the midsize and enterprise businesses stayed on board. This shift toward serving larger businesses proved highly profitable.
All of this led up to Magento’s most recent acquisition in 2018, when Adobe purchased the platform for a hefty $1.68 billion. Now, Magento counts more than 250,000 users worldwide and powers 1% of the Internet. Aside from its customizable nature, many sellers enjoy access to its robust Magento Marketplace that opens a whole new world of extensions.
A Quick Overview of the Magento Marketplace
The Magento Marketplace is the official Magento extension store, similar to the App Store for Apple products, here you can find tons of different Magento extensions to add functionality to your online store. Accessible worldwide to accommodate thousands of global sellers, Magento Marketplace is a resource hub with thousands of applications and solutions that can enhance the functionalities of any Magento store. With so many options, it gives sellers nearly endless ways to optimize their ecommerce operations.
The Marketplace is designed for easy discovery and high quality. Each user is delivered a curated browsing experience and sees offerings from top brands as well as new innovators. The Magento extensions are organized into key business categories so you can intuitively navigate and find the right solutions for your business.
Magento sellers can also rest easy knowing all the extensions available in the Marketplace have been reviewed by Magento’s in-house team and checked for quality. Developers who are part of Magento’s Technology Partner program also undergo manual code and documentation checks for even greater quality assurance.
The final quality check for extensions in the Magento marketplace comes from your fellow e-tailers. Magento’s new user ratings platform guarantees that product reviews are real and relevant, so you can get a better idea for an extension’s user experience before committing to it. You don’t have to take Magento’s word for it—get the scoop from other sellers instead.
Why There Are So Few Returns Extensions
Ecommerce returns have long been the bane of sellers’ existence. Returns eat into profit margins because of the time spent inspecting the products, adding them back into the inventory (if possible) and updating your accounting system. Some Magento sellers assume they’d be better off not making the sale at all, rather than dealing with the return.
Therefore, these e-tailers have adopted the mindset that returns need to be as difficult as possible. In theory, difficult returns will deter customers from making them. That’s why they don’t include return shipping labels when fulfilling orders, deduct the cost of return shipping from the refund and charge restocking fees. These sellers go to great lengths just to protect the revenue they earned without realizing the long-term costs they can’t afford.
See, customers won’t only be deterred from making returns. They’ll be deterred from ever shopping at those online stores in the future. That leaves the sellers in a continuous and expensive cycle of acquiring new customers only to lose them when they need to make a return.
Returns extensions are actually a fairly new and revolutionary concept. Savvy e-tailers have recently learned the benefits of making returns easy, but the Magento extensions market hasn’t yet caught up. This means few returns extensions, but quality is more important than quantity.
How This Returns Extension Helps Magento Sellers
When you look for Magento returns software, you’re guaranteed to find ReadyReturns. This automated solution makes ecommerce returns quick and painless so shoppers can initiate and execute in less than a minute—even from their mobile devices.
ReadyReturns doesn’t just cater to the modern shopper. It’s built for Magento sellers. Once it’s connected to your Magento store and set your own custom rules, it starts tracking returns. It provides visibility into each return: what’s being sent back, which customer is returning it and when you can expect it to arrive by mail. By using pay-on-use labels, ReadyReturns only charges you for return shipping labels that are used. Additionally, it has modes for ecommerce, repair and RMA. You can add it to your online store in 90 minutes and start capturing second-chance sales.
Why You Want Returns to Be Easy for Consumers
Running a Magento store takes a lot of work. From sales and marketing to inventory management to order fulfillment, sellers have a lot on their plates. Most e-tailers don’t want to welcome returns and add to the workload, not to mention incur a slice of the $550 billion pie that is the cost of ecommerce returns in 2020.
What they might not realize is easy returns will prove to be a game changer for their businesses. The unavoidable fact is that some customers return the items they buy. Recent studies reveal anywhere from 10-33% of items purchased online are returned. However, if it’s easy for them to make those returns, they’re far more likely to shop at your store in the future.
Research shows that more than 60% of online shoppers read a store’s returns policy before making a purchase, and 80% of them are looking for hassle-free returns with no return shipping costs. In fact, 90% of consumers “highly value” free returns, and 62% would “buy again” from stores that offer them. These statistics showcase how shoppers are drawn to businesses that offer easy returns, but won’t that get the attention of serial returners?
The question has been posed by many an e-tailer worried about the impact of easy returns on business operations, but the numbers prove there is nothing to fear. Returns are overwhelming due to the fault of the seller—65% of returns are made because products arrive damaged, look different than they did online or were the wrong products altogether. Additionally, a study by Sloan Review found only 0.4% of returners abuse easy returns policies, based on seven years of data from 100+ retailers.
Instead, hassle-free returns can impact your Magento business by improving customer loyalty and retention, plus boosting sales. Take a look at Zappos. The shoe retailer estimated their return rate to be at 35%, but 75% of their customer base is repeat buyers. This keeps customer acquisition costs low, and customer morale is high because they feel empowered to shop until they find the best shoes—not settle for a shoe that doesn’t fit.
How to Make the After Buying Experience Work in Your Favor
If your goal is to make more sales this year, the customer experience should be your key area of focus. After all, customers who feel good about their shopping experiences are going to be motivated to come back for more. This clearly showcases how shoppers are part of a sales cycle that doesn’t end once they buy. In fact, the purchase is only the beginning. The after buying experience comprises the speed and accuracy of shipping, the design and functionality of the packaging and any post-purchase communication.
It includes returns, too.
Some customers will need to make returns, and you can make this work in your favor. Easy returns will leave your customers feeling relieved and more willing to take another chance on your store. These second-chance sales are a great way to minimize the lost revenue from the return, and they make your customers happy because they find more products they can enjoy.
Once you bring your post-purchase experience up to the same standards as the rest of your sales funnel, you can get customers hooked on your brand.
Need even more tips? Check out our related guide: Why Retailers Need to Stop Overlooking the After-Buying Experience.
Or glean some tips on Magento 2 from the infographic we’ve included below.
