Quick summary:

• Gross merchandise value is the total value of goods sold on a platform before any deductions.
• GMV offers an incomplete view of financial health because it doesn’t include the cost of fees and returns.
• Compare GMV with other metrics like revenue, customer acquisition cost (CAC), average order value, churn rate, and customer satisfaction to get a full view of business performance.
• Increase GMV by offering free shipping, upselling and cross-selling, creating product bundles, offering discounts and great customer service.
  

Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) is a useful metric to monitor when running an ecommerce site. Traditionally, it’s one of the first numbers online merchants try to improve sales. It sounds simple enough: If you increase GMV, you’ll make more money, right?

Not so fast.

Like any single metric, GMV has its shortcomings, too. Below we’ll explain the right way to think about GMV and ways to increase GMV that can lead to more profit, not just more revenue. 

What is Gross Merchandise Value (GMV)?

Gross merchandise value measures the total value of goods sold on a platform or marketplace over a specific period of time. GMV is the full amount customers pay before deductions like fees, discounts, or returns.

GMV and revenue are not interchangeable. Revenue is what remains after subtracting deductions from the GMV.

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How to calculate Gross Merchandise Value (GMV): formula + example

You can use the following formula to calculate GMV:

Gross merchandise value =  sales price of goods x number of items sold

Example of GMV

If you sell something for $100 through Etsy and Etsy takes a 10% commission, that’s $100 GMV for Etsy. 

In terms of revenue, $90 of revenue is for you and $10 of revenue for Etsy. 

If you sell something for $100 on your own website, your GMV and revenue are $100.

What Gross Merchandise Value does (and doesn’t) tell you

GMV provides insight into a platform's sales strength before considering deductions, but it doesn't reflect actual revenue or profit. 

In this section, we'll examine the advantages, limitations, and risks of depending solely on GMV to evaluate your business' performance.

Benefits of using GMV

GMV is a versatile metric that can be used for more than just evaluating how profitable your business is. Here are the five benefits of using GMV:

1. Provides a performance snapshot. GMV offers a quick and straightforward snapshot of a platform's sales volume, making it easy to gauge how well products or services are moving.
2. Helps to inform pricing and strategy. GMV data can inform pricing and marketing strategies which can help optimize your approach to increasing sales.
3. Makes identifying trends easier. Being able to access and compare data from different time periods, products, or platforms allows you to detect patterns and ecommerce trends more easily.
4. Attracts investors. Investors often use GMV as an indicator of a business's growth potential, making it a valuable metric for attracting investment.
5. Can be used as the baseline for sales targets. GMV can serve as a useful reference point for setting sales targets and assessing progress toward those targets.

What GMV doesn’t tell you

Although GMV offers valuable insights, it falls short of capturing a complete financial overview of your business. Let's look at some drawbacks of relying on GMV alone.

1. Lacks profit information. GMV doesn't reveal actual profit figures, preventing you from gauging your business’ financial health accurately.
2. Excludes expenses. GMV doesn’t account for any accrued fees and expenses associated with sales, like shipping cost, marketing, and platform fees. This incomplete metric may lead to an overly optimistic view of your business’s profitability.
3. Ignores customer returns. GMV doesn't account for customer returns, potentially overstating sales figures and misleading investors.
4. Inconsistent growth. When you prioritize GMV, you may want to push sales volume rather than focusing on profitability. There are plenty of ecommerce growth tactics beyond increasing sales.
5. Vulnerable to manipulation. Unfortunately, GMV can be manipulated by companies to create the appearance of growth without corresponding financial gains.

How to use GMV properly

The best way to use GMV is to complement it with other essential key performance indicators (KPIs). Here's how you can use GMV in tandem with other metrics:

• Revenue: Combine GMV with actual revenue to understand the impact of deductions like returns, discounts, and fees. This helps you assess how efficiently GMV translates into actual income.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): By comparing GMV with CAC, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your ecommerce strategy and help determine your return on investment (ROI).
• Average Order Value (AOV): Analyzing GMV alongside AOV allows you to explore opportunities to increase revenue by encouraging larger or more frequent purchases.
• Churn rate: GMV coupled with churn rate helps you assess the impact of losing customers on your sales. A high GMV may be exacerbated by a high churn rate, leading to lower overall profitability.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS): Combining GMV with customer satisfaction metrics can help identify the correlation between customer happiness and spending, enabling you to prioritize efforts that improve both.

How to increase Gross Merchandise Value

If you’re looking for ways to improve GMV for your ecommerce website, here are four ways to do that.

1. Offer free shipping

Free shipping is a popular option for online shopping, where customers don’t have to pay for delivery. Free shipping is attractive to customers who are sensitive to price and prefer a simple pricing structure. 

Here is a good example from Teddy Fresh:

Two different ways to offer free shipping to increase GMV:

• Order over a specific dollar amount: Highlight a free-shipping threshold to encourage customers to order more items to meet that limit and receive free delivery. 
• Offer free shipping within a specific period: Do this if you want to improve GMV during slow periods.  

🛒 Setting up an ecommerce store? Check out our list of the best Shopify themes.

2. Upsell and cross-sell products

Upselling is a strategy to sell a superior, more expensive version of a product that a customer already owns (or just bought). Meanwhile, cross-selling means selling related products to the one a customer already owns (or just bought). 

To upsell products, you can offer larger sizes, adding more features, or increasing performance. For example, if a customer wants a 4GB graphics card, upsell them to 16GB with a limited-time discount and a slightly higher price than their previous choice. 

For cross-sell, you can add a “frequently bought with this item” or “who bought this bought this” section on your product pages. Or promote accessories on the cart page as Cariuma does in the below example: 

3. Add bundles

Product bundling is when you package complimentary products as a group of items that can be purchased together at a discount or a lower price than when purchased separately. 

You can bundle products together as an upsell or a cross-sell. Alternatively, you can create a unique product bundle, either in a gift box or special wrapping. 

Winc is just one example of an online store that has capitalized on an opportunity for product education and curation with subscription boxes. The brand uses a quiz to help customers determine the right bottle of wine that satisfies their tastes. Then, offer curated boxes of items that meet their preferences. 

When you have a lot of slow-moving inventory products, it’s a great idea to bundle them with popular items. Doing that will help freshen up your old or overstocked inventory and increase sales. 

By offering bundles, you can also make customers feel that they got a good deal — even though they’ve likely spent more than they planned to. 

Setting up your Shopify store? See our list of the best Shopify apps for ecommerce merchants.

4. Offer bulk discount

Bulk discount (also known as bulk pricing or volume discount) is a sales strategy that encourages customers to purchase more and with higher quantities at a lower price. This is particularly useful if you’re selling items that are typically bought in bulk. 

Note that you can also use free gifts or free products to incentivize customers who spend more on your store. Cotopaxi did a great job of using this tactic. This store offers customers free masks if they spend beyond a certain threshold.

5. Provide top-notch customer service

Approximately 95% of customers say that customer service is important to their choice of and loyalty to a brand. And 80% of customers consider the experience a company provides as important as its products.

These are just a few of many key customer service statistics, but enough to prove that an excellent customer service experience impacts your bottom line. 

When you take time to answer customers’ questions on social media and live chat, you build trust with them and make them feel safe to buy from you.

When you’re proactive in reducing returns, you have a chance to turn them into new sales. Your customer might be satisfied with an exchange instead of asking for a refund.

That strengthens your brand confidence and encourages customers to come back to your store. 

After all, retaining an existing customer is five times cheaper than finding a new one. By delivering exceptional customer service, you give your customers a convincing reason to stay with your business forever. 

A final thought about GMV

GMV is helpful if you’re selling on marketplaces like Etsy, Amazon, or Alibaba. But as said earlier, you shouldn’t focus too much on improving GMV. There are more important ecommerce KPIs you should follow to measure how your store performs. 

Also, it’s one thing to increase GMV; it’s another thing to maintain excellent customer service when you have more orders. Take care of your customers first to create an incredible shopping experience for them, and you’ll improve your bottom line sooner or later. 

If you’re looking for a solution to help you handle a flood of customer requests, let Gorgias lend you a hand.

‍Sign up for a Gorgias account and enjoy all the features you need in an ecommerce help desk in a 7-day free trial.

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You went back to check your store and noticed an error in the checkout page settings, preventing customers from making payments on your store. 

Do you think you would experience the moment of dread in that situation? 

I bet you would. 

When you’re launching an online store, there are many details to remember—and those details can make or break your business's success.  

However, by having a rock-solid ecommerce launch checklist in place, you can eliminate errors and rid yourself of “dread” moments forever. 

The following checklist will help you figure out the key things you need to get ready when launching your online store. Think of it as a quality-assurance check for your ecommerce launch. 

Let’s jump in. 

The 15 step ecommerce launch checklist

1. Get the core pages of your online store set up
2. Design listing pages
3. Create product pages
4. Make a shopping cart page
5. Put together a checkout page
6. Check on your ecommerce SEO
7. Optimize your website for conversions
8. Add essential apps to your store
9. Install an ecommerce helpdesk
10. Set up email marketing
11. Connect your sales channels
12. Set up analytics
13. Develop an ecommerce marketing plan
14. Integrate payment methods
15. Run ecommerce testing

1. Get the core pages of your online store set up 

Your ecommerce website is where customers will visit to learn more about what you’re offering. It’s also where shopping activities happen. 

‎Hence, ensure your website includes these most recommended standard pages:

• Home page: This is arguably the most important page on your website. A well-designed homepage should tell what your business is all about and your unique value proposition. It should also include links to product pages and category pages on your store. 
• About page: This is where customers learn about the people behind your products. A good About page should tell your brand story and what you stand for. It should also include trust elements to prove your store is real and credible.
• Contact page: Ensure you display your phone number, email, and real physical address (if any) on the Contact page. Make it clear about how customers can get in touch with you to showcase your authenticity. 
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page: Customers might have a lot of questions before deciding to buy from you. Having an effective FAQ page will help you offer a self-service solution to customers and avoid answering the same questions repeatedly. 
• Terms of service: This page covers your legal base, what’s included, and what’s not in your services. 
• Privacy: As concerns about data breaches are increasing, it’s highly recommended that you work with a lawyer to draft a clear privacy policy for your ecommerce business. 
• Shipping, return and refund: Nearly half of the consumers check an online store’s return policy before making a purchase. That’s why having a dedicated shipping, return, and refund page on your website is crucial. Doing that is also an excellent way to build trust with your potential customers. 

A worthy note is that your ecommerce website doesn’t have to include a blog page. It depends on your marketing strategy, product types, and target audience (more on that later). 

2. Design listing pages

A listing page or a category page is where customers discover your products associated with a specific category. It’s useful for keeping your website coherent and helping customers find what they’re looking for quickly. You can take listing pages to a whole new level by using them to increase conversions and enhance your overall SEO.

‎Ensure you include the following elements in your listing pages:

• A short introduction to your category. 
• Filtering and sorting functions
• Best sellers and reviews. 
• Stock availability. 
• Product quick view. 
• Internal linking among categories and sub-categories.

3. Design product pages

Product pages are where the buy buttons show up. But they’re also where many other things can go wrong: lack of trust, unclear information about products, etc. That’s why each product page must be optimized as much as possible. 

‎Keep in mind the following:

• Display the add to cart button prominently. Above the fold is an ideal place because it’s at customers’ reach at all times. Also, make it stand out by using contrast colors. 
• Use high-quality, professionally crafted pictures from different angles. Enable product image zoom and 360-degree view features in your theme. 
• Write a solid product description. Focus on the benefits of your products, not just features. In other words, how your products make customers’ lives easier and better. 
• Check product-related components, including styles, sizes, colors, inventory tracking numbers, tax rates, currency, product weights, etc. 
• Establish trust with customers by displaying trust badges, reviews and testimonials, or other social proof types.  

4. Design shopping cart page

The shopping cart is where shoppers review their selected items and make the purchasing decision. The goal of this page is to lead shoppers to the checkout page. 

Follow these tips to create an effective shopping cart:

• Display product details, including product names, images, sizes, colors, and prices clearly. This helps shoppers remember their selected products and why they want to have them. 
• Use a clear, attention-grabbing call-to-action (CTA) button, for example, “Proceed to Checkout” or “Go to Checkout.”
• Make the cart easily editable, like removing items, changing size/color/quantity, etc. 
• Display social proof to maintain trust with shoppers and avoid unexpected shipping costs/taxes/hidden costs. 
• Add a mini cart widget. It’s a good idea because shoppers can add products to their cart without leaving the page they’re on. 

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5. Design checkout page

The checkout page is where cart abandonment often happens. So ensure you review it carefully as much as possible. 

Remember these to build a high-converting checkout page:

• Offer various popular payment options like credit cards, master cards, PayPal, Amazon Payments.
• Keep it simple. Don’t include too many steps or fields—the goal should be to help customers finish the payment process faster. 
• Include an option to check out as a guest. 
• Display a progress bar at the top of the page to tell shoppers how many more steps are left to complete the purchase. 
• Include a live chat throughout the checkout process to quickly support customers.
• Show order confirmation after purchase. The best practice is to create a Thank You landing page to confirm the order and give them special offers for the next purchases.  

6. Check ecommerce SEO

Many ecommerce websites rely on social media or paid advertising to drive conversions. They ignore entirely or put together with little consideration of search engine optimization (SEO).

But ecommerce SEO is worth investing in because 44% of people start their online shopping journey with a Google search. Also, 37.5% of all traffic to ecommerce sites comes from search engines. 

Keep in mind the following:

• Do keyword research and find the most relevant keywords to your niche. 
• Use selected keywords to optimize meta titles, descriptions, H1’s, URLs.
• Insert selected keywords into product descriptions and category descriptions. 
• Add schema markup to get rich snippets displayed in Google, which can increase CTR by up to 30%. 
• Remove or fix duplicate content. 
• Link to high-priority pages like product pages and category pages. 
• Create and submit a sitemap. 
• Optimize website loading speed by upgrading your hosting, investing in a CDN, and optimizing image file size with compression. 

Recommended reading: SEO for ecommerce, Dominate Google in 10 Easy Steps.

7. Optimize website for conversions

On an ecommerce website, conversions are critical. Check out the following to make sure your store is optimized for high conversion rates:

• Use videos to demonstrate your products.
• Show live chat to address shoppers’ concerns and answer their questions faster. 
• Make your website user-friendly and fully responsive on mobile devices. 
• Display countdown timers and/or stock countdowns to give shoppers a little push to take action.
• Optimize menu navigation. Make it super easy for shoppers to find whatever they need. 
• Ensure site search works well, not just product information but also related products, delivery times, return policies, and more.
• Make information about your products and services easily findable and visible. 
• Use a “sticky” buy button so shoppers can easily proceed to checkout whenever they’re ready to place an order. 
• Enable the Pin It button so shoppers can share your products on their Pinterest wishlists. 

8. Install essential apps for your store

Every ecommerce platform offers an app store filled with amazing apps to extend your commerce store’s functionality and grow your business. That’s why you should find the most essential apps and install them into your store:

Here are some app types you should consider: 

• Apps for marketing and promotion.
• App for increasing sales and conversions.
• Apps for sales channels.
• Apps for SEO and site optimization.
• Apps for finding products and managing inventory.
• App for customer service (more on that later).

9. Set up an ecommerce helpdesk

Good customer service means better customer retention and more sales. That’s why choosing the right helpdesk is crucial for your online business. It’ll not only help you provide the best customer support, increase engagement, and convert more sales in the process but also seamlessly integrate with your current ecommerce platform.

For ecommerce businesses, Gorgias is an ideal solution as it’s an ecommerce-dedicated ticketing system and has tight integration with Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento.

‎Here is what Gorgias offers:

• Update orders directly from your helpdesk and work faster with smart automation.
• Manage customer requests for multiple storefronts, either on desktop or mobile apps.
• Use Shopify and BigCommerce variables to auto-respond order-related tickets.
• Integrate with third-party apps like ShipStation, Slack, and Recharge.
• Use macros to automate tasks and perform actions like adding tags, bulk action.
• Provide instant support by setting rules based on customer intents.
• Deliver omnichannel customer service, e.g., SMS messaging and social media.
• Easy to use, no learning curve involved, no feature overload.
• Impartial customer support for all merchants, regardless of the plans you’re using.

10. Set up email marketing 

Using email marketing is one of the best ways to develop and maintain a good relationship with customers. If your ecommerce business hasn’t taken the time to adopt email marketing, you’re likely leaving money on the table.

Here are the eight most important emails for ecommerce:

• Welcome emails: Thank shoppers for joining your email list, set expectations for what’s to come.
• Thank you emails: Thank shoppers for buying from you and reassuring them they’ll receive the order on time. 
• Survey emails: Send customers an email to ask for their feedback on shopping experience and their experience with your products. 
• Card abandonment email: Encourage customers to complete their purchase if they leave items in their carts.
• Order confirmation emails: Confirm with customers the order they just made in your store. 
• Upsell and cross-sell emails: Sell customers additional products to increase your store’s average order value. 
• Promotional offer emails: Tell your customers about your site-wide discounts, holiday offers, free gifts, etc.
• Customer loyalty and re-engagement emails: Send emails to existing customers or customers who haven’t purchased from your store in a specific timeframe. 

11. Connect with sales channels

The U.S. now has over 230 million active social media users, with nearly 7 million added in 2019. That doesn’t mention the fact that ecommerce sales are heavily influenced by social media. Since your customers are very likely already on some social platforms, you might want to go where they are. 

Keep the following in mind:

• Create a blog page and regularly share content relevant to your products. 
• Establish your presence on social media like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.
• Follow influencers in your niche, read their followers’ comments to see what people are interested in and how you can integrate it into your products. 
• Build a list of branded and non-branded hashtags to use in your social media posts. 
• Get your products and brand features on price comparison websites, review websites, relevant forums, communities, Quora, etc. 
• Display your website on handmade and crafts marketplace, on-demand production marketplace, niche marketplace, classified listings website, daily deals sites, Yellow Pages, etc. 

Recommended reading: Master Social Media Marketing for Ecommerce in 10 Easy Steps

12. Set up analytics 

It’s essential to set up analytics tracking and monitoring from day one because doing that will give you valuable insights into your visitors and customers.

‎Your ecommerce platform has its own set of analytics reporting built-in, but you may also want to consider trying these tips:

• Set up your Google Analytics in Google Tag Manager.
• Register and verify your site with Google Search Console.
• Verify checkout tracking. 
• Customize tracking campaigns using URL Query String Tags. 
• Filter bots and spiders.
• Set up Facebook Analytics.

Also, be sure you understand the importance of the following ecommerce metrics:

• Sales conversion rate 
• Email opt-ins 
• Customer lifetime value
• Customer acquisition cost
• Revenue by traffic cost
• Average order value 
• Shopping cart abandonment rate 
• Net Promoter Score

13. Develop an ecommerce marketing plan  

The secret to ecommerce success isn’t just to get your products out there and see how they perform. You need a marketing plan to bring your products to potential customers and convince them to buy. 

Without a marketing plan, you might miss out on the fact that “More and more brands are competing for the same eyes. Facebook’s algorithm rewards video and motion-based creative that are more likely to hook your audience quickly. And customers are also more demanding, impatient and curious than ever before,” as Scott Ginsberg, Head of Content, Metric Digital says.

Ensure your marketing plan includes:

• SMART (Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals and objectives. 
• Target customers, personas, and markets. You have to have a clear understanding of who you’re targeting, what characteristics define them, and where they’re located. Also, be sure you know their purchasing power and behaviors.
• Channels, tactics, tools to execute your plan. Pay-per-click advertising, SEO, content marketing, influencer marketing, social media marketing, or email marketing—list out everything you’ll do to achieve your goals in detail.
• A holiday marketing calendar that shows important holidays and events of the year. It’s also much better if you have a holiday marketing plan in place—the sooner, the better. 

14. Integrate payment methods

One of the best ways to reduce abandoned carts is by providing as many payment methods as possible since everyone has different preferences. 

Consider integrating these payment options:

• Credit and debit cards, bank transfers, prepaid cards. 
• Digital wallets like PayPal, ApplePay, Google Pay. If you’re selling to China, WeChat should be considered. 
• Buy now, pay later. It’s a growing trend, especially among millennials and Generation Z. 
• ACH (Automated Clearing House). This method gives you greater control over payments and increases payment accuracy. Your customers also receive their purchases faster since ACH payments are processed quickly. 

Regarding credit cards, you need to set up payment authorization to capture payment from your customers. You can do this by accessing your ecommerce platform admin. For example, in Shopify, you can set up automatic or manual capture of credit card payments. Shopify Payments provides an authorization period of 7 days.  

15. Run ecommerce testing 

To avoid errors and remove common online shopping hassles, you need to carefully test your ecommerce website before launching it. Also, run continuous A/B testing to identify what makes your customers happy and what brings conversions to your store. 

Ensure you do the following tests:

• A/B test everything about your CTA buttons.
• Test multiple CTAs per page against one CTA per page.
• Test ecommerce apps’ functionalities and social media integrations. 
• Test payment method functionalities.
• Check compatibility with web browsers.
• Test mobile responsiveness.
• Check performance and SEO-related things. 
• Test websites, including homepage hero images, search button, all pages, pop-up forms, account pages, site loading speed, site security, and more. 
• Test email marketing sequences.
• Test orders on mobile and desktops.

Use this ecommerce launch checklist to get your store ready!

This ecommerce launch checklist represents a roadmap for online merchants looking to start their business from scratch. Mastering the basics, and you’ll avoid all the hassles along the way.

Let’s wrap up:

• Prepare standard pages
• Design listing pages, product pages, shopping cart page, checkout pages
• Check ecommerce SEO
• Optimize website for conversion
• Install essential ecommerce apps
• Set up an ecommerce helpdesk 
• Set up email marketing
• Connect with sales channels
• Set up analytics
• Develop an ecommerce marketing plan
• Integrate payment methods
• Run ecommerce tests 

And once your store is up and running, check out these 13 ecommerce growth tactics to take your store to the next level.

Looking for a customer support app for your ecommerce store? Sign up for a Gorgias account and enjoy all the premium features for free in 7 days. Gorgias is an ecommerce-focused helpdesk solution that will help you create the best experience for your customers, improve your support team’s performance, and eventually drive sales.

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The overall best customer support metrics to track:

• First contact resolution (FCR) signifies how efficient and knowledgeable your team is at solving inquiries within one interaction.
• Customer satisfaction score (CSAT) shows how happy customers are with your brand and customer service.
• Self-service resolution rate highlights how well you make the most of self-service resources.
• The tickets closed per agent metric suggests agent efficiency and serves as a benchmark for your support team's average performance.
• Revenue churn rate lets you see the financial impact of losing customers, allowing you to create a more informed strategy.
• Converted tickets indicate how effectively your support agents promote and upsell your product.

Most brands keep a close eye on sales numbers, marketing performance, and other parts of the business that generate revenue. But they don’t do a great job measuring customer support performance, usually because they don’t understand the link between customer experience and revenue.

Your customer support team might already measure how quickly you respond to support tickets, which is a great start. The list of metrics we share below paint a fuller picture of the larger impact customer support has on business growth. And once you can demonstrate your impact on business growth, you can start making the case for better tools and more staff.

Track these customer support metrics, improve them, and watch your customer loyalty, repeat purchases, and revenue rise.

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25 key customer service metrics for ecommerce 

Below, we describe 25 of the most essential customer service metrics, organized into six categories. Some metrics have to do with your team's performance — like how quickly and well you respond to tickets. Other metrics look deeper at your team's impact on larger company goals, like customer retention and revenue generation. 

We’ll also share how to calculate each of these metrics. For some, a simple formula will suffice. For others, a dedicated tool like a helpdesk or survey automation tool will save tons of time.

That said, here are the top customer support metrics to track:

Response time metrics

1. First response time (FRT)
2. Average resolution time (ART)
3. Average reply time
4. First call resolution (FCR) or single-reply resolution
5. Average ticket handle time (AHT)

Customer satisfaction metrics

1. Customer satisfaction (CSAT)
2. Support performance score
3. Customer effort score (CES)
4. Customer contact rate
5. Net promoter score (NPS)

Conversation metrics

1. Abandoned conversation rate
2. Unresolved ticket rate
3. Self-service resolution rate
4. Social media support tickets
5. Social media brand mentions

Agent performance metrics

1. Tickets closed per agent
2. Ticket quality
3. Template utilization

Churn & retention metrics

1. Repeat customer rate (RCR)
2. Customer retention rate (CRR)
3. Net retention rate (NRR)
4. Customer churn rate (CRR)
5. Revenue churn rate

Revenue-related metrics

1. Converted tickets
2. Revenue backlog

Response time metrics

1) First response time (FRT)

First response time (FRT) is a metric that tracks how long it takes for you to reply to the first message in a conversation with a customer.

Top performing companies using Gorgias have an average first response time of .54 hours. However, the benchmark varies per channel: aim to respond to email tickets within 24 hours and live chat messages within 90 seconds, according to Klipfolio. 

How to calculate average first response time

Calculating your average first response time is relatively simple — most helpdesks will report this number for you. If you don’t have a helpdesk, you can find first response times for tickets by comparing the time stamp when you first received the customer request with the timestamp of the first response. If you received the message at 8 AM on Monday and respond at 8 AM on Tuesday, your first response time is one day. 

Add up all of your first response times from the period of time you’re looking to analyze — for example, one month — and then divide that number by the total number of resolved tickets during that same time frame:

Total first response times during chosen time period / total # of resolved tickets during chosen time period = Average first response time 

Using real numbers, here’s an example of what this calculation looks like:

74,000 seconds / 800 resolved tickets = 92.5 seconds (average first response time)

2) Average reply time

Your average reply time (or average response time) refers to how long it takes for you to respond to any customer support message, not just the first message of a ticket. Your average response time should be similar to the first response time. You don’t want to keep customers waiting, even in prolonged conversations.

How to calculate average response time

To find your average response time, add up the total time your team has taken to respond to requests during a specific time period. Then, divide that number by the total number of responses your team sent during that time period:

Total time taken to respond during chosen time period / number of sent responses = Average response time

3) Average resolution time (ART)

Average resolution time (ART) refers to the amount of time it takes for your customer support team to fully solve the customer’s problem and close the ticket. We analyzed data across about 6,000 ecommerce companies using Gorgias to provide customer support and we found that the top-performing companies have an average resolution time of 1.67 hours. 

Inside Gorgias, your average resolution time is automatically tracked. In your account, you’ll get visual reports showing your average resolution time in a given time period.

How to calculate average resolution time

To calculate average resolution time, also sometimes referred to as “mean time,” begin by choosing a specific time period to analyze. Then, total up the length of all of your resolved conversations with customers during that time period. Once you have that number, divide it by the number of conversations had during the time period you’ve chosen to analyze:

Total duration of resolved conversations / # of customer conversations = Average resolution time

See our guide to resolution time to learn good-fit strategies to improve this metric.
4) First contact resolution (FCR) or single-reply resolution rate

You know what customers absolutely love? When they can get their issues resolved with a single interaction. Single-reply resolution rate calculates what percentage of your tickets are handled with the first reply. It’s also known as the first contact resolution rate or FCR. 

Single-reply resolution rate = Total number of requests resolved with one interaction in a single time period divided by the total number of requests in the same time period.

How to calculate this first contact resolution

To find your single-reply resolution rate, you can simply divide the number of support issues that were resolved on the first reply by the total number of tickets that are FCR-eligible (FCR-eligible means only including tickets that are possible to give a resolution in one response). As a formula, it would look like this:

Number of support issues resolved on first contact / total number of FCR-eligible support tickets = FCR rate

5) Average ticket handle time

The average handle time (AHT) is an important metric to track if you offer customer service via phone. In today’s online world, most ecommerce companies handle tickets only with chat and email. However, very large ecommerce brands may choose to provide phone call support as well. 

The average ticket handline time includes the total talk time and total hold time for that caller. You can calculate the average for larger periods of time to get better insights, such as per week or per month. 

Not using voice support? Learn about 4 benefits of adding voice support to your ecommerce store.

How to calculate average handle time

To find your average ticket handling time, add up the total time spent on all voice tickets within the time period you’re analyzing, including talk time, hold time, and follow-up time. Then, divide that number by the number of tickets a customer support agent handled on all channels within that same period of time:

Total voice ticket time / # of total tickets touched = Average handle time 

Customer satisfaction metrics

6) Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) is a metric to measure your customer base’s level of satisfaction with their experience. CSAT is one of the most important measurements because satisfied customers return to your store, refer friends, leave reviews, and unlock reliable revenue for your brand.

CSAT compiles responses to a very simple question: “How would you rate the help [Agent] gave you?” You can use a survey or a website feedback widget to ask customers to rate on a scale of 1 to 5 how satisfied they are with a support experience. 

CSAT aims to get an overall benchmark for your team’s performance, plus information about the service experience each agent provides. If this score suddenly drops or peaks, you should act fast to see what happened. For example, you may be sending delayed or unhelpful responses after launching a new product, getting a spike in ticket volume, or changing a policy like refunds and returns.

Read our in-depth guide to CSAT score for more tips on improving your CSAT score and CSAT survey response rates.

How to calculate CSAT

Calculate your customer satisfaction score by asking a question like, “How would you rate your satisfaction with the goods/services you received?” Then, you would give the customer the option to respond on a scale of 1-5. The scale would look something like this:

1. Very unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied

With Gorgias, you can automatically send one of these surveys after each interaction with customer support:

Once your customers respond, you’ll need to use the responses in this formula if you don’t have a helpdesk that does it automatically:

(Total number of 4 and 5 responses, or “satisfied customers” / number of total responses) x 100 = CSAT

An example of this could look like this:

(126 4 and 5 responses) / (300 total responses) x 100 = 42% CSAT, which indicates you aren’t doing a great job of satisfying customers.

If you use Gorgias, you can automatically send customer satisfaction surveys and track your scores over time. Learn more about our satisfaction survey and dashboard:

7) Support performance score

Support performance score is a metric Gorgias created that combines average first response time, average resolution time, and CSAT for a single score out of five that concisely represents your customer service performance. If you could only track one customer service metric — which we do not recommend — it would be this one.

Support performance score balances these three metrics to represent three of the most important elements of quality support:

• Speed, with first response time
• Helpfulness, with average resolution time
• Customer satisfaction, with CSAT score

How to calculate support performance score

Support performance score is calculated with a series of thresholds for CSAT, FRT, and resolution time. You have to meet the threshold in each category to reach the next level. Here are the thresholds for FRT, for example:

• Level 1 (poor): 13+ hours
• Level 2 (lagging): 12 hours
• Level 3 (fair): 6 hours
• Level 4 (strong): 1 hour
• Level 5 (exceptional) 10 minutes

If you use Gorgias, you’ll see your support performance score over time, plus a breakdown of each metric that makes up your score. 

8) Customer effort score (CES)

According to The Effortless Experience, 96% of high-effort customer experiences drive customer disloyalty. In other words, the amount of effort across your entire customer journey has a huge bearing on the success of your customer experience and, by extension, your brand’s revenue.

By measuring CES, you and your team members can work towards reducing customer effort, which in turn will increase the lifetime customer value and the likelihood of word-of-mouth referrals.

You may be wondering what exactly is considered “high effort.” This could include long wait times when a customer calls in or reaches out via email, or not getting a concise response — which leads to time-consuming back-and-forth. Of course, “effort” is subjective and highly dependent on the individual customer and their expectations. 

How to calculate customer effort score

To measure CES, you’ll need to utilize another survey. The questionnaire should ask the customer how much effort they had to exert in order to get their question answered. 

For example, “[insert company name] made it easy for me to handle my issue.” Then, you’d provide a scale of 1 to 10. A score of 1 would be “strongly disagree,” while 10 would be “strongly agree.” 

Once you’ve collected the data, you can calculate your average customer effort score:

Total sum of all responses / total number of responses = CES

9) Customer contact rate

Customer contact rate measures the percentage of active customers who contact support each day, month, or year.

A high customer contact rate is an indicator that your customer experience is confusing and unclear. It also means your agents will be swamped with tickets and may not have enough time to provide quality responses. 

A high contact rate might also drive down revenue: a customer support interaction is 4x more likely to drive disloyalty than it is to drive loyalty, according to The Effortless Experience. While you want to make your interactions as helpful as possible, you’re better off giving customers a clear, effortless experience without having to reach out to support in the first place.

You can drive down customer contact rate with clearer self-service resources, like an FAQ page and shipping and returns policies.

How to measure customer contact rate

Divide the number of customers who contact your customer service team for help over the course of a month by the number of total customers. Then, multiply that number by 100. 

Contact rate = (Number of customers who contact you in a month / Total number of customers) x 100

10) Net promoter score (NPS)

Similar to the CSAT, the NPS is a common metric for measuring customer satisfaction. Customers will rate on a scale from 1 to 10 how likely they are to recommend your business to a friend. It’s best to measure this regularly, so you can determine your company’s benchmark and look for any drops or spikes in the average rating. 

You can use a feedback widget on your website to collect this data, or include the quick survey at the bottom of emails for transaction or shipping updates.

How to calculate net promoter score

To calculate net promoter score, you first need to gather data using a customer survey. Send a survey to customers after they make a purchase that asks them, “On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [products or service] to a friend or colleague?” On this scale, 0 would be not at all likely, and 10 would be extremely likely. 

Customers fall into three categories based on their responses to these surveys: promoters (scores 9 or 10), passives (scores 7 or 8), and detractors (scores 0 to 6). Once you have all the data collected, you can apply the numbers to this formula:

Total % of promoters - total % of detractors = Net promoter score 

See our best practices for getting the best NPS response rate.

Conversation metrics

11) Conversation abandonment rate

Conversation abandonment rate is a metric to understand how frequently your customers abruptly end interactions with customer support before reaching a clear resolution. 

Whether the conversation is happening via email, chat, or phone call, conversation abandonment signals something larger is wrong. Most conversation abandonment happens after customers wait too long or become frustrated by poor service. 

How to calculate conversation abandonment rate

To calculate this metric, all you need to track is the number of abandoned incidents and the total number of incidents. In this context, “incidents” refers to either calls, emails, or live chat sessions. Once you have those two numbers, you can plug them into the following formula:

Conversation abandonment rate = (Number of abandoned incidents / Total number of incidents) x 100

12) Unresolved ticket rate

Your average number of unresolved tickets is a very important metric to track because unresolved tickets are a leading indicator of unhappy customers. You don’t want too many unresolved tickets piling up. Set a company-wide goal for the maximum number of unresolved tickets per day, week, and month.

Your unresolved ticket rate includes all abandoned conversations, which you read about in the above section. They also include any tickets where the support team couldn’t provide a real solution, plus tickets that your support team forgot to follow up on.

How to calculate unsolved ticket rate

Similarly to ticket volume, you don’t need a specific formula to calculate your number of unresolved tickets. Rather, all you need is a reliable system (whether it’s a helpdesk or a process) for keeping track of how many tickets are left unresolved after a certain length of time. 

13) Self-service resolution rate

Want to know how well your self-service strategy — whether that’s automated chat conversations, self-service chat flows, a blog, or any other self-service resource — lowers customer and agent effort? 

You can separate out tickets that did not have a customer support representative work on them, and that were resolved only with automation. You can also track the amount of views your self-service resources get to understand how many tickets they deflect entirely. 

How to calculate self-service resolution rate

Finding your total self-service resolution rate is a bit difficult because you don’t have a ticket to open or close. You can track views on your self-service resources to understand whether they’re being adopted, and track changes to your contact rate to see if they reduce the number of tickets coming in.

Automated support resolution rate is a little easier to calculate:

Automated support resolution rate = Total number of requests resolved with only automation in a single time period divided by the total number of requests resolved with automation, manual support, and a combination of both (in the same time period).

(Solved tickets with automation / total tickets received) x 100 = Resolution rate 

14) Social media support tickets 

Customers’ issues do not only exist in your desired support channels like email and chat. Do you get support tickets on social media? Rather than fight against this trend and attempt to ask customers to submit a ticket via chat, you should respond and help them. Just don’t share sensitive data, of course. 

Measure the number of social media support tickets that you get every day, week, month, and quarter. When that number grows, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It could mean that more of your customers are interacting with your social media profiles. However, it’s still important to pay attention to the benchmark metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs). Sudden changes could represent an issue with your product or shipping speeds.

With Gorgias, you can track and respond to every support ticket that comes through social media — or any channel — from within the helpdesk:

‍Learn more about Gorgias’ social media customer service features.

How to calculate this metric

Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear-cut way to measure and analyze social media support tickets, so we encourage you to use a social listening tool that allows you to do a number of things. For instance, tracking brand mentions on social media, as well as how many tickets are coming in through your social platforms during various periods of time. Having all of your social metrics in one place will make them much easier to analyze than pulling them one-by-one out of several different spreadsheets. 

15) Social media brand mentions

How frequently your brand is mentioned on social media is a critical metric to track if you want to provide incredible support and get on top of PR disasters. You should have a good benchmark for how often your brand is mentioned per day and per week. If the number spikes, then one of your products might have gone viral, or you’ve got a PR nightmare happening. 

You can pay attention to brand mentions with a social listening and brand monitoring software. It’s also smart to use a helpdesk built to manage social comments.

How to calculate this metric

To keep an eye on your social media brand mentions, you’ll need to tap into a social listening tool, as mentioned above. You can certainly try to do this manually and track it all in a spreadsheet, but similar to tracking the volume of tickets, digital software will make this process easier and more efficient. 

Agent performance metrics

16) Tickets closed per agent

You might also want to measure the number of tickets closed per agent for a certain time period. For example, you could look at the number of tickets each agent is closing per day to spot differences in productivity. You could look at a longer period of time, such as per month, to find which agents are consistently closing more tickets, assuming they each work the same number of hours. 

This will help you discover the agents who deserve praise and bonuses, and which ones might need training. If you find an agent that is always closing too few tickets, it may be time to let them go, unfortunately. 

With Gorgias, this metric is automatically tracked in your account:

Plus, you can zoom out to understand trends among agents over time, to compare performance or plan your weekly coverage schedules:

How to calculate this metric

To calculate the number of tickets closed per agent, take the total number of tickets closed during a certain time period and then divide it by the number of agents working during that same time period:

Total # tickets closed / # of agents = Tickets closed per agent

17) Ticket quality

Ticket quality isn’t a metric on its own, but it’s a metric you can create to score your agents’ tickets and work toward a consistent quality of response. 

We recommend all customer support teams develop a sort of rubric that defines, in objective terms, what a “good” response looks like. The rubric can include things like:

• Response time
• Level of empathy
• Adherence to brand voice
• Correctness (or adherence to company policies)

Your agents will appreciate having concrete goals for their tickets. Plus, you will have an easier time holding agents accountable to standards if they’re written down. You can, and should, regularly update your rubric as you dig into data to understand what ticket qualities actually produce the best results. 

How to measure ticket quality

As we said, this isn’t exactly a metric to measure. So instead, we’ll recommend that you spot check each agent’s tickets against this rubric. This doesn’t have to be an intimidating process. Some support companies have weekly ticket breakdowns where the entire team — or team leadership, for larger companies — discuss and score tickets against the rubric to get on the same page about ticket quality.

18) Template utilization

Templated responses save your agents a lot of time and, by extension, mean customers get answers faster. If you don’t have a customer support platform, you can create templated responses in Gmail to answer common questions like, “Where is my order?” (WISMO). If you use helpdesk software, you can also likely add pre-written responses agents can use for each channel. At Gorgias, we call these Macros.

You can get statistics on the utilization of your Macros in any given time period. You can then compare this to the use of tags. For example, if the tag “Cancel Order” was used 100 times in one week, but the Macro was only used 50 times, then that means that your reps only used the Macro half the time. 

Talk with your reps about why they’re underutilizing certain Macros. You might need to improve the copy of the Macros or add more variables to make it more useful. Or, you might simply need to remind new reps about the Macros feature.

How to calculate this metric

If you don’t use a helpdesk, you’ll likely have to manually review tickets to see when the template was and wasn’t used. Helpdesk software will automatically report on template utilization.

Churn & retention metrics

19) Repeat customer rate (RCR)

Your company will always have two types of customers: new customers and repeat customers. Tracking both is important, but tracking repeat customers specifically will help you determine if your retention efforts are working. Repeat customers also have a larger impact on overall revenue: Repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time customers, according to data from Gorgias merchants.

The value of repeat customers is compounded by the fact that retaining a current customer is five times less expensive for a business than finding a brand new customer. 

How to calculate repeat customer rate

To calculate your repeat customer rate (RCR), you can divide your number of repeat customers by your total number of customers, then multiply that by 100. This means that in order to calculate the RCR properly, you need to already be tracking repeat customers versus new customers. The formula for RCR is as follows:

(Total repeat customers / total paying customers) x 100 = RCR

Using real numbers, here’s an example of what the RCR calculation looks like:

(80 repeat customers / 230 paying customers) x 100 = 34.78%

20) Customer retention rate (CRR)

As mentioned previously, retaining customers is always less expensive than finding new customers. That’s why customer retention rate (CRR) is a vital metric. Ecommerce companies in particular have an average CRR of about 30%, according to Omniconvert, so if your company’s CRR is lower than that, it could be a sign that your customer support isn’t as effective as it could be. 

How to calculate customer retention rate

To calculate CRR, you will need the following information: number of customers at the end of a given time period (E), number of customers gained within that time period (N), number of customers at the beginning of the time period (S). 

Then, plug those numbers into this formula:

CRR = [(E-N)/S] x 100

Tools like Mixpanel, Qualtrics, and Optimove can also help you automatically track this metric.

21) Net retention rate (NRR)

Net retention rate, sometimes called net dollar retention (NDR) or net revenue rate, measures the percentage of recurring revenue retained from your existing customers over a month, quarter, or year. Klipfolio reports that a good NRR is anywhere between 90% and 125%, depending on your brand’s niche, product, and total addressable market (TAM). 

This metric is most common among SaaS companies and subscription-based ecommerce companies, but it can absolutely apply to all types of ecommerce brands and even other industries.

How to measure net retention rate

Net revenue retention depends on your business model — it’s easier to calculate for subscription companies than companies that sell standalone products. That said, here’s the formula for net retention rate: 

NRR = [(Monthly recurring revenue (MRR) at the start of a month + expansions + upsells - churn - contractions) / MRR at the start of the month] x 100

22) Customer churn rate (CRR)

Customer churn rate measures the amount of customers your business loses over a given time period.

Customer churn is a more common metric for SaaS businesses and other subscription-based business models because those business models can easily spot the moment when an active customer cancels their subscription, or churns. 

However, all businesses, including ecommerce businesses without subscription-based products can track churn rate. But ecommerce businesses might find revenue churn rate, which we discuss below, easier to track.

How to measure customer churn rate

To calculate customer churn rate calculation, gather the total number of customers who were with your business at the beginning of a time frame and the number of active customers at the end of the time you’re analyzing. Then, use this formula:

[(Customers at the beginning of the time period - customers at the end of the time period) / Customers at the beginning of the time period] x 100 = Customer churn rate (%)

23) Revenue churn rate

Revenue churn measures changes in your store’s incoming revenue from existing customers. Businesses that sell standalone products might find this more simple to track than customer churn rate, which is better geared toward subscription-based businesses.

Revenue churn rate is easier to conceptualize and measure because you’re measuring changes in revenue from existing customers, which is a clear-cut number for every type of store, not changes in existing customers themselves.

Formula for calculating revenue churn rate

First, find your monthly recurring revenue (MRR) — or the incoming revenue you got from existing customers — at the beginning of the month and subtract that from your MRR at the end of the month. Divide that amount by the total MRR at the beginning of the month. Here’s the formula:

[(Revenue from at the beginning of the time period - revenue from customers at the end of the time period) / Customers at the beginning of the time period] x 100 = Churn rate (%)

Revenue-related metrics

24) Converted tickets

The number of support tickets your customer support team converts into a purchase shows the value of your customer support team in cold, hard cash. We count a ticket as converted whenever a customer places an order within five days of contacting customer support. 

 Customer support agents can provide helpful pre-sales answers to new customers asking about things like product sizing or your returns policy. Likewise, a helpful interaction after a purchase could make a customer feel confident and loyal enough to place a repeat purchase.

With Gorgias, you can measure your converted tickets and other revenue statistics in a convenient dashboard. Converted tickets can be from self-service, or automated, and manual responses.

How to calculate converted tickets

Before you start calculating, make sure that both numbers are from the same time period. Then use this simple formula to calculate your converted tickets:

Total number of sales within five days of a customer support interaction / total number of tickets = Ticket conversion rate

Read more about how to optimize your conversion rate (CRO).

25) Revenue backlog

Revenue backlog helps you measure how much revenue your business will see in a coming period. This metric is especially for ecommerce brands with a subscription-based model. 

Keeping tabs on your revenue is vital to ensuring your brand's growth and continued success. By tracking your revenue backlog, you’ll be able to see if revenue is going to drop before it actually does. 

If you’re interested in tracking revenue, check out our list of KPIs for your ecommerce brand, which includes more than just customer service metrics.

How to measure revenue backlog

To determine your revenue backlog, you’ll just need the sum of the values of your customers’ subscriptions. If you don’t exclusively sell subscription packages, you’ll need to use tools like Dataweave or Y42 to measure upcoming revenue.

Why should ecommerce businesses track customer service metrics?

Happy customers are the best fuel for growth. In other words, the performance of your customer support team (and overall customer experience) directly impacts your bottom line. Customer service metrics help you understand — and improve — the value that customer service brings to your business.

Understand customer support’s impact on revenue

90% of American consumers say that customer service is a deciding factor in whether or not they will do business with a company. Potential customers might ask a question about delivery or the product before making a purchase. And shoppers depend on quality support experiences after the purchase for a great end-to-end experience. If you flub that chance, they may never come back.

Existing customers are also your biggest spenders, and they rely on quality customer support to stay loyal. According to Gorgias research, repeat customers generate 300% more revenue than first-time customers of ecommerce brands. We estimate that by increasing your repeat customer base by 20%, you could increase your revenue up to 6%.

Measure the quality of your customer experience

Customer experience is mission-critical — see above for its impact on your revenue — but it isn’t easy to measure. That’s because it encapsulates your on-site shopping experience, customer support interactions across many channels, post-purchase interactions like shipping and returns, and so much more. 

Customer support metrics help you evaluate your support program and the customer experience across all those touchpoints so you can benchmark your team’s performance, communicate your performance with company leaders, and find opportunities for improvement.

Find actionable opportunities for improvement

As we just mentioned, tracking a full suite of customer support metrics can also help you find specific areas of improvement. If you don’t keep track of many customer support metrics, you’ll only have extremely high-level impressions and small samples of customer feedback to paint a picture of your strengths and weaknesses.

But if you have real-time tracking for a wide range of metrics, you can better diagnose the problem and find a strategic solution. For example: 

• If your average resolution time is longer than eight hours, you might create new templated responses to help your agents send fast, helpful answers
• If your contact rate is too high, you could create more self-service resources such as chatbots, self-service flows, or knowledge bases to deflect more low-impact support requests

Make a case for additional training, staffing, and tools

Concrete metrics are great ammunition for your customer service team when making the case to business leaders for more budget to hire additional agents, purchase additional tools, and ramp up training. 

To argue for more investment, you can communicate which projects have produced early improvements. For example, if you set up an FAQ page and see lower contact rates, you can expand the page to a fully-fledged help center. 

You can also quantify challenges to make a case for more tools. For example, say your agents often ask customers to repeat information or lose time copy/pasting order information from your ecommerce platform to customer support conversations. You could make the case a helpdesk that unifies all your customer support channels and store data in one platform.

Likewise, metrics can help you forecast your customer service staffing needs and proactively hire customer service agents before it’s too late. 

Track and improve your customer service metrics with Gorgias

Now that you have all the important customer service metrics and formulas to support your customer success program, you may be ready to explore a product to help make tracking it all easier. A centralized customer service software like Gorgias can help save you and your team hours upon hours of time. That time you can spend getting back to what you do best: great customer support. 

The Gorgias platform connects all of your integrations and allows for robust analytics tracking, so you can:

• Track support performance
• Monitor agent-by-agent live statistics
• Measure revenue generated by your support team
• Launch customer satisfaction surveys

If you’re on a mission to measure how your customer service team performs (and stacks up against the rest of your industry), check out our benchmark report. 

If you want to improve your metrics with the ecommerce platform custom-built for ecommerce customer service teams, book a demo with us or try Gorgias for free today.‍

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As you hire more customer service agents, providing quality support across the entire team becomes a major challenge. Without clear rules, agents may each handle key tasks — like building self-service resources or handling refund requests — in different ways.

Fortunately, a good customer service policy helps avoid these problems. But to be truly effective, your policy needs more than platitudes like “Be friendly” or “Respond quickly.” Instead, it should include specific and actionable information. 

In this guide, we’ll help you create a useful customer service policy by sharing the five key topics it needs to cover. We’ll also discuss how to write and enforce your policy.

First, let’s start with the basics. Or, you can skip straight to the advice for writing a useful policy. 

What is a customer service policy? 

A customer service policy is a document containing a set of guidelines, rules, and standards for customer service teams. Its goal is to help agents handle day-to-day tasks and set benchmarks for great customer service.

How and where are customer service policies used?

Customer service policies are among the first documents provided to new agents during their training. They act as cornerstone documents for a business's entire customer service team, since agents can use them during difficult or process-heavy interactions, like customer complaints, order cancellations, and so on.

A customer service policy is an internal document, so you won’t share it publicly. However, you can use it as a foundation and repurpose parts of it into various customer-facing policies (like cancellation or refund policies). These policies help you set customer expectations and reduce repetitive inquiries like "What's your return policy?" 

Take a look at how Marine Layer does this in a concise way:

You can share these customer-facing policies in:

• FAQ pages (like the example above) and help center documentation
• Transactional emails: For instance, emails that confirm an item has shipped from the warehouse and includes order tracking and a clear return policy
• Terms and conditions that people sign when becoming customers: These documents usually have sections dedicated to customer-facing policies around refunds, returns, order cancellations, and so on.

Customer service policy vs service-level agreement (SLA)

While similar, customer service policies and service-level agreements (SLAs) are not the same. 

Customer service policies are internal documents that help agents by setting standards and policies. Service-level agreements (SLAs) are external documents that define the expected level of service between a business and its customers. Use an SLA to communicate information like:

• Your support team’s business hours
• Your estimated response and resolution times

If you have SLAs, your policy needs to reference them, as you’ll see in a bit.

For a real-life example, check out Berkley Filters’ Contact page:

Above, Berkey listed the working hours for two of their support channels, as well as their average response time. This is a clear promise to customers that sets their expectations for the level of service provided by Berkley Filters.

The importance of having a customer service policy

While customer service policies vary for each company, they bring some key benefits to all organizations. Specifically, they:

• Help customer service agents do their job. A clear, easy-to-find policy lets agents quickly find the rules they should follow in any given situation. This saves them a lot of time and effort since they don’t have to come up with (or remember) what they should do on the fly.
• Ensure consistent support for every customer. Without a policy, agents can interpret identical situations differently, resulting in inconsistent service. A good policy nips this problem in the bud and guarantees that customers get the same level of care across the board.
• Establish standards and expectations for the customer service team. A key outcome of the policy is defining what “quality customer service” is — how fast service reps should respond, how quickly they should resolve issues, and so on. This provides agents and their managers with an objective measure for evaluating performance.

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When should you create a customer service policy?

Even if you're a customer service team of one, we recommend laying the foundations of your customer service policy as early as possible.

Here’s why:

You, and any agents you hire, will be faced with some situations over and over, regardless of business size or industry. The sooner you set the rules for these scenarios, the better your chances of providing consistent service, avoiding confusion, and setting standards for your team.

For online stores, these common situations are:

• Item exchanges
• Order cancellations
• Refund and return requests 
• Damaged goods and missing package complaints 

Team members who handle customer inquiries should know how to deal with these from day 1. 

Outside of these situations, you should continue to expand your policy as your customer service team grows. That’s a major aspect of ensuring consistent, high-quality service across a larger team. We’ll discuss some additional policy topics in the next section.

What to include in your customer service policy [checklist]

Some elements of the customer service policy will vary depending on company size and industry. For example, a clothing brand's return policy will be different from that one for a brand that sells perishable goods.

However, pretty much all policies should cover the following 5 key topics below.

1) Steps for handling common customer service workflows

This is the most important part of your customer service policy. It empowers agents with the knowledge they need to resolve customer issues and provide quality support.

Here are some common workflows to include in this section:

• Refund and return requests. Agents need clear instructions on how to act when buyers request refunds or want to return an item. For example, if the request comes in within your policy’s timeframe (say 15 days after the purchase) agents should give a no-questions-asked refund. Some businesses allow refunds and returns for repeat shoppers even after the deadline, so don’t forget to list all exceptions to this rule.
• Order cancellations. At a minimum, your policy should state how much time buyers have to cancel an order after placing it. Allowing cancellations until an item ships out of the warehouse is a simple way to handle this. 
• Damaged goods complaints. Online stores usually specify a timeframe in which damaged goods claims have to be filed (e.g., 2 days after the item was received). If the complaint was made on time, agents should explain how to return the product and what to expect next. Some businesses even offer buyers a choice between exchanging their item or keeping it with a small discount when the damage is small.
• Shipping problems. Lots of factors can result in an order being delivered after the deadline you promised (or not being delivered at all), so agents must know how to handle these situations. Offering credit to the customer’s account is a commonly-used practice here.  
• Item exchanges. Your policy should clearly state which items buyers can exchange and under what conditions. For example, custom items (e.g., with a person’s name) usually can’t be exchanged, while generic ones can be exchanged with others in the same category and price point.
• Dealing with angry customers. We’ve discussed how to handle these situations in our article on dealing with angry customer emails. Most importantly, instruct agents to read the complaint carefully, acknowledge the customer’s problem, and don’t let the situation affect their emotions. Also, make sure to lay out guidelines for escalation, when a manager should be involved in the conversation.

As you can see, there are many scenarios to consider here. Fortunately, once you’ve outlined them, you can easily build a library of message templates around your common processes, so your agents don’t have to waste time typing from scratch.

Gorgias’ version of templates, called Macros, include variables that automatically populate with each customer’s unique information (like names, order numbers, shipping information, and more). This means you may be able to simply pull up and send the relevant Macro without any copy/pasting. 

You can also put information about these key policies in useful self-serve resources like FAQ pages or a help center. These empower visitors to instantly resolve simple issues themselves, instead of flooding your team with repetitive tickets (and having to wait for a response).

2) Guidelines for prioritizing customer inquiries

This is another crucial topic for your agents’ day-to-day that every customer support policy should include. Without prioritization rules, agents can follow their own prioritization logic, resulting in poor response times for urgent tickets.

Here are three prioritization factors to include in your policy:

1. Inquiry channel. If you’re using messaging channels, consider prioritizing them to meet the built-in expectations for fast responses. As a rule of thumb, real-time channels like SMS and live chat should be answered within a few minutes, while emails should be answered within a day. 
2. Request urgency. Say a customer reports a bug that prevents them (and potentially other shoppers) from completing a purchase. Regardless of the channel, these types of inquiries should take priority over more generic questions.
3. Customer type. You want to keep your best customers happy with priority service. On that note, consider that repeat shoppers generate 300% more revenue than new customers, as we mentioned in our Customer Experience Growth Playbook. 

We have lots of useful advice on this topic, so check out our detailed guide to prioritizing customer service requests.

3) SLAs and customer service standards

As we mentioned, SLAs are customer-facing promises about your team's response and resolution times. This information should also be in your policy, so agents are aware of the expectations your SLA sets.

But what if you don’t have an SLA? Well, your agents still need to what standard they’ll be held to, i.e., what “good customer service” means for your company. 

That’s why your policy needs to establish a set of customer service metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs), regardless if you have an SLA or not.

First Response Time (FRT) is the primary metric to consider here.

FRT measures how long your agents take to respond to customer inquiries, on average. You can have different FRT targets, depending on the channels you use. For example, a 1-hour FRT might be great for email support, while 1-2 minutes is usually a good target for live chat and SMS.

As Brianna Christiano, Director of Support at Gorgias explains:

“We actually have members of the support team who monitor FRT every hour. This allows us to keep a pulse on our workload and pivot if necessary. If we notice that live chat or SMS inquiries are getting overwhelming, we’ll ask team members who typically do, for example, email support to help with the live messaging channels so we can maintain a low FRT.”

Also, you can use FRT to nudge buyers to try a specific customer service channel.

Let’s take another look at Berkley Filters’ Contact page:

Besides setting expectations, making the average response time public helped Berkley Filters push more buyers toward their new SMS channel. 

Other useful metrics for your policy include:

• Average Resolution Time (ART): How long your customer service team takes to resolve tickets, on average. To calculate it, you first need a specific time period to analyze, like one week or a month. Then, add up the length of all resolved conversions during that period. Finally, divide that number by the number of customer conversations you had during the same period.
• Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT): A measure of how satisfied visitors are immediately after an interaction with a customer service agent. You can collect feedback by running customer surveys with a question like “On a scale from 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your experience today?” Then, to calculate your CSAT, divide the positive customer feedback (4- and 5-star responses) by the total customers and multiply the result by 100.

• Support Performance Score. This is a metric we created for our team at Gorgias and share with merchants to get a single snapshot of their team’s performance. It combines average first response time, average resolution time, and CSAT. The result is a score between 1 and 5, representing the team’s (or an individual agent’s) performance.

4) Tone of voice and acceptable language

Your support team may be the only direct point of contact with your business for many customers. That’s why it’s crucial to establish that agents’ tone of voice should match the brands’ — whether that’s professional, friendly, or a mix of both. 

But this is a pretty broad rule that can be difficult to apply in real-life situations. You also want to add clear examples of what fits within your tone of voice guidelines and what doesn’t.

For instance, starting customer interactions with an energetic tone can be a good foundation. However, agents should adapt to each customer’s tone after the initial contact. After all, annoyed visitors likely won’t respond well to humor or light-hearted conversation.

Also, make sure to add an exhaustive list of words for your agents to use and avoid. For instance, agents shouldn’t sound overly apologetic when discussing fixed company policies (refunds, order cancellations, etc.) with customers. You can instruct them to avoid apologetic language and instead use empathetic — but not overly apologetic — phrases to communicate the facts.

If you use different customer support channels, it’s a good idea to include specific guidelines for them. For instance, call-center agents can be instructed to:

• Periodically reassure people that they’re listening
• Speak clearly without rushing or raising their voice
• Give people enough time to explain their problems 

Of course, apply these same tone-of-voice considerations to any customer support templates or self-service resources. All of these are an extension of your brand, and ensuring consistency at the source is mission-critical. 

5) Rules for proactive customer service

Customer service is much more than responding to tickets. Proactive customer service — where agents make the first move, instead of waiting for people to contact them —  can help you exceed buyers’ expectations, drive revenue, and reduce repetitive questions.

If you haven’t tried proactive customer service, here are some ideas you can test and describe in your policy:

• Reach out to shoppers with items in their carts. This is one of the best ways to reduce cart abandonments. To pull it off, you need a helpdesk like Gorgias to detect shoppers who linger on specific pages — like a product page or checkout page. Learn more about how chat campaigns help you spark conversations with customers and unblock sales. 
• Welcome new followers on social media with a direct message (DM). This can be as simple as thanking them for the follow. Or, you can let them know they can use the chat to ask questions. Learn more about this tactic (and how it can raise overall revenue by 4%).
• Create self-serve resources and send them to visitors. Based on Statista’s survey, 88% of customers expect brands to have self-service resources. Think FAQ pages or a help center that groups resources by topic. Making these resources available and prominently displayed makes the customer experience more convenient (and reduces repetitive support tickets that may currently be flooding your support inbox.)

Learn more about the best customer service software on the market and how it can help streamline your customer service operations and boost revenue. 

How to write a useful customer service policy (outline template)

Before you dive into the policy’s content, make sure to name your document in a clear way, i.e., “Customer Service Policy” or “[Brand Name] Customer Service Policy”. 

No need to get creative with the name. You just need people to be able to find it fast when they need it.

Before diving into writing the policy, consider that it should only cover topics that are specific to the customer service team. Broader topics (like code of conduct or other employee rules) should be part of larger company handbooks or other high-level documents, so the customer service policy doesn’t lose its focus. 

In terms of content, it can be useful to separate the policy into two parts.

1) Information about the company’s mission, values, and products

This first section lays the foundation for the rest of the policy. Your company’s values and mission statement are a common place to start.

For example, Abel Womack — a material handling company — begins the public-facing version of their company’s policy by saying that it “has been established to be reflective of our shared values”, which are integrity, empathy, customer care, and teamwork.

Some policies also include details about the company’s products at this stage. If you sell various complex products, it can be useful to add that information. If not, you can skip it and move on to the meat of the policy.

2) Rules, guidelines, and standards for your customer service team (outline template)

The second half contains actionable information that helps agents provide excellent customer service.

Writing this part can be tricky, especially if you haven’t done it before. Fortunately, an outline makes the process much easier, compared to starting with a blank page.

Feel free to copy the outline below, which is based on the checklist from the previous section.

1) Steps for handling common workflows

1. Refund and return requests
2. Order cancellations
3. Damaged goods complaints
4. Follow-ups
5. Dealing with angry customers

📚 Useful Resources: Our free refund and return policy generator & Loop Returns, which automates the returns process.

2) How to prioritize customer inquiries

1. Factors that determine priority
2. Examples of urgent inquiries
3. Examples of non-urgent inquiries

📚 Useful Resources: Best practices for prioritizing customer service requests.

3) SLAs and customer service standards

1. Company SLAs
2. KPIs for live chat support
3. KPIs for SMS support
4. KPIs for email support
5. KPIs for phone support

📚 Useful resources: Detailed guide on evaluating customer service & 25 key customer support metrics.

4) Tone of voice

1. Guidelines for written communication (live chat, SMS, email)
2. Guidelines for verbal communication (phone support)

5.  Rules for providing proactive customer service

1. Contacting visitors with items in their cart
2. Self-serve buyer resources

📚 Useful resources: Our guide on proactive customer service & customer self-service ideas

From here, it’s all about filling in the specifics using your brand’s terminology e.g., “customer service representatives”, instead of “customer service agents”, and so on.

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Practical tips for enforcing your customer service policy

So, you’ve done the hard work of creating a detailed and actionable customer service policy. Now, let’s get agents to actually use it.

First and foremost, ensure the document is easy to find by:

• Putting it in your Google Drive, knowledge base, or wiki. 
• Making it a part of the mandatory customer service training. 

Also, keep in mind that the policy shouldn’t be a static document. Instead, it needs regular updates as you add new products, team members, and support channels. Entrusting a customer service team member, likely a manager, to keep it updated is a must.

Another key tip for improving enforcement is tying the policy to the metric(s) you use to evaluate agents’ performance. This will keep people accountable and give you an objective way to determine their adherence.

Here’s an example of this idea in action by Brianna Christiano, Director of Support at Gorgias:

“At Gorgias, we use an internal quality metric to gauge the support team’s performance. Each week, managers audit 3 of their agents’ tickets and determine the quality and efficiency of the provided service, based on that metric. This lets us continuously evaluate and reinforce customer service rules and standards.”

Finally, getting managers to shadow new agents is another best practice here. This lets managers reinforce your policy from day 1. Plus, it’s a useful way to check if new agents can satisfy customers’ needs. 

Next steps: Evaluate your policy’s impact

After weeks of writing, introducing a new policy to the team feels great. But getting the document out there is only half the battle.

You then need to monitor if the policy is helping you reach your customer service goals.

To do that, keep a close eye on your support metrics (FRT, ART, and so on) in the weeks after the initial implementation.

It’s also crucial to determine if your new policy is truly customer-centric. This means tracking feedback metrics, like CSAT and other customer satisfaction metrics that have a major impact on customer retention.

The evaluation process is as important as creating the policy, so be careful not to overlook it. For additional practical tips, check out our guide to evaluating customer service programs.

TL;DR:

• An ecommerce returns automation tool streamlines the returns process by automating return requests, payment processing, and customer updates.
• Choose a tool with ecommerce platform and app integrations, analytics, and a self-service portal.
• ReturnLogic is the best returns management tool, providing a return portal, inventory management, and powerful analytics dashboards.

Managing product returns is often one of the most significant expenses of running an online store. Data from Invesp shows that 30% of all products purchased online are returned, compared to just 8.89% of products purchased from brick-and-mortar retailers.

There are several reasons why returns are so common in ecommerce — the most prominent listed in the image below. But regardless of the reason, the bottom line is that your store's bottom line depends on an optimized returns process. 

We’ve already discussed how you can optimize your returns process, but most growing stores need additional help. Thankfully, there are plenty of returns management software tools on the market today that are designed to reduce the expense of returned products without harming customer satisfaction.

In this article, we'll explore what to look for in great returns management software before highlighting the nine best returns management tools available today.

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What is returns management?

Returns management is the process of helping customers who need to return an item, whether online to an ecommerce shop or in person at a brick and mortar store. Typically, customers submit a return request, send or bring an item back, and the business restocks the item and credits back the customer.

What is ecommerce returns automation?

Ecommerce returns automation is a tool that manages the returns process for online stores using automation and AI.

Instead of relying on manually managing returns and refunds, automation software minimizes human error and accelerates the following processes:

• Handle customers' return requests through an online portal
• Generates and automatically provides return shipping labels
• Automatically processes refunds and exchanges
• Automatically manages inventory
• Sends automated updates to customers

What makes returns management software great?

There are several key reasons why returns management software is a valuable tool for any ecommerce business. From helping you automate your returns process to helping you reduce your return rate through insightful data, here are just a few top reasons why the right returns management solution can be highly beneficial: 

Helps automate your product returns process

Managing returns is often a time-consuming process — and an expensive one. According to Axios, returning a $50 item costs retailers an average of $33. And slow, clunky processes are a big part of the issue.

By automating much of your product returns management process, returns management software can make handling online returns much less of a hassle: 

• Automatically generating return labels
• Providing customers with a self-service return portal
• Automatically sending out shipping updates for returned products

📚 Related reading: Our guide to automating customer service processes to save time and improve support quality.

Integrates with other ecommerce tools

One of the most important things to look for in returns management software is its existing integrations. For example, returns software that integrates with your email marketing platform makes sending out customized shipping updates easy. 

Meanwhile, choosing returns software that integrates with your customer support platform makes it easy for support agents to process returns while assisting customers. Below, we’ll link whenever a returns tool integrates with Gorgias to save you the time of searching.

These are just a couple of examples of the value you gain when your returns management system integrates with the other tools your ecommerce store uses. 

Offers speedy service for returns

84% of shoppers say that they will not purchase from a retailer again after a bad returns experience. So, offering speedy service for returns is mission critical. By streamlining and automating your returns process, the right returns management software can make the process faster and more convenient for your customers. 

Provides easy to read data analytics and has a clean dashboard

According to data from Statista, reverse logistics — otherwise known as returns management — cost U.S. businesses a total of $102 billion in 2020 alone. If you want to reduce returns' impact on your store's bottom line as much as possible, it is essential to optimize both your returns process and the customer experience with your products. 

To this end, nothing is more important than the customer returns data that you collect. By providing returns data in a clean and organized dashboard, returns management software makes it much easier to draw the insights you need to process returns in a more cost-effective manner. It also offers your customers a better experience, which lends itself to a lower return rate. 

📚Recommended reading: Our VP of Success’ guide to evaluating customer service. 

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10 best tools for returns management

If you are looking for tools that will make managing returns much more efficient and convenient for you and your customers alike, there are several excellent options to consider adding to your tech stack. Here are our picks for the top nine returns management tools.

Next to each tool, we’ll list the G2 review score to help you understand current user satisfaction. 

By the way, if you already use Gorgias, check out our app store to find a list of returns and exchange apps that integrate with Gorgias.

1) ReturnLogic: 4.8 ⭐(10 reviews)

ReturnLogic is a comprehensive solution designed to automate the entire returns process, offering customizable workflows that can automate tasks such as: 

• Printing shipping labels
• Tracking return shipments
• Inventory management

ReturnLogic also offers warranty processing for accepting warranty claims from third-party purchases, powerful insights and analytics, and a customizable return portal designed to make returning products more convenient for your customers.

Another key benefit of ReturnLogic is that its return portal is designed to encourage customers to exchange items rather than request refunds, enabling you to further reduce the impact of returns on your store's profits.

Pros

• Long list of useful integrations
• Designed to encourage exchanges for returned items rather than refunds
• Wealth of insightful analytics regarding your products and returns process

Cons

• Expensive pricing
• Limited "return reasons" options in the self-service portal
• Sometimes clunky and difficult to navigate

Key Features

• Easy to create custom returns workflows
• Ready-to-use return center that automates the returns process, warranty process, and refund process

See more about ReturnLogic’s integration with Gorgias. 

2) Returnly: 3.5 ⭐(5 reviews)

With Returnly, ecommerce store owners can create customized return portals designed to optimize the customer experience and make returns less of a hassle for your customers and support team alike. Along with an attractive and easy-to-use return portal, Returnly also offers a range of automation rules that enable you to control how and when returns get processed.

Finally, Returnly provides detailed analytics and returns data that you can leverage to optimize your returns process further. The result is a well-rounded returns solution that offers everything online store owners need to reduce the expense and hassle of managing returns.

Pros

• Easy to offer store credit in exchange for returned items
• Plenty of customization options
• Instantly provides credits for returned items to improve customer retention

Cons

• Only capable of integrating with one shipping carrier at a time
• Doesn't provide the option to override automated emails
• Isn't as easy to set up and use as other returns management software

Key Features

• Tools for engaging customers at every point throughout the returns process
• Automatically sends out tracking updates for exchanged items

See more about Returnly’s integration with Gorgias. 

3) Loop Returns: 4.6 ⭐(57 reviews)

As one of the more popular returns management solutions today, there's a lot to like about Loop Returns. With Loop Returns, store owners can create a branded return portal complete with automations that streamline the returns process, and feedback forms to generate valuable insights on why customers return their products. 

The Loop Returns return portal also encourages exchanges, allowing your store to retain more revenue. Another key benefit of Loop Returns is that it enables customers to use a QR code to return their product rather than printing a shipping label (though Loop Returns does offer customers the option to print a shipping label as well).

📚Recommended reading: Learn how Kulani Kinis Saves $400k in Refunds Using Gorgias + Loop Integration

Pros

• “Reason for return” forms provide valuable insights that can be used to reduce your return rate
• Exchanges are instantly approved, and exchange credit is instantly applied to the customer's account
• Long list of useful integrations

Cons

• Somewhat pricey
• Customer support issues have been reported
• Many features are only available on upper tiers

Key Features

• Offers customers who choose a refund rather than exchange a bonus credit if they choose to exchange instead
• Allows customers to automatically apply the value of their return to any item in your store

See more about Loop’s integration with Gorgias. 

4) LateShipment.com (no reviews on G2)

LateShipment.com is a post-purchase experience platform designed to improve multiple aspects of a store's post-purchase process, including order tracking and returns management. 

One of the best features of LateShipment.com is that it provides a litany of order fulfillment data points, including real-time tracking updates that can be sent automatically to customers via email or SMS. Regarding returns management, meanwhile, LateShipment.com offers a customizable return portal complete with real-time tracking and a wide range of rules and automations that you can use to customize and automate your returns process. 

Finally, LateShipment.com promises to recover every dollar lost to carrier errors by automatically auditing shipping invoices and requesting refunds when an error occurs, helping your business save on shipping costs.

📚Recommended reading: Learn how to offer your customers free shipping without breaking the bank.

Pros

• Comprehensive post-purchase platform that isn't limited to returns management alone
• Flexible plans and pricing allows you to choose the features that best match your needs and budget
• Plenty of customization options

Cons

• Late packages are sometimes incorrectly labeled as "suspect lost"
• Daily metrics doesn’t support USPS
• Customer support issues have been reported

Key Features

• Automatic real-time tracking updates for both orders and returns
• Automates refund claims for 50+ carrier errors

See more about LateShipment.com’s integration with Gorgias. 

5) yayloh: 4.6 ⭐ (4 reviews)

yayloh is a return management platform that automates and optimises the returns process for fast-growing direct-to-consumer brands, particularly those in the fashion and lifestyle market.

With customisable workflows, yayloh reduces the workload for customer service teams and provides customers with a fully-digital and branded self-service returns experience.

The platform stands out for its focus on return data. yayloh collects and analyses customer feedback in top-tier data dashboards and datasets to help merchants make data-driven product adjustments to reduce returns rates.

With yayloh's all-inclusive solution, brands of all sizes can scale their businesses, boost customer loyalty and reduce returns, all while ensuring a smooth and efficient post-purchase experience for customers.

Pros

1. Top-tier returns data dashboards and datasets (allow CVS export)
2. Auto-refunds based on different triggers
3. Tailored to support fashion and lifestyle brands at any stage of growth
4. In-depth “returns reasons” with newly introduced returns keyword tags

Cons

1. More established in Europe. They're actively working towards expanding our presence in the US/Asia.

Key Features

1. Advanced data and analytics features
2. Open APIs for integration with all e-commerce platforms and Shopify App
3. Supports well for international expansion — paperless trade
4. Fully-digital and branded returns process

See more about yayloh's integration with Gorgias.

6) OrderHive: 3.7 ⭐(26 reviews)

Unlike many solutions on this list, OrderHive is not designed specifically for returns management. However, OrderHive's excellent inventory management and ecommerce automation features can be incredibly valuable for optimizing your returns process. 

For example, OrderHive's real-time tracking features make it easy to provide customers with tracking updates on product exchanges. At the same time, the platform's inventory management tools simplify the process of updating your inventory when returns are processed. 

But the real value of OrderHive comes from its wide range of ecommerce automation features. These features enable you to automate an incredibly long list of routine tasks, including tasks associated with returns management — such as processing returns and updating inventory levels.

Pros

• Affordable pricing with multiple plans to choose from
• Streamlines and automates every aspect of order fulfillment and returns management
• Enables you to set customized return policies

Cons

• Sometimes prone to frustrating bugs and errors
• Information from carriers often takes a while to update
• Analytics and reporting features are somewhat limited

Key Features

• Excellent inventory management solutions for handling returned products
• Real-time tracking and rate comparisons for 200+ shipping carriers

🧰 Tool: Want to update your returns policy? Use our free template generator to get started.

7) Return Rabbit 4.5 ⭐(6 reviews)

The features offered by Return Rabbit might not be anything all that new or revolutionary, but Return Rabbit is very good at what it does nonetheless. With Return Rabbit, ecommerce store owners can: 

• Create branded return portals
• Set up customized automation rules and return policies
• Provide customers the option to return products via a QR code

Similar to other tools on this list, Return Rabbit encourages exchanges via customized product recommendations presented to customers in the return portal. 

Pros

• Wide range of automation rules that go well beyond the generic rules offered by many platforms
• Designed to encourage customer feedback that can turn into valuable insights
• Robust reporting and analytics provide complete visibility into your returns process

Cons

• Only compatible with Shopify stores
• More expensive than many comparable options
• Customer support issues have been reported

Key Features

• Provides customers the option to return their product via a QR code rather than print a shipping label
• Instant exchanges and customizable product recommendations encourage exchanges over refunds

📚 Recommended reading: The best Shopify apps for growing your ecommerce business.

8) 12Return: 4 ⭐(1 review)

12Return is a returns management solution designed for both brick-and-mortar and ecommerce stores. For ecommerce stores, 12Return offers the ability to create both branded return portals and merchant dashboards designed to simplify the returns process for customer support agents. 

12Return also provides customizable automation rules for authorizing returns and automating a wide range of returns management tasks. 

Perhaps the most unique feature of 12Return is local returns processing, which enables customers to ship returned products to a local 12Returns hub for a faster and more efficient returns process.

Pros

• Local shipping can reduce return shipping costs
• Great customer support
• Powerful yet easy-to-use merchant dashboard makes the returns process much more efficient for customer support agents

Cons

• Somewhat tricky to set up and use
• Pricing is only available upon request
• Limited analytics and reporting

Key Features

• Automated tracking event updates for returned products
• Create on-demand digital labels
• Utilize 12Return's local shipping hubs for faster and more affordable returns

9) ReverseLogix: 4.4 ⭐(11 reviews)

ReverseLogix is a platform that offers everything you could want from a returns management solution, along with a few unique features you probably won't find anywhere else. 

ReverseLogix boasts standard returns management features such as:

• Creating branded return portals
• Generating on-demand shipping labels and QR codes for customers
• Rules for automating your returns process

However, they also offer features such as configuring returns workflows based on priorities such as sustainability and cost-effectiveness, and a Repairs Management module for managing part replacements and warranty-based repairs. 

Another nice feature of ReverseLogix is its detailed reporting, designed to provide insights into your returns process and the customer's experience with your products.

Pros

• Excellent analytics and reporting
• Lots of features in a single package
• Great customer support

Cons

• Somewhat prone to glitches and bugs
• Long and complex integration process
• Expensive compared to similar tools

Key Features

• Returns workflows can be configured based on a variety of business priorities
• Repairs Management module for managing part replacements and warranty-based repairs

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10) Ordoro: 4.7 ⭐(9 reviews)

Ordoro is a comprehensive order fulfillment platform that can manage orders and returns. With Ordoro, you can look forward to a long list of order fulfillment features, including: 

• Automation rules and shipping presets for automating your returns and order fulfillment processes
• Automated shipping label generation
• Detailed order fulfillment
• Returns management
• Inventory management reporting
• UPC barcode support
• Automatic PO generation based on inventory levels

If you are looking for an all-in-one solution to order fulfillment, inventory management, and returns management, then Ordoro is a great option to consider.

Pros

• Broad range of features and capabilities under a single platform
• Great customer support
• Free Starter plan that lets you try out the platform's basic features

Cons

• Somewhat difficult to navigate
• Updates are few and far between
• Occasional delays when syncing between shopping carts and Ordoro

Key Features

• Automation rules for order fulfillment, returns management, and inventory management
• UPC barcode support

Want more suggestions? Check out our list of 150+ top ecommerce tools or our list of the best shipping software for ecommerce.

Enhance your ecommerce store with Gorgias

Managing returns is one of the necessary evils of running an online store. With the right returns management software, you can greatly mitigate the expenses and hassles associated with returns management. 

Integrating these solutions with a powerful customer support platform such as Gorgias makes them even more beneficial. The ability to integrate with a wide range of returns management solutions is just one of the features that make Gorgias the premier customer support solution for ecommerce stores. 

With Gorgias, you can create automated customer support workflows to assist with returns management and other customer support tasks. Along with these powerful automation rules, Gorgias also offers live chat support, a centralized customer support dashboard, advanced customer support reporting and analytics, and so much more. 

To see for yourself how our industry-leading customer support software can enhance your returns process and your ecommerce business as a whole, sign up for Gorgias today!

On Instagram, the most common types of engagement are likes and comments. For likes, you can’t do much about them, but you can take advantage of Instagram comments to drive more engagement, build relationships with followers, increase customer trust, and even boost conversions. 

If your business has a strong presence on Instagram, you may receive a lot of comments from followers. That means you have a higher chance to turn comments into your advantage. 

But sometimes, it’s easier said than done, right? With a flood of comments every day, you may struggle to respond and manage them effectively.

That’s why this post is for you. You’ll learn several Instagram comment ideas to interact with your followers and some useful tips to monitor comments without losing your mind. 

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9 Instagram comment ideas and tips for ecommerce businesses

1. Respond to comments in a timely manner
2. Speak like a human being
3. Add a touch of humor to your comments
4. Use relevant emojis to make comments eye-catching
5. Say thank you
6. Apologize for customer support issues that come up
7. Ask for followers' emails if necessary
8. Don't delete or hide comments
9. Don't just comment on your own posts

Why You Should Care About Instagram Comments

The average post on Instagram receives 285.48 comments, taking into account posts of highly influential users. Mention found that 26% of Instagram users love to comment on or share personal Instagram Stories.

Why do people comment on others’ posts?

The reasons are many. For example, they want to ask a question, give feedback, share a personal perspective, add to discussions, or interact with a community. Sometimes, they feel so resonated with a story that they want to start a conversation. 

Whatever the reasons, the Instagram comments section gives you a huge opportunity to communicate with your followers and discover potential customers. 

Here are three main reasons why you should create an Instagram comment strategy:

Comments Reflect Engagement

Think this way: if you’ve uploaded a photo and received 20 comments within only five minutes, you probably have a lot of following on Instagram, or your content is very engaging, right? 

The opposite is true as well. If you get a few comments whenever you publish a post despite having a huge following, your engagement rate may be low. In this case, you should probably rethink your Instagram comment strategy. 

Responding to Comments Help Build Brand Trust 

When a customer mentions you on Instagram, a lot of eyes are on you. How you handle that can tell a lot about your social media management and customer service. If you respond to it tactfully, it shows you care about your customers and take control of the situation.

Meanwhile, choosing to shy away and remain silent will lead to people bad-mouthing your brand. And as you might know, words can travel fast. 

By providing great customer service through Instagram comments, you not only retain existing customers but also win new ones. 

Instagram Comments Ideas and Tips

Below are Instagram comment ideas and tips you can apply right away. Note that there is no one-size-fits-all answer – every comment and every situation is different. Use the following as a reference to create the right strategy for your business. 

1. Respond to Comments in a Timely Manner

When customers ask a question, they want an answer instantly. This is true, especially if the question is about product availability, price, or shipping issues. 

Aim to respond to Instagram comments within 24 hours. This way, you can build trust with your followers and leave them a good impression of your business. 

Look at all of Dannijo’s posts, and you can see they respond to comments within minutes, if not seconds. No wonder they have great engagement. 

Using Instagram Quick Replies is a great way to do that. This cool feature allows you to create draft messages for commonly asked questions, like “what is the shipping cost?” or “can I return the item?”

Whenever you want to use those messages, just insert the “quick reply” instead of typing out the same message multiple times. 

You can use Instagram Quick Replies on mobile devices (iPhone and Android). But this feature is only available for Instagram business accounts. So make sure you set up an Instagram business page beforehand. 

2. Speak Like a Human Being

Like other social networks, Instagram is about two-way conversations. But we don’t join Instagram to talk with bots – we want to share, discuss, and speak with humans. We seek real, genuine connections.

That’s why brands must be human when interacting with followers on Instagram. Speak to them like you’re already in a relationship with them, as if you’re good friends. Avoid using a formal and distant tone.  

3. Add a Touch of Humor to Your Comments

You should take customer queries and complaints seriously, but there are times when you can add a bit of humor to entertain a conversation. According to Hootsuite, “entertaining content is one of the top five reasons people follow particular brands or individuals online.”

Think about when you saw an animated GIF on Tumblr or a funny tweet. You couldn’t help but sharing it with your circle, right? That’s why adding a touch of humor to your Instagram comments can be helpful to connect with your audience instantly. 

Make a good joke, and your followers will share it with their followers. Some of those followers will start following you to get more jokes, and your outreach will grow exponentially. More followers, more customers. It’s as simple as that. 

4. Use Relevant Emojis to Make Comments Eye-catching

Emojis aren’t common in Instagram posts, but comments too. More and more brands are responding to their Instagram comments with emojis. 

Emojis are friendly, fun, and engaging. They’re great for humanizing your brand and connect with followers quickly.

A worthy note is that before using emojis, ask yourself if it aligns with the tone of your brand. Make sure you understand the meanings of different emojis so you can use them the right way.

It’s also important to understand whose comment you’re responding to. Just because you see other followers using emojis doesn’t mean everyone is okay with them. Learn more about your target audience to create an emoji marketing strategy that makes sense for your business. 

5. Say Thank-you

A thank-you comment is necessary when someone gives you a compliment or mentions you on Instagram. Something as simple as “Thank you” or “Thanks” or “Glad you like this one” is more than fine. If they called out specifics in their comments, try to respond with a similar level of personalization. Show them your appreciation. 

Another tip is when saying thanks to your followers, try to expand the conversation. If a follower said they were happy with your order, you could ask them why they liked it. Let them know you’re available to support them whenever they need help. 

6. Say Sorry for Customer Service Issues 

If a customer reaches out to your Instagram with a question or a customer service issue, you must respond to them. You should provide that support. 

Here are some helpful tips to handle followers’ complaints on Instagram:

• Keep calm, say sorry, and show your responsibility for the issue
• Answer their questions accurately and promptly
• Be specific and helpful about your solution
• Don’t overpromise unless you’re 100% sure that you can give them what they want
• Come bearing gifts or discounts if necessary 

7. Ask for Followers’ Emails If Necessary 

If a follower’s question is complicated and requires a wordy answer or needs more time to fix, you ask for their email address in the comments and send the full response through email. 

It’s an opportunity for you to impress your follower with the high level of customer service you provide. Ensure you let the follower know you’ll contact them via their email. 

8. Don’t Delete or Hide Comments 

A lot of people will tell you to ignore or delete negative comments on your Instagram posts. But wait… rethink before you do that.

Of course, dealing with difficult customers is never easy, and it only gets more challenging when both of you don’t understand each other or the customers expect more than what you can offer. 

Despite that, it isn’t a smart move to delete comments. Why? Because the difficult customers might do the following:

• Stop buying from you and spread bad words about your business
• Continue speaking negatively about your brand across social media channels 
• Continue commenting negatively on your posts until you block them or remove them from your community 

With all that being said, it’s obvious that you should come up with a strategy to handle negative comments, instead of just deleting them. 

A good tactic is to reply to those comments or direct message commenters with an apology. Then, ask for more information about why they made that statement. Explain you need this information to figure out the best solution for them. 

If the person continues to be an issue after you’ve attempted to resolve the matter, try to move the conversation to a private space (like an email) or block them when necessary.

It seems a lot of work, but keep practicing that. It’ll help improve your brand’s online presence and make people remember your excellent customer service. 

9. Don’t Just Comment on Your Own Posts 

If you just start using Instagram for your business, commenting on other posts is a good idea. Doing that will help you identify your target audience, understand what they need, expand your brand awareness, and drive engagement to your Instagram profile. 

You can comment on your followers’ posts, influencers’, or the posts of brands that are relevant to your niche. 

If you’re struggling with identifying who you should start interacting with, look at your recent collaboration or co-marketing projects. Then, start engaging with them. 

How to Manage Instagram Comments Effectively

Have you ever glanced at your (hundreds of) Instagram notifications and feel tired of replying to your followers’ comments? You see many comments on some much older posts and don’t know which one to start with. AGRH. You get lost. 

If you’re in this situation, the first thing you should do is set a specific time to handle Instagram comments. Give yourself windows of time when you’re pleased to respond to those messages. Doing that can help you remove distractions, maintain concentration, and increase productivity. 

The second tactic is to use an all-in-one customer service tool like Gorgias. 

Think this way: Your customers aren’t on Instagram only. They may also follow your business on Twitter and Facebook. Some of them may prefer connecting with you via email, SMS, or phone call. Others might often visit your website and find it convenient to chat with you via chat box. 

That’s where tools like Gorgias (and other social media apps that integrate with your Shopify store) come in handy.

Gorgias' social media features allows you to centralize all customer requests and comments across channels into a single dashboard. You can easily manage every customer interaction on Instagram (for instance: Instagram comments, Instagram ads comments, Instagram mentions), emails, and other messages – using only Gorgias is enough to deliver an exceptional omnichannel customer experience.

Gorgias also helps streamline your team collaboration. When someone comments on your Instagram, a corresponding ticket is automatically created. You can solve the ticket right away using macros, change its status, or assign it to another agent. Everything will be done inside Gorgias without you logging into your Instagram app.

Don’t Ignore Instagram Comments

Take the time to go through Instagram comments and address them. Show your followers that you care about them, appreciate their engagement, and strive to maintain relationships with them. The more you do that, the more your followers want to stick with you and support your business. 

Interested in using Gorgias to monitor Instagram comments and customer inquiries on other channels? Sign up for a Gorgias account today and discover all the premium features our ecommerce ticket management help desk offers. 

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TL;DR:

• Ecommerce payment processing enables fast, secure transactions. A typical flow includes the gateway capturing payment data, the processor authorizing it, and funds settling into your merchant account in 1-3 days.
• Choose a processor that supports your customer’s preferred payment methods. At minimum, accept major cards and at least one digital wallet; add BNPL or bank transfers if relevant to your audience.
• Security and fraud protection are non-negotiable. Look for PCI compliance, tokenization, 3D Secure, AVS, and CVV checks to protect both your business and customers.
• Factor in fees, features, and scalability when comparing providers. Stripe is great for global growth, PayPal for trust, Square for POS + online, and Shopify Payments if you're already on Shopify.
• A smooth checkout experience boosts sales. Fast, mobile-friendly checkouts reduce abandonment, while saved payment info and responsive support increase conversions and retention.

You're building your ecommerce store the right way. Researching payment processors before you launch means you understand that checkout directly impacts sales.

Whether you're comparing Stripe, PayPal, Square, or Shopify Payments, the decision comes down to a few key factors: security, fees, customer experience, and whether the processor can grow with your business.

Let's dive into what payment processing actually is, how to evaluate your options, and which processor fits your needs so you can set up checkout once and focus on growing your store.

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What is ecommerce payment processing?

Ecommerce payment processing is the system that lets online stores accept digital payments securely. When a customer checks out, their payment information moves through a series of steps that verify the transaction and transfer funds to your store.

Unlike older systems that redirect customers to third-party pages, modern payment processing keeps customers on your site throughout checkout. They enter their card details, the system encrypts the data instantly, and authorization happens in the background.

The components of ecommerce payment processing

Every transaction involves three core parts working in sequence:

1. Payment gateway: Captures and encrypts payment data from your checkout page, then transmits it to the processor.
2. Payment processor: Communicates with card networks and banks to authorize the transaction and settle funds to your merchant account.
3. Merchant account: Holds settled funds from approved transactions until they transfer to your business bank account.

How ecommerce payment processing works

Every transaction follows four steps that happen in seconds:

Step 1: Customer enters payment and the gateway encrypts the data

When a customer submits payment at checkout — whether by card, digital wallet, or buy now, pay later — the payment gateway immediately captures and encrypts their information using SSL/TLS protocols. Modern gateways are embedded directly in your checkout, so customers never leave your site.

Step 2: The processor requests authorization

The payment processor receives the encrypted data and forwards it to the card network, such as Visa or Mastercard. The network routes the request to the customer's issuing bank, which checks if they have sufficient funds, if the account is in good standing, and if any fraud rules are triggered. The bank approves or declines the transaction.

Step 3: The gateway confirms approval or decline

The authorization response travels back through the same path: issuing bank → card network → processor → gateway. Your customer sees the result in real time, usually within two to three seconds. If declined, they can try another payment method. If approved, the transaction moves to settlement.

Step 4: Settlement transfers funds to your merchant account

Settlement is a batch process that happens separately, typically once per day. Your acquiring bank requests funds from the customer's issuing bank for all approved transactions. Settled funds appear in your merchant account within one to three business days and are then available for transfer to your business bank account.

Most common ecommerce payment methods

Offering multiple payment methods reduces cart abandonment and meets customer preferences at checkout. 

Here are the four major categories every ecommerce brand should consider:

• Credit and debit cards: The most widely used payment method, where customers enter their card number, expiration, CVV, and billing address directly at checkout. All major processors support Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express (though Amex typically has higher fees). Cards are a non-negotiable baseline for most stores.
• Digital wallets: Services like Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Shop Pay, and Amazon Pay store payment credentials securely and enable one-click or biometric checkout. They streamline mobile shopping, lower your PCI compliance burden since card data never touches your server, and can significantly boost conversion rates for returning customers.
• Buy now, pay later (BNPL): Services like Affirm, Klarna, and Afterpay let customers split purchases into installments — often four payments over six weeks. You receive full payment upfront (minus 2–6% processing fees) while the BNPL provider assumes credit risk. BNPL can increase average order value and conversion, especially for higher-ticket items.
• Bank transfers: ACH transfers (US), SEPA (Europe), and open banking enable direct bank-to-bank payments. They have lower processing fees (often under $1 flat) but longer settlement times (three to five days). These work best for B2B transactions, established customer relationships, or large orders where payment timing is less urgent.

How to choose an ecommerce payment processor

The right processor balances cost, security, customer experience, and growth potential. Here's what to evaluate:

Prioritize PCI compliance and fraud protection

Choose a PCI-compliant processor that handles security for you through hosted payment forms or tokenization. Look for built-in fraud tools like 3D Secure 2.0 (biometric verification), AVS (address verification), and CVV checks. These protect against fraud while keeping approval rates high for legitimate customers.

Support the payment methods your customers actually use

Offer the methods your audience prefers. At minimum, accept major cards (Visa, Mastercard) and at least one digital wallet (Apple Pay or Google Pay). Consider adding BNPL for higher-ticket items. North American customers typically use cards, wallets, and Affirm, while European customers favor PayPal, Klarna, and iDEAL.

Enable international and multi-currency payments

If you sell globally, ensure your processor handles multi-currency settlement, local payment methods, and dynamic currency conversion. Be aware that cross-border transactions carry higher fees and longer settlement times.

Use tokenization for saved payments

Tokenization replaces card data with secure tokens you can store and reuse, enabling one-click checkout for returning customers while reducing your PCI compliance burden.

Confirm integrations with your tech stack

Check for native integrations with your ecommerce platform (Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce), CRM, accounting software, and support tools like Gorgias. Seamless data flow between systems reduces manual work and errors.

Calculate your total cost structure

Most processors charge 2.5–3.5% plus $0.10–$0.30 per transaction, monthly fees of $0–$50, and $15–$25 per chargeback. Interchange-plus pricing is most transparent for high-volume merchants. With payout timing, most settle in one to three days, but faster options exist for a fee.

Choose a processor that scales with you

Select a provider with 24/7 support and the ability to handle traffic spikes during peak events, add new sales channels, and expand internationally as you grow. Payment issues directly impact revenue, so reliable support matters.

How to find a secure payment processor

Security protects your customers and your business. A data breach or fraud problem can damage your reputation and trigger fines. Here's what to look for:

Look for PCI compliance that's handled for you

PCI DSS is a set of security rules required by card companies to protect customer payment data. It's mandatory, but you don't need to become a security expert.

Choose a processor with hosted payment forms or tokenization. Customer card details go directly to the processor, never touching your server. This means the processor handles complex security requirements for you. Without this, you risk fines and could lose the ability to accept payments.

Choose fraud protection tools that verify real customers

Look for processors with built-in fraud protection:

• 3D Secure 2.0: Verifies identity at checkout using Face ID, fingerprint, or a text code, stopping fraudsters and protecting you from liability.
• Address verification (AVS): Checks that the billing address matches what's on file at the customer's bank.
• Security code verification (CVV): Requires the code from the physical card, confirming the person has it in hand.

Get chargeback protection and early alerts

Chargebacks happen when customers dispute charges, often because they don't recognize the transaction or had a delivery issue. If more than 1% of your transactions become chargebacks, you'll face higher fees or lose your account. Each chargeback costs $15-$25, even if you win.

Choose a processor with early alerts (before disputes become official) and tools to fight unfair disputes. Prevent chargebacks by using clear billing descriptors, visible refund policies, order tracking, and fast customer support.

Resolving problems before customers call their bank saves money and headaches. Tools like Gorgias AI Agent help you respond quickly and issue refunds when appropriate, stopping disputes before they start.

Which payment processor to use for your ecommerce store

If you're just starting out and wondering "Should I use PayPal or Stripe?" — you're asking the right question. The answer depends on your platform, technical comfort, and where you're selling. 

Here are the main options:

Shopify Payments (best if you're on Shopify)

Built directly into Shopify with no setup hassle. Accepts all major cards plus Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay. The big win: no extra 0.5-2% fee that Shopify charges for third-party processors. Payouts are fast, reporting is unified with your orders, and fraud protection is automatic. Only downsides: Shopify-only, limited countries, and strict policies for certain industries.

Stripe (best for customization and growth)

The go-to for businesses that need flexibility or plan to scale globally. Supports 135+ currencies and payment methods from cards to wallets to local options like iDEAL. Great API if you want custom checkout flows. Pricing starts at 2.9% + $0.30, but setup requires some technical knowledge and support can be slow for smaller accounts.

PayPal (best for instant trust)

Everyone knows PayPal, which means customers trust it immediately. Fast approval (often same-day), accepts cards plus PayPal balance, Venmo, and Pay in 4 installments. Pricing is 2.99% + $0.49. The trade-off: reporting is clunky and support quality varies.

Square (best for online and in-person)

Perfect if you sell both online and at markets, pop-ups, or a physical location. Free POS hardware connects to the same dashboard as your online store. Simple pricing: 2.9% + $0.30 online, 2.6% + $0.10 in-person. Includes business tools like invoicing and payroll. Best for small businesses—less suitable if you need heavy customization.

Adyen/Checkout.com (best for enterprise)

For large brands processing high volumes. Advanced features like payment orchestration and 100+ payment methods, but requires technical resources, longer onboarding, and volume minimums.

Add BNPL and wallets to any processor

Most processors let you add Affirm, Klarna, Afterpay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay through integrations. These boost conversion, especially on mobile and for higher-priced items. BNPL providers charge 2–6% but often increase average order value enough to justify the cost.

How payment processors impact customer satisfaction and sales

Your payment processor directly influences whether customers complete checkout or abandon their cart. Keep these best practices in mind:

Keep checkout fast and on your site

Choose a processor with embedded checkout so customers never leave your site. Redirects to third-party pages kill trust and increase abandonment — in fact, 22% of customers bail due to slow or complex checkout. Display recognizable payment logos (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal) and SSL security badges to reassure customers their data is safe.

Optimize for mobile with one-tap wallets

Mobile shoppers don't want to type card numbers on small screens. Offer Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay for one-tap checkout with biometric verification. Fast mobile checkout also increases impulse purchases at the point of sale.

Let returning customers save their payment info

Enable one-click checkout for repeat customers using tokenization, where the processor stores secure tokens instead of actual card numbers. This is critical for subscriptions and mobile shopping. Offer multiple wallet options (Shop Pay, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay) so customers can choose their preference.

Resolve payment issues instantly

Failed transactions, refund requests, and order questions all need fast resolution, or customers get frustrated and file chargebacks. Slow support costs you sales and increases chargeback fees.

Keep building your ecommerce foundation

Payment processing is just one piece of running a successful online store. Once your checkout is set up, focus on the other fundamentals:

• Ecommerce customer service: Learn how fast, helpful support reduces chargebacks, increases repeat purchases, and turns one-time buyers into loyal customers.
• Ecommerce SEO: Drive organic traffic to your store by optimizing product pages, category pages, and content so customers can find you through search.‍
• Ecommerce merchandising: Display your products strategically to increase conversions, boost average order value, and create a shopping experience that keeps customers coming back.

TL;DR:

• Ecommerce merchandising is the strategic presentation of products to drive sales and improve shopping experiences
• Core components include catalog structure, visual presentation, search optimization, and personalization
• AI and automation enable small teams to deliver sophisticated merchandising at scale
• Strong merchandising reduces customer support burden by answering questions proactively
• Success requires ongoing testing, data analysis, and optimization

Ecommerce merchandising is the strategic presentation of products to drive sales and create better shopping experiences. 

With online shopping more competitive than ever, how you showcase products can make or break a sale. 

This guide shows you how to optimize product discovery, improve the customer experience, and boost revenue.

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What is ecommerce merchandising?

Ecommerce merchandising is the practice of strategically presenting products to drive sales and improve the shopping experience.

Think about a physical store. Products aren't randomly thrown on shelves — merchandisers place bestsellers at eye level, create enticing displays, and use signage to grab attention. Ecommerce merchandising works the same way, just digitally.

The goal is to put the right product in front of the right customer at the right time. The advantage? You can optimize in real-time based on customer behavior, purchase history, and browsing patterns — something brick-and-mortar stores can't easily do.

This includes organizing your product catalog, optimizing search and filters, creating compelling visuals, personalizing recommendations, and fine-tuning your product pages to convert browsers into buyers.

Why ecommerce merchandising matters

Merchandising directly affects your revenue because it influences every step of the customer journey from product discovery to checkout. Here's why it should be a top priority:

Your customers expect personalization. They don't want to dig through generic product pages or wrestle with basic search. They expect experiences that adapt to their preferences and recommendations that feel hand-picked. If your site feels one-size-fits-all, you're already behind.

Your competition isn't just down the street. It's everywhere. Customers can comparison shop across dozens of stores in minutes. If they can't quickly find what they want on your site, they'll bounce to a competitor who makes it easier. You're not just competing locally anymore. You're up against every online retailer worldwide.

You have data physical stores can only dream of. You can test product arrangements, track which layouts convert better, and adjust your strategy in real-time based on actual behavior. That's a massive advantage, but only if you use it.

Core components of an ecommerce merchandising strategy

Effective merchandising has four foundational building blocks. Here's what you need:

1. Product catalog structure: How you organize, categorize, and tag products. Your store's architecture should take customers from broad categories to specific items.
2. Visual presentation: Images, videos, descriptions, and layouts. High-quality photography and compelling copy that build trust and show customers exactly what they're buying.
3. Search and navigation: Search bars, filters, category menus, and autocomplete. The tools customers use to find products quickly without frustration.
4. Personalization: Recommendation algorithms and dynamic content based on customer behavior and purchase history. What makes each visit feel tailored instead of generic.

How to build your ecommerce merchandising strategy

Building an effective merchandising strategy requires a systematic approach, not guesswork. Follow these five steps.

1. Audit your current state

Review your catalog organization, search performance, and conversion data. Identify which products are easy to find and which are buried. Check search analytics to see where customers struggle and where they drop off. This baseline shows you where to focus.

2. Define goals and KPIs

Establish what success looks like. Choose 3-5 key metrics—conversion rate, average order value, search exit rate—that align with your business objectives. Clear KPIs let you measure impact and prove ROI.

3. Map the customer journey

Identify key touchpoints: homepage, category pages, search, product pages, checkout. Understanding this flow helps you prioritize which areas to optimize first and where merchandising has the biggest impact.

4. Prioritize quick wins

Start with high-impact, low-effort improvements like fixing broken search, adding recommendations, or streamlining category navigation. Quick wins build momentum and show stakeholders what's possible.

5. Plan for ongoing optimization

Set up a testing framework with regular analytics reviews, A/B testing processes, and customer feedback channels. Merchandising isn't one-and-done. It requires continuous refinement.

Ecommerce merchandising best practices

These are the foundational must-haves for any ecommerce store:

✅ Optimize your search functionality – Implement autocomplete, synonym mapping, and smart filters so high-intent shoppers can actually find what they're looking for.

✅ Use high-quality product media – Include multiple angles, zoom functionality, videos, and lifestyle shots. Customers can't touch products online—visuals bridge that gap.

✅ Display social proof prominently – Add reviews, ratings, customer photos, and trust badges on product pages. Customers trust other customers more than your marketing copy.

✅ Ensure mobile responsiveness – Make sure you have responsive design, touch-friendly navigation, and fast loading. 61% of searches happen on mobile.

✅ Show real-time inventory – Display accurate stock levels and low-stock alerts. Nothing kills trust faster than letting customers buy unavailable products.

✅ Optimize checkout flow – Offer guest checkout, multiple payment options, transparent pricing, and progress indicators. Every friction point increases abandonment.

✅ Track Core Web Vitals – Monitor LCP, INP, and CLS. Aim for sub-3-second page loads. Slow pages kill conversions.

Measure success: key ecommerce merchandising metrics

Track these six KPIs to understand how your merchandising impacts revenue. Metrics turn opinions into data-driven decisions.

Conversion rate

The percentage of visitors who buy something. This is your most direct measure of merchandising success.

Example: If 100 people visit your site and 3 buy, your conversion rate is 3%. Track this by traffic source, device, and product category to spot where you can improve.

Average order value (AOV)

The average dollar amount customers spend per transaction. Growing AOV through bundles and recommendations increases revenue without needing more traffic.

Example: If you make $5,000 from 100 orders, your AOV is $50. If product recommendations bump that to $55, you've added $500 in revenue from the same number of customers.

Revenue per visitor (RPV)

Total revenue divided by total visitors. This combines conversion rate and AOV into one number that shows overall merchandising effectiveness.

Example: 1,000 visitors generate $3,000 in sales = $3 RPV. If your merchandising gets that to $3.50, you've gained $500 per thousand visitors.

Bounce rate

The percentage of people who leave after viewing just one page. High bounce rates mean navigation problems or customers not finding what they expected.

Example: If 60% of homepage visitors bounce immediately, something's wrong. It could be unclear navigation, slow loading, or irrelevant content.

Search exit rate

The percentage of customers who search and then leave without clicking any products. This directly measures search quality.

Example: If 40% of people search for "running shoes" and then exit, your search isn't showing them relevant results. Fix this by improving synonym coverage and result relevance.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Total revenue a customer generates over their entire relationship with your brand. Good merchandising makes repeat purchases easy through personalization and seamless experiences.

Example: A customer makes their first $50 purchase, then returns for three more $40 purchases over two years. Their CLV is $170—much more valuable than a one-time buyer.

Testing and optimization approach:

• Run A/B tests on merchandising changes before full rollout
• Review metrics weekly or monthly depending on traffic volume
• Adjust strategy based on data trends and performance shifts
• Use funnel analysis to identify specific drop-off points
• Segment metrics by customer type for deeper insights

Pro Tip: Your support team sees patterns that metrics can't capture. Combine quantitative data with qualitative feedback from customer conversations. Pre-sales customer support can go a long way toward boosting sales by assisting customers with issues that might otherwise prevent them from converting.

Additional merchandising tactics for advanced optimization

Once your foundation is solid, these tactics drive growth. Use them to differentiate your store and boost conversions beyond the basics.

Behavioral personalization

Show "Because you bought X" recommendations, tailor homepages by customer segment, and use dynamic content based on browsing history.

Product quizzes for discovery

Guide uncertain shoppers with quizzes that recommend products based on their needs and preferences.

Curated collections

Create thematic collections ("Summer Essentials," "Work From Home Setup") that reduce decision fatigue and inspire purchases.

Strategic promotions and bundling

Use product bundles, tiered discounts, and free shipping thresholds to increase average order value without constant discounting.

Proactive chat campaigns

Trigger automated chats based on behavior like reaching out when someone views high-value products or lingers on checkout.

AR and product videos

Let customers "try on" products virtually or see 360-degree views to boost confidence and reduce returns.

Social commerce integration

Extend your merchandising to Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms where customers already shop.

AI-driven merchandising

Use machine learning to adjust product rankings, predict demand trends, and personalize at scale.

Turn conversations into conversions with Gorgias

Organizing your store and displaying products to customers is just one element of creating a customer experience optimized for revenue generation.

Gorgias extends your merchandising strategy through three key capabilities:

AI Agent answers product questions instantly, provides recommendations, and handles order inquiries without human agents. 

Customer data integration means agents see browsing history, cart contents, and past purchases to make personalized suggestions during support conversations. 

Proactive engagement through chat campaigns can re-engage cart abandoners or offer help at key decision points in the customer journey.

When merchandising and support work together, you reduce pre-purchase support inquiries because product pages answer common questions. You turn support conversations into sales opportunities by equipping agents with context and product knowledge. 

See how Gorgias helps ecommerce brands turn support into a revenue driver. Book a demo.

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