We all agree that the eCommerce business model is a highly profitable one as you do NOT have to pay rental kind of fixed costs. But if you do NOT maintain a healthy return ratio, it will eat your profits.
At Baapstore, we maintain a very healthy return ratio of 8% approximately as we do a lot of behind the screen work like product quality checking, fetching and uploading the right details, strong vendor scrutinization, etc., but there are something that you have to do from your end in case you think you are getting more than 10% of total orders as returns.
1. Call your customer for every order and verify if they really placed an order or placed it by mistake.
2. Verify if the customer's phone number is valid, reachable and if it is the primary number where they'd always be reachable.
3. Verify with customers that they have provided the right and complete address with a landmark, Pincode, and phone number.
4. Verify that the customer whom you speak to is NOT a kid who does not have access to make payments, make sure you ask to talk to parents in such cases.
5. Keep a healthy markup margin of 50% to 80% that will keep your customers happy and yet you can be highly profitable.
Note: You may find that some customers just make false orders if you are providing the COD option. They just try out. As a seller, you got to be cautious about eliminating such orders to not create a dent in your profits.