How The Little Green Bag reduced returns online, in multiple countries
Summary
The Little Green Bag is in an enviable position. Online sales tripled during the pandemic, prompting the Netherlands-based retailer of trendy bags, jewelry, watches and accessories to move into a much larger warehouse in early 2021. That growth continues as The Little Green Bag adds brands and categories to meet customer demand across thelittlegreenbag.com and 14 country-specific websites including France, Germany and the U.K.
But as sales scaled, so did returns.
To keep up with the impressive pace of growth — and keep earning business across Europe — The Little Green Bag needed an easy way for customers to choose the right size products, no matter what country they were shopping from.
“For a specific item that used to have a 40% return rate, now we’re looking at a 20% return rate. Wow!”
“For a specific item that used to have a 40% return rate, now we’re looking at a 20% return rate. Wow!”
Challenge
Returns are notoriously expensive. They cost your company time, labor, packaging materials, shipping, software, customer experience — with zero revenue in return. Customers send back, on average, 30% of online purchases, with return rates as high as 50% for some fashion categories.
Like many e-commerce retailers, The Little Green Bag wanted to get a handle on returns. They also wanted to ensure that any investment would translate seamlessly across sites, geographies and languages.
The Little Green Bag's E-Commerce Director Lawrence van de Meeberg explains:
“You want to give [customers] that extra confidence to buy a product with us rather than someone in their own country...and one of the ways to create that trust is to give them more information about the product than maybe a competitor in their own country.”
And with thousands of SKUs, and more on the way, The Little Green Bag needed a solution that could keep up.
Enter Tangiblee
Most retailers provide product dimensions, but customers may not know what those measurements will look like on themselves. And vendors don’t always offer model shots along with product images, making it extra challenging for customers to picture the actual size of a handbag, backpack or watch. If it’s bigger or smaller than expected, they’ll send it back.
Van de Meeberg was intrigued when he saw Tangiblee’s Adjustable Silhouettes in use on another retailer’s website. The tool lets shoppers quickly choose a model and adjust the height and body size to match their own. They also can compare the size of a bag or accessory with an iPhone, MacBook, passport — everyday items that retailers can customize to meet customer needs.
+68.4%
Conversion Rate
for users who interacted with Tangiblee
For bracelets, rings and watches, shoppers can adjust the skin tone on a hand model to match their own and see the product alongside a coin, golf ball or AirPod. Tangiblee also offers a unique Virtual Try-On for jewelry and watches that combines augmented reality with your existing images — no product modeling required.
In addition, the Tangiblee tool can retain recently viewed products, making it easy for shoppers to compare potential purchases side by side. Van de Meeberg says:
“It’s very difficult to see if that is a mini clutch, a medium clutch or a big clutch because some brands have a small difference between their products...so you might end up buying the smallest size when you really wanted the medium. If you can fit that on your body size before buying, [we believed] it would be a very helpful tool.”
Tangiblee lets customers do just that. It provides fast visual comparison and confirmation — customers don’t have to read a lot of text, answer questions or move through multiple clicks.
“No steps are required, and it immediately shows you what you want to see. That’s very important.”
“No steps are required, and it immediately shows you what you want to see. That’s very important.”
Tangiblee is easy on the retailer too. It uses your existing product images and information, making it surprisingly simple to scale.
The lightweight, customizable solution works with any tag manager or e-commerce platform, and integrates with just one line of code.
Van de Meeberg explained how valuable Tangiblee's no-code integration process was to The Little Green Bag's decision-making:
“It’s almost like a plug-and-play setup–that was one of the deciding factors, maybe THE deciding factor after realizing [Tangiblee's solution] was a good price for us.”
+78.13%
Revenue Per Visitor
for users who interacted with Tangiblee
Results
The Little Green Bag agreed to give Tangiblee a try, but they wanted to make sure customers would actually use the interactive sizing tool.
During a trial run in fall 2020, the retailer was thrilled to find more than 50% of site visitors using the Tangiblee tool and a higher conversion rate among those users. “For us, that was already enough,” Van de Meeberg says.
And Tangiblee made an immediate impact on the retailer’s returns. On some of The Little Green Bag's Best Selling items, Tangiblee's solution helped cut the return rate in half - from 40% down to 20%.
Needless to say, The Little Green Bag was ready for a larger rollout — just in time for their move into a larger warehouse. At one point, the retailer added 6,000 SKUs in two weeks.
Tangiblee’s web crawling technology, backed by top-notch client service, made it possible to go live fast without extra work for The Little Green Bag’s busy team.
Universal Language
The Little Green Bag also experienced extra value when it added Tangiblee to country-specific sites. Product detail pages need careful translations, which take time, to ensure customer confidence.
In the meantime, the Tangiblee tool offered visual assurance — no translation needed. When asked if he would recommend Tangiblee to other e-Commerce companies, Van de Meeberg said:
“I would definitely recommend Tangiblee — as long as it’s not in the Netherlands–on websites far, far away from here, I would definitely recommend Tangiblee.”
