The variation and complexity of car parts is beyond any other product category that is popular with consumers online. For example, many under-the-hood parts such as distributor caps have connectors in slightly different positions, making components that look identical at first glance completely incompatible. This makes the scope for pre-sale questions, complaints and returns unusually high.
While some sellers enjoy customer contact, responding to questions can be very time consuming and therefore expensive. Answering vehicle compatibility questions is not easily outsourced to low-cost virtual assistants. Returns cost you money for shipping and handling, and often go hand-in-hand with complaints. A customer who spent several hours dismantling their car only to find that your part did not fit is likely to be an unhappy customer.
Making your listings as clear and detailed as possible reduces your customer support workload and returns, and improves feedback. Customers will still make mistakes from time to time, but high quality listings will reduce the volume as much as possible. If you sell your own brand products, it may be worth investing in installation videos as well as high-quality images. When it comes to specifying fitment, don’t take chances by adding vehicles you are not sure of in order to increase sales.
As a seller, there will likely be times when you make mistakes such as providing incorrect compatibility information, confusing photos or ambiguous descriptions. Double check your listings and explain which vehicles are not compatible as well as those that are, rather than simply not mentioning them at all. This will help discourage buyers from taking a chance because your compatibility list includes similar vehicles to theirs.
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If you get three or more questions or returns on a listing, spend some time looking at it from a buyer’s point of view and revise the listing to make it clearer. No matter how good you thought the listing was, this is evidence that something you included is confusing buyers.