Explaining the most valuable post-purchase features in ecommerce

Megan Donnelly

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September 5, 2025

As a brand, you put a ton of work into wowing your shoppers from the outset, with creative ads and intuitive interfaces that will convince them to click the “buy” button. But if that’s where your effort stops, you can kiss customer retention goodbye.

Long-standing brands know that the post-purchase customer journey is even more critical than pre-purchase. That involves everything that happens after a shopper has placed an order, including your communication, your shipping and delivery experience, and your returns and exchange processes.

By ensuring a superior post-purchase experience every step of the way – including when a customer chooses to return an item – you’ll be able to boost shopper engagement, enhance trust in your brand, and generate higher customer lifetime value.

At Loop, we’re laser-focused on helping brands deliver a best-in-class post-purchase experience. Here are some of the key Loop features you can use to optimize the experience for your customers at different points in their journey.

Immediately after the purchase

Your customer has just made a purchase, and they’re anxiously awaiting their product’s arrival. Don’t let their engagement drop – this is an ideal time to boost their confidence in your brand and encourage them to explore what else you have to offer.

Our ecommerce order tracking tools help you communicate clearly with your shoppers, and instill confidence around their upcoming arrival. You’ll be able to provide real-time notifications around shipping status, delivery updates, and delivery confirmation via SMS and email, with links to a branded order tracking page.

Your order tracking page can also serve as a hub for additional resources: Use it to promote complementary products to generate upsell revenue, and include a FAQ section that can keep your customers informed and cut down on customer support inquiries.

When a shopper wants to make a return

Stop thinking of returns as a dirty word – and consider their potential as a touchpoint for building customer loyalty.

Anywhere up to 30% of product sales might end in a return – so whether your shopper will come back after returning a product really hinges on their returns experience. Loop makes it easy for you to deliver a seamless, hassle-free returns experience, no matter why they’re making a return.

Our custom tools include:

• A branded returns portal: Make it simple for customers to initiate a return through self-service, rather than wasting customer support resources (and your customers’ time) waiting for manual approval. Shoppers can visit the returns portal to see all of their return-eligible items at once, and instantly get approval for a return, with confirmation of next steps.
• Multiple options for exchanges: If a shopper wants a refund, they can get it – no questions asked. But with Loop, it’s just as simple for them to exchange the product for another, whether or not they’re selecting the same type of product. Our Instant Exchange tool lets them instantly apply their refund credit towards another item, and add a debit or credit if the new item is a different price. Or, if they’re not ready to make a decision yet, they can keep their refund credit in their account until they’re ready to buy, with our Shop Now & Later tool. These options give your shoppers more choices around returns, while giving your brand new opportunities for retaining more revenue from returns.
• Warranty returns: Of course you want your customers to be able to return products for any reason – but if the return is due to a product defect, it generally requires a different process, and your product may need to be sent to a refurbishing center rather than to your warehouse. Our Warranty tool makes it easy for your team to put the right workflows in place to ensure all warranty claims are handled efficiently.
• Point of Sale: If your brand sells in-store as well as online, your shoppers may opt to return items to your brick-and-mortar locations to save costs on return shipping. When they do, our Point of Sale tool enables your retail sales associates to effortlessly manage returns, syncing your online and offline data for real-time visibility around your inventory management.
• Dynamic routing: Reverse logistics can be expensive – but Loop can help you cut costs around return shipping, with dynamic routing options that help you automatically identify the most cost-efficient shipping method and route for every return. You’ll even be able to calculate when certain items aren’t profitable to resell, and choose to let the shopper keep the item in a “returnless refund.”

Looking to see all these features in action?

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CX and revenue retention

Delivering a streamlined post-purchase experience for our brands is our key mission – and as part of that, we’ve built tools to focus on delivering a great customer experience while helping brands improve their profit margins. Those tools include:

• Workflows: Different situations require different returns processes. Our Workflows tool is endlessly customizable, enabling your brand to set up customized workflows for different return categories, conditions, or events – ensuring a streamlined, no-hassle returns experience for every type of item.
• Checkout+: With return shipping costs on the rise, it’s getting harder for brands to absorb the costs of returns. With our Checkout+ tool, you can deliver a great returns experience while boosting your profit margins, by offering shoppers access to a free return later for a small upfront fee at the point of purchase. On average, around 70% of shoppers opt in, giving brands the cash buffer they need to cover reverse logistics and software fees.
• Fraud Detection: Returns fraud is on the rise, but setting overly restrictive terms around returns will only alienate your loyal customers. Strike the right balance between fraud prevention and CX with Loop’s fraud detection tools. Our automated fraud protection tool correctly identifies 87% of confirmed fraudulent transactions, helping you stop abusers in their tracks without disrupting the experience for the rest of your customer base.
• Analytics: We all know returns happen – but why do they happen? With Loop’s Analytics tool, you’ll be able to tap into analytics data around the reasons each customer is returning an item. That will help you understand if your product descriptions are inaccurate, or if there’s a product development issue that customers are struggling with. With these analytical insights, you’ll be able to optimize your PDPs and enhance your product development, helping you improve the customer experience and lower your future return rate.

Building a sustainable business through a better post-purchase experience

Successful, long-lasting brands know that every customer touchpoint is important – not just the one that convinces them to buy a product. By leveraging tools that help you enhance every part of the post-purchase experience, you’ll be able to build consumer trust in your brand that will keep them coming back, time and again.

Focusing on your sales strategy may help you scale quickly, but if you don’t think about what happens after the purchase, you’re likely to lose those shoppers just as fast. By pairing a strong sales and marketing strategy with best-in-class post-purchase tools, you’ll be able to keep those customers for the long term, helping you build a sustainable brand that your customers will love and trust for a lifetime.

Ready to build a post-purchase experience your shoppers will love? Book a demo of Loop.

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