How Cotswold Outdoor cut returns by 83% by surfacing sizing guidance to high-intent shoppers
The Challenge
Cotswold Outdoor sells premium outdoor clothing and equipment from brands like Patagonia, Berghaus, and The North Face. Technical apparel means technical fit. Trail pants run slim. Waterproof jackets are cut for layering. And when customers get sizing wrong, the product comes back.
Returns are one of the most expensive problems in online retail. Every return carries a logistics cost, a processing cost, and a customer experience cost. For a retailer selling technical gear where fit varies significantly between brands and product types, the returns rate on certain lines was painfully high.
The information to prevent those returns already existed on the product page. Sizing guides, fit notes, customer reviews mentioning fit. But visitors were blind to it. The content sat passively on the page, buried beneath product imagery and pricing. For a visitor ready to buy, the sizing guidance they needed to make a confident decision wasn't reaching them at the moment it mattered most.
The Hypothesis
By showing sizing guidance at the moment someone is choosing a size, Cotswold Outdoor could reduce returns by helping customers make a confident choice, rather than hoping they would find the information themselves.
In the Closing the èƵ Gap report, we found that when onsite messages are aligned to real visitor intent, they lift conversion by an average of 15% - simply by prioritising what matters most in the moment.
The impact shows up most clearly when you tailor by mindset:
- +142% conversion rate for low intent visitors when the most relevant reassurance/USP is prioritised.
- +35% conversion for high intent visitors when practical, decision‑driving messages (like delivery speed) are prioritised.
In short: messaging works when it matches what the shopper needs right now.
The Solution
Cotswold Outdoor used Made With èƵ to identify visitors with high purchase confidence on product pages and show a dynamic sizing message right when they were choosing a size. When a visitor's intent signal showed they were ready to buy, a real-time tooltip appeared near the add-to-basket button: "What Customers Say: Fits Small - Try a Size Up."
The message drew from existing customer review data but presented it dynamically rather than leaving it buried in the reviews section. The design was intentionally lightweight - a small, dismissible callout that appeared at exactly the moment a high intent visitor was making their final size selection.
Crucially, this wasn't shown to everyone. Low intent browsers - visitors still exploring, comparing, or just landing on the page - didn't see it. The message was reserved for the visitors most likely to convert, and therefore most likely to return if they got the sizing wrong. It showed only to ready-to-buy shoppers, so it helped without cluttering the page for everyone else.
The Impact
Without èƵ, sizing guidance sat passively on the product page. Fit information existed in size guides and reviews, but visitors making quick purchase decisions rarely found it. Returns on technical apparel remained high.
With èƵ, sizing guidance was shown to high intent visitors right when they were choosing a size. The information they needed appeared at exactly the moment it mattered.
Key Results: 83% drop in returns rate for targeted products
This play reframes what "conversion optimisation" actually means. Most experiments focus on getting more visitors to the basket. This one focused on making sure the visitors who reached the basket had made the right choice. The result wasn't just fewer returns. It was fewer customer service contacts, lower logistics costs, and a better experience for the customer who got the right size first time.
It also proves that the content needed to solve expensive problems often already exists on the page. The challenge isn't creating new information - it's making existing information visible to the people who need it, when they need it.
Returns aren't just a logistics problem. They're an information problem. The data customers need to make confident decisions is usually already there - it's just not reaching them at the right moment. This play shows that when you time the message to the intent, you don't just improve conversion. You improve what happens after conversion too.
Ready to reduce returns with smarter on-page messaging? Explore more about Product Visits with èƵ.
