To lower returns (it will never stop occurring though) when selling clothes online its important to think of a couple of things for B2C sites:

• Inform about qualities both in a technical text (80%cotton et.c) and a commercial text (wonderful soft dress et.c) 
  The better you describe your product the bigger possibility for your sold garment to be kept by the customer instead of him returning it just because you say "Its a dress" and the customer returns it because "Its a dress, but you never said that it would feel like a second skin"
• Sizing, give the user clear instructions how to measure himself for clothes to fit and clear size matrix and the span in cm/inch that each size is in and preferably using translation matrixes with localized size system.
  This way you give the user the possibility to measure and find a size that should fit. This demands that the entire supply chain is of good quality so what you promise is promised to you as well.
• Washing instructions, display those both in text and with standardized images for the customer so he knows whats expected of him. 
• Images, images, images. Detail (special things like pockets or how the fabric looks in close), environment (people wearing the garments), sketch (so the visitor knows where stitches is made)
• Delivery time display, try to calculate this as exact as you possibly can and keep the promise or send out new information early on if there is changes so the customer always knows what is happening with their order and dont return just because of a lazy supplier that did not inform.

Its a bit easier for B2B (uniform/profile corporate clothing) sites since they often use contracts where details is already agreed and in these cases they often have professional purchasers ordering and measuring and in there case its more important to be able to have an effective ordering process with good information tools like track and trace, status updates and statistics.

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Today when I went to Borås Knalleland for a bit of shopping it came clear to me, when walking around in a store whats really important.

Many storeowners either seem to think that I want to steal something since they follow me around the store without saying something or they start talking to me before I have seen whats in the store. These to people lost me as a customer because I got stressed and couldnt concentrate on what I was there for, to shop.

So I put together a short list whats important for sales personell to think of in a store (and with some creativity this can be translated to online channels as well):

• Let the customer look around a couple of minutes before you jump at him to try to sell, he needs to have this time to accommodate with the store and filter out the important products in the store. A polite "hello" or "welcome" is of course a natural thing that you should say immediately the customer enters.
• Be intuitive about the customer, if he looks confused, go to him and ask if you can help him out
• If you start helping a customer out, dont give the impression that you actually dont have the time to speak to him because you want to go to the next customer. If, and only if, the customers just seem to talk to you about the weather and you have lots of people in line it is ok to be polite once again and say "it is nice talking to you, but I have more customer in line"
• Eyecontact at the counter, dont stand there when the customer is paying and just look at the cashier. Look at the customer, a smile perhaps, and give him his receipt and a "thank you for shopping, hope you will be satisfied"
• If you got the time, try to say "good by" to customers leaving the store without buying things. This way they see that you actually did not ignore them and its a higher chance of getting free advertising.

Its really simple because if you are polite and give the customer a bit of breathing space before giving him the commercial parts its probably a happy customer and happy customer often shop or at least give you free advertising to his friends.

You could say, and this goes for B2B online business as well as physical stores, that you need to get a customer interested in your things before you start with the commercial messages to him.

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What is performance, really? Is it just handling a request of texts, images, scripts, media in less than a second? Well, yes

But it is more than that, if you got a blog, newspaper or a community you only (in most cases) handle information of different kind.

But if you have somekind of online commerce there is more to it than just handling information (ask LetsBuyIt for example about the christmas trees they sold a couple of years ago), its somekind of physical things in most cases (which I will cover here, human capital nor economical instruments will be covered)
When trading there is a couple of questions that needs to be solved:

• do I need my own warehouse or will this be solved by a 3PL partner?
  it could be good to have your own warehouse in the beginning, and it do not need to be a 10000 sqm big warehouse. Startup small and when your up and running with positive economy you can start thinking about a bigger warehouse or outsourcing to a 3PL.
  This of course depends on if you actually want your own warehouse or if you will let all parcels be shipped directly from supplier to your customer.
  The positive thing to have at least a buffer warehouse where things you sell a lot of is placed is that delivery times could be shorter and if you send everything from your warehouse your customer wont be confused about sender of parcels and you have the possibility to repack everything in your boxes where you can put logos (even though suppliers of products often offer this today)
  The positive thing to shipping directly from supplier to customer is freight cost, it could be lower, and all physica riscs taken is between your supplier and your customer (depending of the contract)
• what deliverytimes do I want to promise customers and how will this be solved?
  If you put a delivery time on your site, delivery on that time. It could take time for you to get the products, check it, pack it and sending it out to the customer.
  A ground rule is that the more expensive the product is, the longer delivery time is ok to offer.
• how will I handle returns?
  Tough question, important to remember is that customer often expect free return freight and they expect to be able to open up parcels and looking at the product before deciding if the return it. Stick to the laws in the country you trade in
• what way of delivery options do I want to offer my customers?
  do you deliver your self as a service?
  is it the cheapest ways you want to use or the best ways? Its a matter of costs sometime, so try both as long as the companies you use to delivery your parcels gives the service that you and your customer expect (often related to the product you sell and your customers)
• what kind of guarantees will I offer my customers on the products they buy?
  Some companies gives guarantees mandatory by laws and some companies gives longer guarantees. Of course it is better with longer guarantees, but it comes with a cost and somewhere this cost must be calculated in the price your customer pay.

The least but most important question in this post is:
Will (and should in some cases) I handle customers/suppliers from several countries?
It could be fun tou trade in more than your own country, but remember that laws, language (surprise, surprise), culture, expectations are different 

Startup small, learn new products, countries and cultures in your trading journey and grow with the flow.

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