2 . The Problem with Online Returns

Online shopping is booming: In 2020, Americans spent $ 813 billion online, a 42% increase over 2019. This year, experts expect that figure to top $ 1 trillion for the first time. But millions of those purchases will eventually get sent back.     1     Here’s what you need to know.

When shoppers can’t physically examine products before purchase, they’re more likely to buy clothes that don’t fit or items that don’t suit their needs. People return on average about 25% of what they buy online, compared with 8% of what they buy in stores. However, many items that get returned never go back on sale.     2     About 5 billion pounds of returned goods went to landfills each year, according to logistics(物流)company Optoro.

    3     When you send a product back, companies already owe you a refund, and it would cost them even more to ship it to a sorting facility and have someone evaluate whether it can be sold again. At this stage, every person that touches that item is adding cost, but the company doesn’t earn any value.

Although it’s unlikely that returned items will be sold as new, some items get sent to discount stores.     4     Other unwanted items might be sent overseas-although many could still go to the garbage eventually.

In some cases, giant companies like Amazon and Target have begun telling customers to just keep their unwanted items rather than send them back. Third-party logistics businesses have also popped up to help clean up the return process. But that’s not enough on its own.     5     If we continue to shop without thinking about the environmental impacts of our decisions, we’ll ultimately have very unsustainable supply chains.

5 . You may not have noticed it as you shop online, but the experience is changing. Clicking through a navigation bar of a website to find an item has become outdated. A search bar that allows you to look up a specific product is faster. In some cases, chatting with a bot (robot) may be even more efficient.

We have experimented with chatbots for years. Facebook has offered tools for businessmen to make bots that deal with customers. Retailers like Amazon have used chatbots to answer customers' questions, and when the bots can't help, a person can take over. “Now that visiting a physical retail store has largely become impractical in the pandemic, we can expect such conversational technologies to gain popularity.” said Julie Ask, a technology analyst for Forrester Research. “There are already plenty of examples. Recently, I shopped for a pair of shoes at Beckett Simonon, an online fashion brand, and asked an employee via a chat box about the correct shoe size for my feet.” she added.

More companies are also using augmented reality to help people with online shopping, Ms. Ask said. Jins Eyewear, which sells glasses, lets you take a photo of your face to virtually try on glasses before deciding whether to buy them. Snap, the parent company for Snapchat, has teamed up with luxury brands like Gucci and Dior to offer virtual try-ons.

Augmented reality is ready to become especially popular this year because the technology keeps improving. New high-end Apple and Android smartphones include sensors for detecting depth, which makes it easier for augmented reality apps to place objects like virtual furniture in physical spaces.

It is expected to see a wave of new ads that take advantage of the format. This year, advertisers are expected to spend about S2.4 billion on augmented reality advertising, up 71 percent from $1.4 billion last year, according to the research firm eMarketer.