2023 · Product journey mapping in fashion e-commerce · 4MIN READ
E2E Return Optimization
Product journey board, 2023
1. Create
Season briefing to supplier handover
Design
Product approval
Tech / fit
Master and block fits
1Merchandise
Orders and pricing
PDM / PLM
Specs to supplier
2. Store
Where product data lives
SAP
Retail and wholesale master data
Data lake
Pricing, orders, status
2PIM
Central product info
Built end-to-end
3. Shoot
Eight-step studio and retouch chain
Samples
Stockroom, express delivery
Shooting
Stills and model
Approval 1
Selection
External retouch
12h turnaround
3Approval 2
3h on declines
Colour correction
Style on hand
4Built end-to-end
4. Publish
Assembling the page
DAM
Approved imagery
Copy & translation
48h to publish
5Storefront feed
Data to the shop
5. Sell & learn
What the shopper sees, and says back
Product page
Imagery, copy, size chart
Fit guidance
Third-party tool
6Returns & feedback
Weekly returns list
7Breaking points
- 1Fit decided here, never written back into the page.
- 2Data sits in four places, so nobody trusts one version.
- 3Retouching corrects colour away from the real garment.
- 4Colour check happens once, with no reference locked earlier.
- 5Copy is written from mood, not from garment behaviour.
- 6Fit tool has no access to the updated size tables.
- 7Return reasons too coarse to send back to any owner.
Efficiency
- Missing product info and incomplete fit and size description lists
- Fitting check (true to size, normal fit) missing on some pages, no automation behind it
- Outdated size charts
- Inaccurate colours and imagery against the real garment
- Inconsistent or missing copy highlights, prints in particular
Technical
- Model size missing because customer feedback never came back into the record
- Data not released into the downstream systems
- Model information missing or broken
Strategy & visibility
- Owners and stakeholders unknown across the chain
- Loss of manpower turning directly into loss of knowledge
- Undocumented processes and no shared visibility
- Decentralised data across PDM, SAP, PIM and Salesforce
- Inconsistent size labelling per category
- Purchasing strategy: not every size is bought for e-commerce
Development status at handover
High priority
- Copy guideline for product descriptions
- Mapping the end-to-end product journey
- Size table update, inch to cm
- Fit Analytics visibility updates
- Adding model information
- Measurement info bugs
Medium priority
- Repositioning the product info box
- New visuals for “true to size”
- Transfer of the new range plan
- Product tagging app surfaced in Power BI via the data lake
- New product strategy as a chance to unify size strategy
- Fixing translations
Low priority
- Evaluating a new fit tool
- 3D images for flats
- Video introduction for selected categories
- Process input from product and styling
Process summary
How the work was made
Click a step to jump to the artefact it produced.
01
Mapping the chain
I contacted the teams along the path - design, tech, merchandise, photostudio, copy and translation, PIM and storefront - and drew the product journey end to end in FigJam: every hand-off, every system, every service-level agreement, and the owner of each node.
02
Finding where the promise breaks
With the map in place, the defects grouped themselves into three families: efficiency, technical and strategic. It became visible that most customer-facing errors were downstream symptoms of upstream data gaps, not mistakes made on the page.
03
Turning findings into a backlog
Each problem was paired with a solution and sorted by effort and impact - low-hanging fruit against high-hanging - then re-cut into a high, medium and low priority list the team could actually work through.
04
Shipping and testing
The first fixes went live: a copy guideline, the journey map itself as a shared reference, and the size table converted from inches to centimetres. One change went into an A/B test before the company entered insolvency and the programme stopped.
Participants
Eight teams and six systems mapped; stakeholders interviewed across design, tech, merchandise, photostudio, copy, translation, PIM and storefront.
Result
Three fixes shipped and one A/B test started against a one percent return-rate target worth thousands of euros a season; the programme ended with the insolvency.
What I would test next
Whether pairing fit guidance with model measurements on the product page moves the return rate on the categories with the worst fit complaints.
Outcome
- An end-to-end product journey map covering eight teams and six systems, adopted as the shared reference
- Every known defect traced back to its cause and sorted into a prioritised backlog
- Three items shipped: the copy guideline, the size table conversion in centimetres, and the journey map itself
- One further change taken into an A/B test; the programme ended when the company entered insolvency
What I took from it
The target was a one percent reduction in returns - small on paper, thousands of euros in practice. I learned to argue for design work in the language of that number, and that the hardest part of a systems problem is not solving it but getting everyone to agree on what the system actually is.
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