The Team
Christian Mtima: Product Designer
Connie: Senior UX Researcher
Jay : Experiment Lead
Rachel: Senior Product Manager
Daniele: Returns Continuous Improvements Manager
Challenge
New Look faced a significant return rate of 40%, costing the business £2.6 million annually. Customer survey insights revealed that:
•Many customers ordered multiple sizes due to inconsistent sizing across products.
•Key reasons for returns included poor fit and disappointment upon delivery.
•Users often struggled to determine size despite available tools, leading to inefficient purchases and high return costs.
Solution
To address the sizing issue, we explored improvements to the PDP (Product Detail Page):
Tested “True to Size” Bar: Surfaced size feedback from customer reviews to help shoppers choose the correct size.
Introduced Model Size Text: Displayed model height and worn size to give customers better context on fit.
Conducted multiple A/B tests to measure the impact on returns and conversion.
Results
True to Size Bar:
Resulted in no significant change in return rate (27% in both variants).
Resulted in no significant change in return rate (27% in both variants).
Model Size Text:
Delivered a 1.45% reduction in return rate, statistically significant (<0.1% chance due to random variation).
We asked customers why they make a high volume of returns to New Look.
506 of them told us why.
The top three reasons why customers reported to make their returns to New Look are;
•I order multiple sizes and need to send some back
•I don’t like my items when they arrive
•Other
42% of respondents referred to sizing in their response. Even more customers were concerned about the fit of items. Others flagged concerns around quality.
The survey found that that the biggest challenge that customers face is inconsistent sizing. Due to lack of in-store availability and a desire to try the items on, customers are frequently order multiple sizes and only keep the items that fit best.
“The sizing and fit of the items is off and my standard sizing never seems to fit compared to other brands hence the returns.”
“It's hard to know which size to order when it's so inconsistent, this means I'm likely to order more than one size and end up returning.”
Project kickoff
Current Challenges
•Model size info is hidden in dropdowns, with only 4% engagement.
•Suggest repositioning model size info near product images for better visibility.
•Current size guide is too generic; lacks product-specific detail (e.g. jeans vs dresses).
•Low engagement suggests it doesn’t meet user needs effectively.
•Dropdowns and long scrolls make navigation difficult.
•Users struggle to remember sizing info due to poor layout.
•Recommend a tabbed/toggle-based size guide to reduce scrolling.
Gather insights from Ali on Fabric ROW size guide performance.
Competitor Analysis
Design Crit Concept feedback
Multiple size bag prompt
•Encourage customers to try using size guide
•Dependencies: size guide being improved - more product specific
•Challenges: Dev work and migration to new platform
Categorise product descriptions to guide customers (User Tested)
•Good way to measure engagement
•Testing opportunities for different copy variants
•Challenges: Migration to new platform and lack of dev support to implement page relayout
True to size Bar (A/B Tested)
•Hypothesis: Size recommendations from customer reviews will slightly reduce •size-related returns.
•No significant impact on returns; both A/B test reached 27%.
PDP Model size information (A/B Tested)
•Adding model size text to PDPs reduced return rates by 1.45%.
•This result is statistically significant (less than 0.1% chance it’s random).
•Conversion rate dropped slightly from 4.04% to 4.03%, but not significant.
•Overall, the variant with model size info looks promising, but needs more time/data to be fully confident.
User testing insights - Product Description Accordions
Objective
To evaluate how users interact with product sizing and description information on the Product Details Page (PDP) and determine which layout (Accordion Descriptions vs. Open Information) better supports informed purchasing decisions, reducing the likelihood of buying multiple sizes.
Summary
User testing showed a clear preference for Layout B (accordion style), with participants highlighting its clean, organised design and reduced need for scrolling. The expandable sections helped users focus on only the information relevant to them, making the page feel less overwhelming. In contrast, Layout A—which displayed all information at once—was appreciated by a smaller group who preferred immediate visibility without needing to click. However, some found it cluttered. A common issue with Layout B was that opening one section closed another, disrupting flow. Overall, users favoured Layout B, but recommended allowing multiple sections to remain open to better accommodate different browsing preferences.
