Accenture recently did a study and found that 95 percent of returned consumer electronic products in 2007 work properly despite many customers thinking they were broken. 68% of these returns were because the product did not meet the customer’s expectations and 27% were from buyer’s remorse. Returns cost money and ultimately customers.

What is causing that 68% of returns? A big factor is the user experience and usability of the product. Many products are complicated and hard to figure out. Many users don’t look at the instruction manuals. One study found that the average U.S. consumer spends only 20 minutes trying to make a device work before giving up and returning it. Let this be a lesson to companies that want to reduce the returns of their working products: focus on the User and create easy to use, usable, intuitive products.