Ask About Fit and Cut Your Returns

Short answer: Ask a short fit question — runs small to runs large — next to your star rating, because a free-text review box almost never surfaces a sizing problem clearly enough to act on, and a scale question can be averaged and shown right on the product page.

Most returns in clothing and footwear aren't about quality. They're about a size that looked right online and didn't feel right in the mirror. A customer who runs into this doesn't usually type it into a review box in a way you can use — they might mention it in passing, or not at all, and it gets buried in a review that's otherwise five stars.

Why a free-text box misses the sizing problem

A customer writing "runs a little small, sized up and it's perfect now" has told you something useful, but it's stuck inside a sentence. You can't average a sentence. You can't put "some people mention sizing" on a product page next to the star count — there's nothing there to show.

A structured question fixes that. Ask "how did the fit run?" on a scale from runs small to runs large, and every answer becomes a value you can average across every review left for that product.

Which questions are actually worth asking

Fit. A scale from runs small to runs large is the one question that directly cuts returns — a shopper who sees "runs small" before they buy sizes up instead of ordering, receiving it, and sending it back.

True to description. A yes/no or short scale that tells you whether the photos and the copy matched what arrived. This is the question that tells you when the problem is the listing, not the size chart.

Would buy again. A simple yes/no that works as a repeat-purchase signal separate from the star rating. A product can earn four stars and a "no" on this question, and that's worth knowing before you reorder more of it.

Ask only what you would actually act on. A question you'll never look at again is a question that costs you a finished form for nothing. If you sell more than one kind of product, a fit question doesn't have to be the same shape everywhere — a scale suits clothing and shoes, but a plain choice question can cover something like packaging condition on a fragile item, and the same rule applies: only ask it if the answer would change something.

If you're still working out the wording for the request itself, how to ask for a review, with templates covers that half of it.

Why two or three questions is the limit

Every question after the star rating is one more thing standing between a customer and hitting submit. Two or three questions, chosen for what they'll actually change about your product page, beat six questions that ask about everything and get answered by almost no one. Asking for too much at once is one of the more common review request mistakes to avoid, and a form nobody finishes collects nothing at all.

Setting it up so it actually shows on the product page

In Kudo, a fit question like this is defined once, per page, with its own scale and its own labels — runs small on one end, runs large on the other — and every answer against it is stored as a value rather than buried in review text. That's what lets the average actually work: a product can show something like "most reviewers say true to size," or "87% would buy again," as one line next to the stars, built from the answers rather than someone reading through every review to guess.

Why the labels stay in your own words

The fit scale, the choice labels, whatever you call the ends of that scale — those are your words, written for your shop, and they don't get run through machine translation the way the review text itself can be. A reviewer's own words can be shown in another language for a visitor who needs it; the question you asked stays exactly as you wrote it, in the language you wrote it in.

The Two-Minute Version

Kudo lets you add a fit question like this to your review form, with your own scale and labels, and shows the average on your page as one line instead of leaving it buried in review text.

Start free at getkudo.co.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the single best question to ask if I want fewer returns?
A fit scale — runs small to runs large — because it directly tells the next shopper what size to order, which is what actually prevents the return.

Should I ask about fit as a free-text question instead?
No. Free text gets buried in the rest of the review and can't be averaged or shown as a summary line the way a scale question can.

How many extra questions can I add before people stop finishing the form?
Keep it to two or three. Every additional question is one more reason a customer closes the tab before submitting.

Do these questions apply to every product, or one at a time?
They're defined for your page and answered per review, so you can ask the same fit question across every product that needs it.

Will my question labels get translated automatically?
No. The review text a customer writes can be translated for other visitors, but your own question labels stay exactly as you wrote them.