Fitment Data, Subject Matter Experts and Rich Content Reduce Product Returns

Selling parts and accessories for cars is a complex task. To select the right products, you may need to know as many as 60 attributes of the car — year, make, model, trim level, color, the number of doors, the number of seats and more.

“Fitment is the biggest challenge in this industry,” Ajay Roy, chief operating officer at PARTS iD, told PYMNTS. “I don’t think there are many players who have invested as heavily as we have invested in solving the fitment problem.”

PARTS iD owns and operates CARiD, an eCommerce platform for the automotive aftermarket, and seven other verticals. The company reports it has maintained a return rate of 5% while the industry average is 18% to 20%.

Zeroing in on the Part That Fits

The company has achieved this low return rate by offering online shoppers access to a comprehensive fitment database, subject matter experts and rich content.

The platform’s fitment database includes 14 billion data points. Artificial intelligence (AI) is used to enrich the data that is provided by vendors, adding information and filling out as many as 60 attributes.

“On our website, when a customer searches for a product, not only do we show year, make, model, but we also have built a model which takes into account 10 to 12 different dimensions,” Roy said. “With that, they can exactly zero in on the part that will fit their car.”

If customers have questions, they can call, chat or email with a subject matter expert. PARTS iD has a dedicated team of experts in categories such as wheels and tires, performance parts, autobody parts and interior accessories. On the website, for each product category, there is a switchboard number.

“If you’re buying something on our platform and you have a question, you can pick up the phone and you can actually talk to a person who will help you through your buying journey,” Roy said.

Serving as a Discovery Platform

The website also features rich content that helps shoppers select the correct part. This includes detailed product descriptions, high-definition images, videos, educational resources and links to what other customers have done with similar products. Rich content gives customers the look and feel of the products, which is especially important with products that are used to soup up or modify a car.

With this rich content, the website also serves as a discovery platform, making customers aware of products they didn’t know they wanted.

“That can only be possible if you create an experience for consumers where things that they have not thought about, they can discover it, and that can only happen when you invest heavily into content and also help them through the journey,” Roy said.

To offer the products customers want and need, PARTS iD has 1,000 product categories, 2,500 vendors, 5,000 brands and 17.5 million stock keeping units (SKUs). It also offers a variety of choices for payments, supporting Affirm, Apple Pay, GPay, PayPal, credit cards, debit cards, wire and checks for business-to-business (B2B) orders.

“We are expanding into other categories like boating, marine, motorcycle, power sports, RVs, tools, recreation,” Roy said. “All these areas have one thing in common, which is the need for fitment data. Because our technology platform is very fungible, we are able to extend it beyond just automobiles — which I see as a big growth driver for us.”