Before you invest in order confirmation emails

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Before you spend anything on order confirmation emails, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• It is the most-opened email you will ever send
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

What to watch for

Include everything needed to avoid a support ticket. This is the sort of thing that compounds, quietly, in both directions. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

A tracking link reduces "where is my order" enquiries. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. Anything you cannot measure here, you are deciding by taste, which is fine as long as everyone knows it.

How to tell if yours is fine

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Three things worth confirming about order confirmation emails before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Include everything needed to avoid a support ticket — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.