A practical checklist for order confirmation emails

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Run through this the next time order confirmation emails comes up.

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

The checklist

• It is the most-opened email you will ever send
• Include everything needed to avoid a support ticket
• A tracking link reduces "where is my order" enquiries
• Someone is named as the owner
• There is a date to review it again

Why it matters

It is the most-opened email you will ever send. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

How to tell if yours is fine

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. Three things worth confirming about order confirmation emails before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A tracking link reduces "where is my order" enquiries — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Worth checking on your own setup before it becomes someone else's problem to fix.