Order confirmation emails for small teams

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Most advice about order confirmation emails assumes a team that does not exist at your size. Here is the version that does not.

In e-commerce every friction point has a price attached, and the arithmetic is unusually easy to check. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

What to keep

It is the most-opened email you will ever send. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

What to drop

Process that exists to coordinate ten people is overhead when there are two of you. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions.

How to approach it

A tracking link reduces "where is my order" enquiries. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

What this looks like day to day

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
• 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

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.