When order confirmation emails is worth the effort

We end up explaining this on discovery calls often enough that it deserved writing down. Order confirmation emails is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

When it is worth it

It is the most-opened email you will ever send. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

How to decide

A tracking link reduces "where is my order" enquiries. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

How to tell if yours is fine

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. 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

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.