Meeting customer expectations with ecommerce order tracking
Vaishali Ravi
·August 22, 2024
Modern logistics carriers offer unparalleled ability to track your packages’ real-time locations and other data insights. Supply chain visibility is important for your brand’s operational efficiency—but it’s just as important for your customers when it comes to order fulfillment.
Delivering a best-in-class customer experience requires transparency throughout the fulfillment process. By implementing order tracking, you can build confidence in your brand, reduce customer support requests, proactively address errors, and combat fraud.
In this article, we’ll cover what order tracking encompasses, why ecommerce order tracking is so important, and how to optimize your order tracking process from end-to-end to deliver a superior post-purchase experience.
What is ecommerce order tracking?
Ecommerce order tracking is a process that enables you to build visibility into the logistics of getting an order from Point A to Point B—whether that involves an initial purchase or a return.
While many brands default to sharing their shipping carriers’ order status links with customers, a best-in-class order tracking experience includes access to a branded order tracking page, with proactive messaging updates at each customer touchpoint.
By taking ownership of the order tracking experience, you can ensure that you’re meeting your customers’ expectations around shipping, and avoid the likelihood of a carrier issue damaging your customers’ perception of your brand.
Your ecommerce order tracking experience should include these key elements:
A branded order tracking page
Rather than sending customers off-site to your carriers’ links, you should link your shoppers to a branded order tracking page that integrates your logo and style, providing a cohesive experience for your customers. The page can also include curated product recommendations to drive upsells, and an FAQ listing common questions customers may have around their order status.
Your order tracking page shouldn’t feature vague delivery estimates that will confuse your customers (i.e., expected delivery within 5 to 7 business days). Instead, your order tracking solution should rely on real-time data to provide an accurate Delivery Promise of the exact date the order is due to arrive, with automatic updates based on new alerts from the shipping carrier.
Branded transactional email sequences
As soon as they’ve hit the “buy” button, shoppers should be looped into an email sequence that’s designed to give them confidence in your brand, with timely updates around their order status. You should include template options for deliveries that progress as planned, as well as those that go off course, using these “Core 6” email template models:
- Good news:
- Order Confirmed - “Thanks for your order”
- Shipment Created - “Order ready to be shipped”
- Shipment Picked Up - “Your order has shipped!”
- Out for Delivery - “Your order is out for delivery”
- Shipment Delivered - “Your order has arrived!”
- Proactive bad news:
- Shipment Stalled - “An update on your order”
Once the order has shipped, each email should include a link or embedded link to your branded order tracking page.
Branded SMS messaging sequences
For customers who’ve opted in to SMS messaging, SMS transactional updates are a crucial opportunity for driving engagement around an upcoming delivery, with open rates as high as 99%. By delivering both email and SMS messages, you can make sure your shoppers never miss an important notification related to their delivery. Your transactional message templates should include customized content for these five trigger events during the delivery journey, including links to your branded order tracking page:
- Good news:
- Shipment Created - “Order ready to be shipped”
- Shipment Picked Up - “Your order has shipped!”
- Out for Delivery - “Your order is out for delivery”
- Shipment Delivered - “Your order has arrived!”
- Proactive bad news:
- Shipment Stalled - “An update on your order”
Return tracking updates
In up to 30% of cases, a customer order ends up as a return—and if your brand’s return policies require inspection prior to issuing a refund or store credit, the customer will be just as concerned with the reverse logistics journey as they were with tracking their initial purchase.
When a customer requests a return, they should receive a link to a return order tracking page. They should be able to track each of these updates as they occur:
- Product scanned in for return
- Product shipped to warehouse, with estimated delivery date (updated in real-time based on carrier notifications)
- Product received at warehouse
- Product inspected at warehouse
- Success—refund or exchange credit granted!
Proactive bad news:
- Refund declined - explain why and what the next steps are. (This may happen if the item was not returned in as-new condition, for example—you may choose to either send the item back to the customer or deduct a certain amount from the refund.)
Looking for ways to get more out of your tracking strategy?
Check out our recent report focused on driving loyalty and revenue from transactional touchpoints.
Download the reportNow that you know what to include in your ecommerce order tracking experience, let’s focus on why it’s so crucial for both your customers and your operations team.
Why ecommerce order tracking matters
Ecommerce order tracking across every customer touchpoint can build confidence in your brand, reduce support requests, and drive enhanced operational efficiency at your organization.
Leading ecommerce brands like Amazon, Walmart, and Target have set the expectation of real-time order tracking at every stage, with “where’s my order?” pages that empower customers to track their packages’ progress in real-time, via carriers like USPS, UPS, DHL, and FedEx. These ecommerce giants and carrier partners have set the standard for order tracking—and no matter the size of your brand, it’s important that you deliver the same best-in-class experience.
With a best-in-class order tracking experience, you can:
Enhance the customer experience
Ease your customers’ minds as soon as they place an order by giving them accurate order tracking with real-time status updates, so they know exactly when to expect their orders.
From the moment of purchase to package delivery, they want full transparency around their order status. In fact, 96% of online shoppers say they track their delivery status at least once after placing an online order, with 43% tracking daily. And 29% of them said that order tracking is so important to them that they wouldn’t place an order at all if they weren’t able to track its delivery status.
Reduce your customer support ticket volume
Automated order tracking can also help you reduce CX inquiries related to order status. When customers have access to real-time data at their fingertips, they’ll never need to seek out help from your team in finding out where their package is. In fact, brands with proactive order tracking have seen a 40% reduction in customer support inquiries compared to brands that don’t offer tracking.
By making it simple for customers to check their package delivery status in a self-service portal, you’ll empower them to get the answers they need instantly. That frees up time for your CX team to focus on more complex cases that need hands-on support, while expediting resolution time.
Get ahead of shipping errors
With an integrated dashboard that gives both your brand and your customer access to shipping updates, you’ll be able to respond instantly when there’s a shipping delay or error.
You can set up customized campaigns based on the error type that will instantly send branded messages to your customers, informing them of the delay or error and your brand’s plan to resolve the issue. In cases of shipping delay, you can inform your customer of the new delivery date as soon as it’s available. If the package has been lost in the mail or misdelivered, you can instantly ship out a replacement product at no cost to your customer.
Combat INR fraud
Returns abuse is on the rise, and one of the most common forms is “Item Not Received” (INR) fraud. In INR fraud, a customer will make the false claim that they never received an item, and request a refund. In some cases, they may simply be experiencing buyer’s remorse over purchasing an item they can’t afford, but still wish to keep—but whatever their motivation, it’s impacting your bottom line if you let them get away with it.
With detailed order tracking and proof of delivery, you’ll be able to discourage your customers from making such claims. Your carrier can share geotagged photographic evidence that the package was delivered at the correct location, giving you solid evidence to fight against a potential chargeback. If you’re shipping a high-value item, you can even require signature confirmation, which will require that someone in the household has accepted the package, ensuring that you won’t fall victim to an INR scam.
Implementing end-to-end order tracking
As we’ve seen, automated order tracking is an essential technology for delivering a great customer experience throughout the course of an ecommerce sale, including the post-purchase journey.
With Loop’s new Order Tracking solution, we now offer an end-to-end order tracking experience—starting from the second a shopper places an order, all the way through to the post-purchase returns process.
Self-service order tracking
Our unified platform enables you to give shoppers access to a branded order tracking portal where they can see the real-time status of their shipment, whether it’s on its way to their door or back to your warehouse.
Personalized recommendations
Loop’s order tracking pages also include personalized product recommendations for upsells, which see an average 1-2% lift in conversion rates—helping you drive increased revenue throughout the entire buyer’s journey.
Triggered email and SMS sequences
Craft customized email and SMS messaging templates that activate automatically at trigger events, keeping your customers informed and reducing your CX team’s support ticket volume by 40%.
Returns data insights
Track post-purchase metrics such as return reasons, average time to return, and return rate, giving you the data you need to optimize your returns process.
Build better visibility into your logistics process, and set up seamless automations that will keep your shoppers updated at every turn. With the right order tracking technology in place, you’ll be able to drive high engagement rates throughout the order and returns process, leading to higher customer satisfaction rates, increased upsell rates, and more repeat purchases.
Discover the benefits of end-to-end order tracking and management. Book a demo.
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