While 90% of consumers want to track their orders for peace of mind and a sense of control, the reality falls short, as one in three online shoppers couldn’t track their most recent delivery.
E-commerce order tracking isn't just a basic delivery status update any longer — it’s a strategic customer experience touchpoint, from product discovery and checkout all the way to the doorstep.
What’s the secret sauce in great order tracking? Here's how ambitious e-commerce brands turn tracking experience and delivery into a revenue-driving competitive advantage.
What is order tracking in e-commerce?
E-commerce order tracking lets businesses and customers monitor orders from purchase to delivery, offering real-time updates on status, delivery dates, and delays. For customers, the tracking experience typically begins once the parcel is shipped. But in the next era of retail, that’s not enough — customers expect a single tracking link and full transparency from the moment they place an order.
What makes tracking information such a pain point?
Online shoppers often wait days or weeks to experience their purchase, left uncertain about the product, delivery timing, or carrier. Worse, they have to repeatedly check tracking updates to stay informed. Retailers, on the other hand, are left with a WISMO headache and rising delivery costs that decimate the e-commerce industry's margins.
WISMO costs your business
From the perspective of your online brand's operations, optimized order tracking addresses the frequent 'Where’s my order?' (WISMO) question, which makes up around 70% of post-purchase inquiries and gives your customer support team quite a headache.
Customers are overwhelmed
For shoppers, it’s a fix for the endless flood of emails and texts they don’t want. They just need to know when and how their parcel will arrive. No digging through notifications, entering order numbers, generating PINs, or endlessly refreshing delivery pages.
"Do you really need to know your parcel left the depot at 3 AM?"
Luke Hodgson, Commerce Thinking
Standard carrier tracking won't cut it
Frustration like this drives customers away. By redirecting your customers to delivery carrier websites, you're loosing a strategic business opportunity to foster trust and brand loyalty among your target audience.
Benefits of order tracking optimization
Make data-driven business decisions
When your online store owns order tracking information, you get deep, granular insights into days to fulfillment, shipping times, delivery success rates, on-time delivery rates, and customer preferences. It's powerful tool for any e-commerce business when optimizing operations, addressing issues in real time, anticipating future customer needs, and tailoring delivery services amid ever-evolving consumer demands.
Enhance customer satisfaction
These days, meeting customer expectations means offering more than just fast delivery. Once your customers make a purchase, they treat the product as theirs, and any delay can cause frustration. Giving customers accurate delivery estimates and detailed, harmonized tracking updates helps create a comfortable delivery experience, reduces delivery anxiety, and builds customer loyalty.
“Deliveries are very contextual, how the consumers want their stuff varies a lot depending on what they’re buying and when. From our experience, not everyone is looking for speed or a standard home delivery.”
Anders Ekman, Co-Founder and COO at Ingrid
Boost customer retention and lifetime value
It’s no surprise that customers who aren’t satisfied with the delivery experience are less likely to buy agai. In fact, 85% of online shoppers say they’d avoid a retailer after a poor delivery experience. That’s precisely why order tracking and delivery shouldn’t be treated solely as the last steps in the buyer’s journey—when done right, the after-sales experience can easily encourage repeat customers.
Reduce your WISMO request overload
Ask any e-commerce customer service team what question they dread the most, and WISMO tickets will likely top the list. Delivery anxiety drives shoppers to contact support again and again. It’s a real drain on your team’s energy and your company's operational costs.
By leveraging technology for proactive, detailed order fulfillment and delivery status updates, you can give customers the sense of ownership and clarity. The more predictable and transparent the post-purchase experience, the fewer support inquiries you’ll receive.
IDEAL OF SWEDEN, a lifestyle brand for mobile accessories and bags, slashed delivery-related support tickets from 37% to just 4%. By introducing a new tracking solution ahead of Black Week, they eased the burden on their support team and achieved a big win for customer satisfaction.
Avoid failed deliveries and high shipping costs
Life's complicated enough, online shopping shouldn't be. Online deliveries should fit people's lives, not the other way around. Not to mention that failed deliveries not only cost companies billions of euros annually but also damage brand reputations with bad reviews. In the UK and Germany, the average cost of a failed delivery is approximately €14, with failure rates hovering around 6–7% of total order volume.
Real-time delivery updates, including an accurate delivery promise times and status updates, help customers avoid missed deliveries. Tracking lets them plan ahead or make alternate arrangements, like leaving packages with a neighbor or redirecting them to an out-of-home (OOH) delivery location like a service point or a parcel locker.
Amplify your brand experience
Sure, shoppers want to be in the loop of the delivery process at every stage of the order journey, but in today's world, people are likely to make multiple online orders at once, especially during peak sales seasons. That's where fragmented tracking communication spoils both the customer experience and your brand's voice.
Relevant delivery notifications help retail brands reclaim their end-to-end customer communication and keep customers engaged throughout the post-purchase journey instead of relying on generic status messages from carriers. Branded tracking emails, texts and push notifications, as well as branded tracking portal, drive returning traffic, repeat purchases, and customer lifetime value (CLV).
Top 10 order tracking optimization practices, tried and tested
1. Optimize your order confirmation email
Thanks for the money, buy now. It turns out that many online retailers miss out on order confirmation or just massively underuse the opportunity it provides. At best, there is a note saying 'thanks for your order', maybe some frequently asked questions, and a few social sharing buttons allowing customers to brag about their purchase to social media followers.
Instead, make sure your order confirmation page and emails include payment confirmation, a summary of the ordered items, the customer's address details and estimated delivery time, a feedback button, relevant product recommendations encouraging customers to come back, an account creation possibility, support contact information, and of course, tracking information.
2. Reclaim your order tracking information
Don’t redirect your customers to carrier’s websites, keep them close and loyal while also helping their delivery anxiety and notification overwhelm. Use branded tracking to unify your 'thank you, we got your order' email, for instance, with a carrier shipment notification into a single update using modern post-purchase experience solutions.
3. Streamline all tracking events
In terms of business growth, international expansion and scalability, you should be able to gather all your tracking events from different data sources in a single dashboard push the information to the right channels at the right time. Think checkout and order creation, shipment and/or return creation through the transport management system (TMS), warehouse management system (WMS) or 3PL order events, and shipping carrier tracking events.
In this way, your e-commerce, logistics and customer support teams can move on from the stress of complex shipping, rising costs, and poor customer satisfaction. Complicated, to say the least — unless you're using a holistic delivery and returns solution like Ingrid Delivery Experience Platform.
4. Leverage your tech stack
Now that you've theoretically switched to a modern tracking experience and operations solution, you have got an opportunity to harmonize your e-commerce technology stack and get an exponentially rising functionality benefits out of your entire ecosystem, where 1 + 1 equals 3.
For instance, you can generate events from both warehouses and your shipping carriers via the same link. Then, you can maximize your existing digital stack by displaying tracking information from any internal or external customer relationship system you use, such as Zendesk, Voyado, Emarsys, Klaviyo, etc.
5. Create a personalized CX feel
Begin with an attention-grabbing subject line and header for your delivery tracking notifications to create a stronger connection with your customers. Avoid industry terms that mean very little for the end customer. Use customer data, such as email addresses and cookies in case of a guest checkout, to address them by name. Get your copywriters to work, because 'do a little dance, it's official' sounds happier than 'your order confirmation'.
Next, depending on your markets and shipping regions, make sure your tracking updates support as many languages as possible. You can also tailor the design, tone and content of your tracking notifications branding to align with your brand to provide your customers with a consistent and personalized experience even after sales.
6. Build a proactive tracking experience
Don't leave your customers hanging until they check their overflowing email box and carrier's tracking links themselves. Instead, send them consolidated, proactive tracking emails, texts and/or push notifications, triggered by the order status changes, to keep each shopper informed about the delivery process in real time.
Ideally, you should also be able to provide a branded tracking experience using the order number immediately after checkout, instead of making customers wait for the carrier’s shipment notification and confusing tracking details.
7. Add transparency to the shipping process
Cover all stages of the post-purchase customer journey and delivery process — from the moment the order's placed, not when it's shipped. Imagine the quick, in-app tracking notifications you get when you order a takeout. you place an order, it’s confirmed, prepared, and ready for delivery.
Finally, you see the courier’s real-time location and get a final, notification when the order's delivered and waiting for your review. E-commerce tracking should work the same way — maximum transparency, minimal hassle. There's quite a lot in terms of customer expectations that your online store can learn from quick commerce.
8. Enable multi-parcel tracking for split delivery
When your customers order multiple products in a single order, chances are you will split the order into multiple shipments to speed up the delivery times and reduce shipping costs. To improve your order tracking experience and reduce the notification overwhelm, multi-parcel orders shipped with the same or different carriers should all be tracked under one link.
9. Use creative chatbot automations
Boost your tracking communication efficiency with a chatbot implementation. Chatbots use AI and natural language processing (NLP) to provide natural, conversational responses. For order tracking, they offer instant 24/7 updates, reduce your support team’s workload, and keep customers informed throughout the shipping process.
Women's fashion brand Cellbes manages 77% of delivery-related chats in Sweden with a 74% customer engagement rate and 95.6% accuracy, thanks to an integration between Kindly, the AI-powered chatbots built for support automation, and Ingrid Tracking.
10. Don't forget about returns tracking
Returns are a frequent and frustrating process for the customer. Instead of customers being left out of the loop when returning a parcel and awaiting refund, enable automatic returns tracking notifications and display the parcel's shipping process on its way back to the warehouse or distribution center.
In terms of your retail operations, Returns tracking keeps you informed about which products are coming back and helps minimize the high costs of restocking. Streamline the process for your e-commerce store by integrating a returns software solution that automates tracking and management.
Reduce support issues, boost the overall customer experience, and simplify the fulfillment operations of your e-commerce business by investing in a powerful tool like Ingrid Tracking.
Book a 30-minute demo or send us your questions via a contact form, and our dedicated team members will get back to you promptly.
