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Summary: Good parcel tracking tells customers what has happened, what to expect next and where to get help. Match messages to real shipment events, make tracking easy to find on mobile and explain delays or split deliveries clearly. Test the whole journey across your carriers before rolling it out more widely.
Your customer has checked out, received an order confirmation and started looking forward to their delivery. When they open the tracking link, they want a straightforward answer: is everything progressing as expected?
A tracking number is the starting point. The wording around it, the page it opens and the help available when something goes wrong all shape the experience.
For retailers, the challenge is consistency. Orders can leave different locations, travel with different carriers or arrive in more than one parcel. The following practices help you give customers a clear experience across those variations.
Useful tracking answers three questions: what has happened to my order, what happens next, and what should I do if something is wrong?
Carrier events provide the underlying shipment information. Your messages and tracking page make it understandable. Avoid describing tracking as continuous live location data unless the selected service actually provides that capability. A scan-based update is a record of an event, not a guarantee of where the parcel is at every moment.
Separate the time your team needs to prepare an order from the carrier’s delivery estimate. Explain relevant dispatch cut-offs, working days and preorder arrangements where the customer makes the purchase.
In the order confirmation, tell customers when tracking information will become available. If you sell made-to-order items, do not use the same dispatch expectation as a ready-to-ship product.
Keep the wording consistent from checkout through the delivery messages. Tracking cannot repair a promise that was unrealistic before the order was placed.
Use wording your customer can understand without knowing your warehouse process. A label-created event might mean “We’re preparing your order”; a confirmed carrier collection can support a different message.
Do not send “your parcel is on its way” solely because a label has printed. Similarly, an estimated arrival date should not become a guaranteed delivery date in your email template.
Automated notifications help make routine updates consistent, but the events available and their timing depend on your shipping setup and carrier data. Check the statuses for the services you actually use.
Use a clear label such as “Track your parcel” in the dispatch message. Keep it separate from promotional links and confirm it opens the correct shipment.
On the destination page, put the latest available status and support route ahead of marketing content. Make text readable on a phone and links easy to select. A customer should not need to search through a promotion to learn whether their parcel is due today.
Our branded tracking explainer covers what to include on a retailer-branded page and how it differs from a notification.
Choose messages around useful moments, rather than sending every available event through every channel. Consider whether the update changes what the customer needs to know or do.
Email can hold the order reference, delivery context and a clear tracking link. SMS can be useful for a short, timely update where your setup supports it. Check the relevant messaging requirements, customer preferences and charges before adding SMS.
List the messages sent by your eCommerce platform, carrier and shipping software. Assign responsibility for each stage, then test before disabling an existing message. This helps prevent both duplicates and gaps.
If an order travels in more than one parcel, customers need to understand what has arrived and what is still coming. A delivered status for one package should not suggest the entire order is complete.
Where possible, show the separate tracking references and identify the parcels clearly. Check what your connected systems actually display; do not promise item-level detail that is not available.
Starshipit supports options for combining multiple packages’ tracking details in one notification. When you configure email notifications, review the multi-package settings and test the resulting template with a representative order.
A status such as “in transit” may stop being helpful when a parcel has passed its expected delivery window. Explain what your team will check, how the customer can reach you and when they should expect another update.
For failed delivery attempts, use the actual carrier instructions available for that parcel. For a missing scan, avoid inventing a cause: no update does not by itself prove a parcel is lost.
Keep promotions secondary while a customer is trying to resolve a problem. Your immediate job is to help them understand the delivery and the available next step.
For example, imagine a customer who ordered a lamp and two cushions. The cushions arrive first, while the lamp is travelling separately. A generic “your order has been delivered” message creates an unnecessary problem. A message that identifies the delivered parcel and provides the remaining tracking reference gives the customer a more useful answer.
This is an illustrative scenario. Build the wording around the parcel and item information your systems actually provide, then check how the full sequence reads.
Test more than the appearance of an email. Follow the journey from the triggering event to the tracking page, including the help link.
Use test data where possible and avoid exposing customer addresses or tracking links in screenshots. Repeat the checks after changing a template, carrier integration or notification setting.
Look at enquiry reasons alongside order volume. If customers repeatedly ask about partial deliveries, a clearer split-shipment message may help more than adding another general update.
Review broken tracking links, missing delivery events, repeat contacts and time to resolution. Where reliable reporting is available, compare by carrier, service and destination to find patterns worth investigating.
Our guide to reducing WISMO enquiries explains a consistent way to measure order-related contacts. Avoid treating email opens alone as proof that the tracking experience works.
Before you launch or change your tracking experience, check that:
Dispatch expectations match the offer at checkout.
Each notification describes the event that triggers it.
Tracking links open the correct shipment on mobile.
Customers can understand orders with more than one parcel.
Delay messages show a practical next step and a route to help.
Your team knows who handles exceptions and follows up.
There is no single interval that applies to every shipment. Updates depend on the carrier, service and events recorded during the journey. Set customer expectations around the available information, and give them a clear next step if the parcel passes its expected delivery window.
They should agree on the shipment’s status, but they do not need identical copy. Use email for more context and SMS for a concise, timely message where appropriate. Keep the tracking destination and support instructions consistent across both channels.
Check that the shipment reference and link in the notification match the correct order. Test the destination, correct the template or integration issue, and give affected customers a working way to check their delivery. Include link checks when you change notification settings.
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