Making your first Shopify sale is really exciting. But once that order’s in, how do you make sure the customer can track their order? Even just figuring out how to send a tracking number to a customer can be difficult.
Shopify does offer an automatic tracking page, however, this feature currently only supports the following carriers: USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL Express, and Canada Post.
If you use a carrier that is not supported through the Order Status feature, the page will display the tracking number appropriate for the order that redirects the customer to the carrier’s website and will not display the order status or the map.
Realistically, this system won’t work for those who prefer a more customized order status page or a different carrier. Therefore, it is important to look into other alternatives such as Shopify apps that allow merchants to track their orders. You can click here for a list of the most popular order tracking apps!
Although we may be a bit biased because we made it, we definitely recommend using our order tracking app, Tracktor, which currently supports over 800+ carriers. Tracktor has been proven to reduce customer service tickets by 30%. Tracktor also directly increases return sales by displaying recommended products on the tracking page.
For simplicity, I’ll be assuming you’re utilizing Tracktor for the rest of the piece. (Install it here.)
Given that, a better post-purchase experience means that you’ll use a two-step branded tracking page. The first page, which will be readily available on your site, will look like so:
Once the customer has entered their order number and name, this is the information-rich page they will be met with:
Unlike the built-in tracking page, Tracktor’s page enables you to provide custom updates. Custom updates are great for those merchants who hand-make products and want to give customers visibility into where in the creation process their order currently is during the weeks between order confirmation and shipping. In the screenshot above, Designing and Manufacturing are custom order statuses.
Now that we’ve established what the post-purchase experience looks like, let’s jump into the steps for how to make enable your customers to track their Shopify orders.
Steps to Enable Tracking
1. Go to the order within the Orders section from your store’s admin.
2. Click on Mark as fulfilled to fulfill your order.
3. You will see a Fulfillment page to fulfill your order and will see an empty box for the tracking number. Here, enter the tracking number. Shopify will try its best to recognize the carrier that you are using automatically. However, the system may incorrectly choose the carrier for you so you will need to choose the correct carrier under the Shipping Carrier drop-down menu.
4. If the carrier that you are using is not supported by Shopify, you will need to select Other under the Shipping Carrier drop-down menu. Once you select Other, you should see Tracking URL pop up underneath. This is for you to add the link for your customers to track their orders from. For Tracktor users, you’ll have to make sure our carrier mapping feature is enabled so that Tracktor can automatically display the tracking information of any non-Shopify supported carriers.
5. Lastly, click on Fulfill items!
When you fulfill the order, the customer will receive a shipping confirmation email from Shopify. In that email, customers will receive a tracking link that redirects them to the tracking page. Once on the tracking page, Tracktor will auto-populate their tracking information.
Bonus: How to Add Custom Shipping Statuses
If your products take a long time to arrive or to create, Tracktor has a unique feature that can help create a better post-purchase experience than the standard ghosting feeling of not knowing when the product will arrive: custom status updates.
1. If you would like to hide the carrier’s name and logo on your tracking page, you can disable the setting within the Feature Configuration Options section of the Tracking Page tab. Additionally, you can change the location that is seen on the map to the destination address instead of the current package location. For instance, customers will see a map displaying their home address instead of a location in China.
2. Most of the time, the tracking information for your order will reveal where your order is coming from, also known as the origin country of the package. To hide this specific information, Tracktor has a feature called Blacklist Routing, under the Tracking Page tab. As an example, entering China into the Locations textbox will tell Tracktor that any tracking information mentioning a location in China to be replaced with the Replacement Message entered into the Replacement Message textbox.
The version on the left of the same screenshot displays tracking information that would come through before making any adjustments to the shipping or carrier details. The version on the right displays after adding “China” to the blacklist feature and hiding the carrier details. As you can see, the replacement message displays instead of the actual tracking information as well.
Get Fulfilling
There’s nothing more exciting than receiving an order. Now you’re ready to get them all shipped out. And if you still don’t feel like doing all the work yourself, feel free to request Tracktor’s free Expert Install Service. One of our awesome team members will get Tracktor up and running on your store in no time.
