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The order, from cart to delivery
By the end, you'll know how to set up an order flow with its options, a minimum purchase, and the right messages to the customer, so no one gets stuck halfway between paying and you delivering.
An order is never just "the customer buys." It's a form with sizes or flavors that someone fills out wrong and confuses the buyer, a cart that fills up with two dollars and doesn't even cover delivery, a payment that comes in without you knowing whether to accept it because you're not sure you have the stock, a customer who writes "is my order ready yet?" because no one told them, and at the end of the day, an order nobody remembers whether it was delivered.
This course follows the order things usually trip you up: first you decide whether a purchase option deserves its own product or can just be confirmed with the customer, then you set the minimum order that makes it worth your time and where you tell the customer about it, then you choose whether to accept payment right away or hold off before promising anything, what the customer sees when they order and pay versus what you write to them by hand, how you sort the prep queue by delivery time, and who marks each order as delivered.
This is for anyone who already takes orders with more than one purchase option and wants every order to reach its end without last-minute calls. It's not for someone who sells a single item with no variants or delivery.
- Decide whether a purchase option (size, color, flavor) needs its own product listing or can be confirmed with the customer when the order comes in
- Set your 'Minimum order' based on what it costs you to fulfill, and let the customer know before they get to the cart
- Choosing when you accept the order: at payment, or after a short verification window
- Ordering the prep queue by delivery time and closing each order once someone marks it delivered
It helps to already have your product catalog loaded, even if you haven't decided yet how to split out sizes, colors, or flavors.
The 6 lessons
In the order it makes the most sense to read them.
- 1
When a size or a color deserves its own product listing
You can tell whether a purchase option belongs on the same product page or deserves its own product, whether or not your store uses variants, before you build your whole catalog the wrong way.
5 min - 2
The order won't start below this number
By the end, you'll know how to set your minimum order based on the real cost of fulfilling it, and why the customer needs to see that minimum in the cart from the first item, not at checkout.
6 min - 3
Paying isn't the same as accepting: the minute you hold before promising anything
You decide whether to accept the order the instant it's paid, or hold a short window to confirm you can actually fulfill it before promising anything.
7 min - 4
What the customer gets when they order and pay, and what you write yourself
By the end, you'll know which order notifications you can send over WhatsApp with a single template for everyone, and which ones need a message you write yourself for that customer.
8 min - 5
Sort the queue by delivery time, not by payment time
By the end, you'll know how to sort orders that come in at the same time by delivery time and by what's running low, and to send the "order in progress" alert when you actually start it, not when it was paid for.
7 min - 6
An order isn't delivered until someone says so
By the end, you'll have decided who marks each order as delivered and within what deadline, so none of them stay open forever waiting on a confirmation that's never going to come.
7 min