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POST-001After the order

Order status accessible by order id and email

Checks whether a shopper, or an agent acting for them, can look up an order's status with only the order number and the checkout email, without logging in.

What we check

We look for an order lookup form with an order-number field and an email field, and no password. A form asking for the order number plus a postcode or billing surname is recognised too, but graded lower. A page titled "Track your order" with no form does not count.

Why it matters

"Where is my order?" is the most common question after a purchase. An agent helping the shopper usually holds the order confirmation (an order number and an email) but not their password. If order status only exists inside a customer account, the agent cannot answer and the shopper comes back to your support team.

How we check

We follow links on crawled pages that name order tracking in several languages ("Track your order", "Order status", "Sendungsverfolgung" and others), then try common paths such as /orders/lookup and /pages/track-your-order, with at most 4 extra requests.

PASS: a form with an order-number field and an email field. WARN: a lookup that asks for the order number plus a postcode or surname instead of the email; a login form where the lookup should be; or order history only behind account links such as "My orders". FAIL: none of these found. SKIPPED when the linked tracking page needs JavaScript to show anything, when tracking lives on a host we do not fetch (such as Narvar or AfterShip), when bot management answered instead of your shop, or when the crawl was too thin to judge.

How to fix it

  1. Publish an order lookup page that accepts the order number plus the email used at checkout, with no account or password required.
  2. On WooCommerce: the built-in [woocommerce_order_tracking] shortcode renders a form asking for the order ID and billing email; put it on a page and link to it.
  3. Link it from your footer and order confirmation emails as "Order status" or "Track your order".
  4. Serve the form in the page HTML, and show the order state, carrier and tracking link as text.

What good looks like

<a href="/pages/track-your-order">Track your order</a>

<form action="/orders/lookup" method="post">
  <label for="order_number">Order number</label>
  <input id="order_number" name="order_number" type="text">
  <label for="email">Email used at checkout</label>
  <input id="email" name="email" type="email">
  <button type="submit">Check order status</button>
</form>

Sources