Ecommerce Website Development in Lucknow

COD as a dial, not a switch

Turning COD off loses most of your orders. Leaving it fully on invites refusals you pay for twice.

COD is controlled at three levels here. Per product — a heavily worked piece can be prepaid-only while everyday kurtas stay COD. Per order value — allow COD below a threshold, require prepayment above it. And store level, so you can switch it off during a festive rush when couriers are already struggling.

You can also set a COD handling charge from the admin panel. It shifts more buyers to prepaid than a discount does, and unlike a discount it costs you nothing.

The advance that filters out the order you never wanted

The worst order in this trade is placed on impulse at midnight, never confirmed, and refused at the door. You paid freight both ways on a piece that took an artisan days.

Partial COD collects a small advance online and leaves the balance for delivery. The advance is small enough that a genuine buyer does not blink and large enough that a casual one does not proceed.

RTO prevention flags risky orders before dispatch — thin addresses, unusually high value, numbers that have refused before — so you confirm those specifically instead of calling every customer.

Handwork needs to be shown, not described

Chikankari is bought on the quality of the thread work, and no description carries that.

Multi-image galleries and product video let you show the piece the way it would be shown across a counter — the work close up, the fall of the fabric, the piece on someone for scale.

Every product carries its own size chart, and return windows are set per product. A basics line can carry a generous window; a made-to-order piece can carry a tighter one, stated clearly before the buyer commits.

Selling from Instagram without losing the sale

Most traffic here arrives from a reel or a story. The buyer is warm, on a phone, and anything that adds a step loses them.

OTP login means no password to invent. UPI and Razorpay handle payment. WhatsApp alerts confirm the order on the channel the buyer actually reads — which also tells you within minutes whether the phone number is real, before you dispatch anything.

Abandoned cart recovery on the Pro plan catches the half-filled basket, which in this trade is usually someone who got interrupted rather than someone who changed their mind.

What it costs

Starter — ₹4,990 one-time. Complete store with variants, per-product size charts, COD control, Razorpay, GST invoicing and admin panel. Live in three to five days.

Pro — ₹9,990. Adds Partial COD, Shiprocket, abandoned cart recovery, Meta Pixel and reviews. If COD is most of your orders, this plan pays for itself quickly.

Elite — ₹19,990. Adds Meta CAPI, WhatsApp automation, advanced analytics and multi-store admin.

One-time. No monthly fee, no commission on what you sell.

Handwork takes time — say so on the page

A machine-made kurta ships tomorrow. A piece with real chikankari might take a week, and a customer who was not told that becomes a customer chasing you on day three.

Custom attributes let you carry a dispatch time per product, so a ready-stock item and a made-to-order piece do not make the same promise. Setting the expectation before the order costs nothing and removes most of the follow-up messages.

Stock management tracks quantity per variant, so ready pieces come off sale when they run out instead of taking an order you cannot fulfil this week. For made-to-order work you can keep the listing live and let the dispatch time do the explaining.

WhatsApp alerts then close the loop — a message when the piece is dispatched turns a nervous wait into a normal one.

Work out your refusal rate first

Before changing anything, take one month and divide your failed deliveries by your total COD orders.

Under fifteen percent is healthy. Fifteen to twenty-five is common and worth working on. Above a quarter, something specific is wrong — usually a few pincodes, or a checkout letting incomplete addresses through.

Most sellers have never calculated this number. If yours surprises you, you now know which of the tools above is worth turning on first — and that decision is worth more than any redesign.