Setting expectations before the sale

"It's smaller than I thought." "I assumed it would be here by Friday." "I didn't realise delivery was extra." Three sentences, three refunds you didn't need to give, and not one of them is about the quality of what you make.

Write down six facts before anyone pays: exactly what they're getting, the total including delivery, the date it lands, how they pay, what happens if it goes wrong, and who you are. Put them where a buyer reads them before the money moves, not after. A ₹1,450 block-printed kurta with "chest 42 inches, arrives in 5 to 7 days, ₹90 delivery, exchange within 7 days if the size is wrong" attached to it produces almost no messages. The same kurta with three photos and a price produces four.

Expectation gaps are the cheapest problem in your whole business to fix, because the fix is sentences.

The six facts

Every one of these is something a buyer will otherwise fill in with a guess, and their guess will be more optimistic than your reality.

1. What it physically is. Dimensions, weight, capacity, what it's made of, how many are in the pack. Not "generous size". A number.
2. What it costs, delivered, to them. The item price plus delivery, and whether tax is included. A price that grows at checkout is the single most common reason a buyer stops mid-order.
3. When it arrives. Two numbers and a start point: "posted within 2 working days, arrives 3 to 5 days after that".
4. How they pay, and what happens next. Which rails you take, and how long you take to confirm a transfer.
5. What happens if something's wrong. One line. It doesn't have to be generous, it has to exist.
6. Who you are. A name, a city, and a way to reach you that isn't a form.

That's it. Six facts, roughly 60 words when written properly, and they'll remove most of the messages you're currently answering by hand.

State the version you can hit on a bad week

Every promise you make is going to be tested on the worst day of your month, not the best one.

So the rule is simple. Whatever the number is, publish the version you can hit when the printer jams, the fabric arrives late and your rider has flu. If you can post in one day when everything goes right and three days when it doesn't, publish three.

This feels like it costs you sales. It costs you almost none, and here's the reason. A buyer choosing between "ships tomorrow" and "ships in 3 days" is not usually choosing on that at all. They're choosing on whether they believe you, and a specific number that turns out to be true builds more belief than an optimistic one that doesn't.

Under-promise is bad advice if it means being vague. The useful version is: publish a specific number you can hit on a bad week.

Then beat it. Posting on day one against a stated three days is a small, free piece of delight that costs you nothing and buys a message you didn't have to write.

Photographs and descriptions are promises too

A photo sets an expectation whether you meant it to or not. The three that cause the most trouble:

Scale. A ring photographed on a white background could be any size. Put something in the frame with a known size, or state the dimension in the first line of the description. The number of returns caused by "it's tiny" is enormous and it is entirely preventable.

Colour. Screens lie, especially with anything red, teal or fluorescent. Photograph in daylight, then write the honest sentence: "The green is closer to olive than the photo suggests on some phones."

Perfection. If you make things by hand, every piece differs, and the buyer is comparing what arrived to the exact photo they saw. Say so before they buy: "Each one is block-printed by hand, so the print lines vary slightly between pieces. That's the point of it, but if you want two that match exactly, message me first."

That last sentence turns a complaint into a feature, and it only works before the sale. Said afterwards, it's an excuse.

The mechanics of making the photo honest as well as good, which is a different job from making it flattering, are in how to photograph what you sell.

Dates: two numbers, one start point, one cut-off

The single most argued-about expectation is the delivery date, and it's argued about because sellers write it in a way that means nothing.

"Fast delivery" means nothing. "3 to 5 days" means nothing either, because the buyer starts counting from the moment they pay and you start counting from the moment you post.

Write it in two halves:

I post within 2 working days of your payment landing. Delivery is normally 3 to 5 working days after that, so most orders arrive within a week.

Then add the cut-off, which is the thing that saves you in December:

Orders placed after 2pm on Friday go out on Monday.

Two sentences and a cut-off. Now the buyer's mental arithmetic matches yours, and the "where is it?" message on day three doesn't happen at all.

If a date genuinely matters, a birthday or a wedding, ask for it, and be honest about whether you can hit it. A buyer who tells you the 14th and gets it on the 16th will be more upset than one who was told on day one that the 14th was tight.

The total, not the item price

Show the delivered total before the buyer commits. This is not about honesty as an abstract virtue, it's about the specific moment where a ₹1,450 item becomes ₹1,540 and the buyer, who had decided on 1,450, has to make the decision again.

Three shapes work:

Shape	What to say	Best for
Flat delivery	"₹90 delivery anywhere in India"	Similar-sized items, predictable weights
Free over a threshold	"Free delivery over ₹2,000, otherwise ₹90"	Nudging basket size, if the margin allows
Built into the price	"Price includes delivery"	Small, light, high-margin items

Whichever you pick, state it on the product itself, not on a separate page nobody reads. Working out what the number should be is a separate piece of arithmetic, and how to work out delivery charges does it properly.

One line about what happens if it goes wrong

You need a sentence in front of the buyer before they pay. Not a policy page. A sentence.

If it arrives damaged or it's not what you ordered, message me within 48 hours with a photo and I'll replace it or refund you, my cost.

That's the whole thing. It answers the question every first-time buyer is silently asking, which is not "will this be perfect" but "what happens to me if it isn't".

If you sell sizes, add the second half:

Wrong size? Send it back unworn within 7 days and I'll exchange it. Return postage is yours.

Notice the difference between the two lines. One is your fault and you pay. One is a change of mind and they pay. Separating those two cases in advance prevents most refund arguments before they start.

The expectations you set by accident

The written ones are the easy half. The accidental ones cause just as much trouble.

Reply speed. Answer in two minutes on a Tuesday and you've told that customer what normal is. A stated window is more sustainable than a fast reply, and the full argument is in answering messages when you are asleep.

The favour you did once. You squeezed in a rush order for someone in March. In June they'll ask again, and they'll be surprised, because you taught them that rush orders are possible. Do the favour, and say what it was: "I can do it this once because I've got a gap on Thursday, but normally I'd need five days."

Changes after payment. The first time you let someone change a colour after they've paid, you've established that orders are editable. Set the boundary in the confirmation: "Anything to change, tell me before Wednesday, after that it's already made."

Haggling. If you drop the price when someone pushes, you've published a second price list. Everyone in that comment thread saw it.

Custom work needs a proof step

For anything made to order, the expectation is not a sentence, it's an artefact. Send a mock-up, a photo of the fabric, a spelling of the name, a sketch. Get a written yes before you cut anything.

Before I start: name spelled "Aarav", navy thread, on the left chest, delivered by the 20th. Reply "yes" and I'll begin this afternoon.

Boring, awkward, takes four minutes. It's also the only thing that stops the conversation where a customer swears they said Aarav and you have a screenshot that says Arav. Every seller who does custom work learns this the expensive way exactly once.

Where the six facts have to live

Same words in four places, because people read in different orders.

• On the product itself. Size, price, delivery time, materials. This is where the decision happens.
• In the order confirmation. Repeat the date and the total, because this is the message they'll search for on day four. How to write an order confirmation covers the six jobs that message has to do.
• In your bio or shop header. Who you are, where you are, when you reply.
• In the box. A slip that repeats what to do if something's wrong, so the person holding a damaged item doesn't have to go looking for you.

If the four versions disagree, the buyer believes whichever one is best for them, and they're right to.

Worked example: Sneha, block-printed clothing, Pune

Sneha sells hand block-printed kurtas and dupattas from Pune. A kurta is ₹1,450, a dupatta ₹650, delivery ₹90 flat within India. She does around 45 orders a month, most through Instagram DMs, paid by UPI, with a handful of cash on delivery orders going to smaller towns.

Her problem wasn't sales. It was that roughly one order in six turned into a back-and-forth, and about one in fifteen turned into a return.

She kept a note of the reason for every complaint for two months. 19 complaints. 11 were size, 5 were colour, 2 were delivery timing, and 1 was a genuine fault. Not a single one was about the printing, which is the part she'd spent nine years learning.

What she changed took an afternoon:

1. Actual measurements on every listing, in inches, chest and length, measured flat. Not S/M/L.
2. A daylight photo of each colour on a plain white sheet, plus a line: "The indigo reads brighter on some phone screens. It's a deep blue in person."
3. A stated dispatch line: "Posted within 2 working days. Usually with you in under a week."
4. One sentence on variation: "Hand-printed, so no two are identical."
5. A returns line: "Wrong size? Exchange within 7 days, you pay the return post."

Size complaints dropped by about two thirds in the following two months. Her returns went from roughly three a month to one. At ₹1,450 a kurta plus ₹90 out and a return leg she was often absorbing, each avoided return was worth more than ₹1,600 to her.

The one that surprised her: adding the returns line increased her orders slightly. She'd assumed telling people how to send something back would make them think about sending things back. What it actually did was tell people it was safe to try.

For the cash on delivery orders she added one extra step, a WhatsApp message the day before dispatch confirming the address and the total, because a COD parcel refused at the door costs her both legs of postage and comes back as stock she has to check over.

What Sailo does here, and what it doesn't

Sailo is where the six facts can live in one place: the item, the options, the price, and whatever you write in the description, on a page at sailo.store/yourname that a buyer sees before they order. A WhatsApp order then arrives pre-written with the item, the options, the address and the total, which matters here more than it sounds, because an order assembled from six chat messages is an order where somebody's assumption goes unrecorded.

Two honest limits. Sailo displays what you type and cannot check it. If you write "delivered in 2 days", nothing in the product will stop you, warn you, or tell the buyer when you miss it. And the free plan caps at 10 products, which bites specifically on expectation-setting, because the cleanest way to remove size confusion is often to list each size separately with its own measurements, and that eats your 20 fast. If you're at that point, either use options within one product or move up a plan, but decide it deliberately rather than by running out of slots on a Thursday night.

The wider question, what makes a stranger comfortable enough to pay you at all, is in building trust before money moves.

Write your six sentences this afternoon

Take your best-selling product. Write the six facts about it as six short sentences: dimensions, delivered total, dispatch and arrival window, payment, what happens if it's wrong, who you are.

Then read them as if you'd never seen the product. Anywhere you'd have to guess, that's a message you'll be answering at 10pm.

Paste them onto that product, and then do the next one. Ten products is an evening's work, and it's the cheapest hour you'll ever spend on customer service.