The short version: This is not one message, it is four, and most vendors send one and then wonder why half their customers never noticed. You need a heads-up before the date, an announcement on the date, a reminder a week later, and then an individual reply to every person who still uses the old way. The content matters less than the sequence, with one exception: lead with what it does for them. Nobody cares that your admin got easier. They care about not missing out, seeing what is left, and knowing when to order by. And do not apologise, because you have not done anything to them.
Because attention is not distributed the way you imagine.
A single post reaches a fraction of your followers, at a moment they may be driving, cooking, or asleep. Of the people who see it, some read it properly, fewer register the date, and fewer still remember it a week later when they actually want to order.
The four-message shape solves that:
Message four is the one that actually completes the switch, and it is the one people leave out because it feels awkward. It is not awkward. It is a friendly reply with a link.
Four things, in this order, and it should be short.
The benefit, first. Not "I've moved to a new system" but "you can see exactly what's left and grab it in one go." Whatever the honest advantage is to them: availability, speed, confirmation, no more wondering whether you saw their message.
The date. Stated plainly, with the day of the week. "From Saturday the 15th" beats "from next week" because next week is ambiguous to anyone reading it on a Sunday.
The instruction. The one thing they need to remember, which is usually the cutoff. "Order by Thursday 6pm for Saturday."
What has not changed. Same products, same collection point, same person making it. People are more resistant to change than they are to any particular change, and naming the continuity removes most of that.
Then stop. A long explanation invites questions; a short one gets read.
The plain-language guidance at PlainLanguage.gov is written for government communication and the principles transfer exactly: lead with what the reader needs, use the words they use, and cut everything that is there for your benefit rather than theirs.
Four things that make it worse, all of them tempting.
Do not apologise. "Sorry for the hassle" tells people there is hassle. There is a link. Apologising frames a small change as an imposition and invites the reaction it is warning about.
Do not explain your admin. "This will make things much easier for me" is honest and irrelevant. Your customers are not choosing where to order based on your Thursday evening.
Do not mention fees. "This saves me the commission I was paying" is true on some switches and reads as asking a favour. It also invites the question of whether your prices are coming down.
Do not offer to keep taking orders the old way. The single sentence "or just message me as usual" undoes the entire switch, because messaging is easier for the customer and they have no reason to change.
That last one is the difference between a switch that completes in a fortnight and one you are still half-running two years later.
They need different treatment, and the same text pasted everywhere reads as a broadcast.
Instagram or Facebook post: the announcement, with a photograph of the product rather than a screenshot of your new store. People engage with food, not with software.
Story: the same thing, with a link sticker, repeated more often than feels comfortable. Stories vanish and your audience is not watching all of them.
Bio link: update it before you announce anything, so anyone who acts immediately lands in the right place.
A group or page you run: a pinned post, plus the link in the description, since members join at different times and scroll to different depths.
Email or text list: the most reliable channel you have, and the one where a plain, personal message works better than anything designed.
In person: the highest-converting of all. Telling someone while handing over their bag, and then texting them the link, is worth more than any post.
Printed material: the new link on the next batch of bags, cards, and labels. Do not reprint everything immediately; use up what you have and let the redirect or the old channel catch anyone holding an older bag.
Our guide to announcing a price increase in DMs covers the tone for a harder message than this one, and our piece on communicating changes to regular customers covers the personal channel, which is where your best customers live.
Five points across about a month.
The mistake in timing is announcing too far ahead. Three weeks of warning means everyone forgets and you get to announce it twice. A week is enough for people to notice and not enough for it to slip their mind.
The other timing choice worth making deliberately is which week. Do not switch during your busiest period. A vendor who moves platforms the week before a holiday run has combined the two most stressful things in their year and will spend the launch weekend answering questions instead of baking.
Pick a quiet, ordinary week. The switch is unremarkable when nothing else is happening and genuinely difficult when everything is.
Short, friendly, and consistent. The same reply every time:
> "Grab it here so it's held for you: [link] 🙂"
Three things that does well: it is warm, it gives a reason in four words, and it does not take the order.
For the small number who genuinely cannot manage the link, help them privately. Taking one person's order by hand in a message is fine. Announcing publicly that you will take orders by hand reopens the channel for everyone, which is the entire failure mode.
Worth remembering that some of those people are not being difficult. Someone who finds an online form genuinely hard to use is not a customer to lose over a workflow preference, and the Department of Justice's ADA guidance is a reasonable reminder that access varies. A phone number you answer is the simplest accommodation there is, and offering it quietly to individuals is different from offering it to everyone.
A few, temporarily, and usually fewer than the anxiety suggests.
What normally happens: a noticeably quiet first week while people notice, near-normal by the second, and better than before by the fourth. The improvement comes from customers who were previously beaten to the last item and now order in advance, plus people who never wanted to ask publicly.
Who genuinely drops off: a handful who found the old way effortless and are not motivated enough to learn a new one. Real, and typically a very small number.
What you gain: every order now carries a contact detail you own rather than a comment on a platform. That is the strategic difference and it does not show up for months.
The one thing that turns a small dip into a real loss is inconsistency. If half your orders still come the old way because you kept accepting them, customers reasonably conclude the change was optional, and you end up running both systems while getting the benefit of neither.
Four checks, at four weeks.
If volume has not recovered by week six, the usual cause is not that customers rejected the change. It is that the link is buried, the cutoff is unclear, or the product photographs on the new store are worse than the ones you were posting. Check those three before concluding anything about the platform.
If the new store is the part you are still setting up, running one real order through it yourself before you announce anything is the step that makes all four messages easier to write, because you will know exactly what the customer experience is when you describe it.
The ones who order twice a year and follow nothing, and they are easy to forget.
They will turn up eventually with the old link, or ask at a market, or message a channel you have stopped watching. Plan for it:
Nothing here needs to be perfect. A switch is complete when the default has changed, not when literally everyone has moved.
Harder, and worth handling differently, because you are now asking people to change something you already asked them to change.
The credibility cost is real. A customer who updated a bookmark eighteen months ago and is being asked to update it again will reasonably wonder whether it is worth bothering. Two things reduce that:
That second point is the practical argument for buying a domain even if your current platform is fine. A vendor on their own domain has changed platforms zero times as far as customers are concerned, because the only thing anyone remembers is the address.
Our guide to moving a food business off Instagram DMs in one weekend covers the first version of this conversation, and the same sequence works on the second and third.
If you are still choosing where to land, set up a trial on your own domain rather than a platform subdomain from the start. It costs about $15 a year and it is the difference between announcing a new link once and announcing one every time you change your mind.
Every platform below shows the same four commercial facts, because a table that lists one platform's transaction fee and not another's is not a comparison. "Not published" means exactly that: the company does not state it publicly.
| Platform | Reaching customers to tell them | Subscription (annual) | Free trial | Platform fee | Card processing |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | Customer export with consent status | $29/mo Basic | 3-day trial, then $1/mo for 3 | 2% platform fee if not on Shopify Payments | from 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Square Online | Customer list export | Free tier; paid from $29/mo per location | 30-day trial on paid plans | $0 platform fee | 3.3% + $0.30 free tier, 2.9% + $0.30 paid |
| Etsy | Messaging restricted, a package insert is the compliant route | No subscription | n/a | $0.20 listing + 6.5% commission | 3.0% + $0.25 processing |
| Homegrown | Export your list, bring your own email tool | $10/mo billed annually | 7-day free trial | $0 platform fee (0% commission) | 2.9% + $0.30 processing |
| Big Cartel | Customer export available | Platinum $12/mo ($144/yr) | 7-day free trial | $0 platform fee | Your own provider, so 2.9% + $0.30 typical |
| Cheddar Up | Contact details captured at checkout | Basic $0; Pro $15/mo annual | No trial needed, Basic is free | $0 platform fee | 3.95% + $0.95 Basic, 3.59% + $0.59 Pro processing |
Four: a heads-up about a week before, the announcement on the day, a reminder a week after, and an individual reply with the link to anyone still using the old channel.
The benefit to them first, then the date with the day of the week, then the one instruction they need to remember, usually the cutoff, then what has not changed. Keep it short.
No. Apologising tells people there is hassle where there was only a link, and it frames a small change as an imposition. Say what it does for them and stop.
Better not to. It reads as asking a favour, and it invites the question of whether your prices are coming down. Your costs are not a reason your customer should do anything differently.
Reply with the link, every time, in the same friendly sentence. Help genuinely stuck individuals privately, but never announce publicly that you will take orders by hand, because that reopens the channel for everyone.
Usually a quiet first week, near-normal by the second, and better than before by the fourth. If volume has not recovered by week six, check whether the link is easy to find and whether your cutoff is clear.
A small number who found the old way effortless. Most return, and you typically gain people who never wanted to ask publicly. Inconsistency loses more customers than the change itself does.
Treat this as a sequence rather than a message. Heads-up, announcement, reminder, and an individual reply to everyone still using the old way. One post is not a communication plan; it is a message a minority of your audience happened to see.
Lead with the benefit to them, give the date with the day of the week, state the cutoff, and say what has not changed. Then stop writing.
And do not add "or just message me as usual." It feels generous, it takes four words, and it is the single reason most vendors are still running two ordering systems a year after they decided not to.
