WISMO order data and methodology
Guides on this site cite figures drawn from WISMO's own order data rather than unattributed industry statistics. This page states what that data covers so the numbers can be checked against their limits. Period: March 25 – August 11, 2026. Extracted August 15, 2026.
What the dataset covers
This is a small dataset from an early-stage product, and it is presented as such. It is not a market-wide survey, and it is not weighted to be representative of small sellers generally. Its value is that it records what actually happened on real orders rather than estimating it.
Findings
Across the 93 orders whose tracking page was opened at least once (24 sellers), customers opened that link a median of 7 times before the order finished. The mean is 18.1, pulled up by a single order opened 187 times — the median is the fairer figure.
93 of 226 orders. Sellers do not share a link on every order, so this is a floor on how often customers check, not a measure of how often they would.
58.6% of sellers use a currency other than INR. Most common: INR (24), USD (15), GBP (5), NGN (5), ZAR (2), AED (2).
Across 120 completed orders. This cohort skews toward quick-turnaround work, so it should not be read as how long custom orders take in general.
983 updates across 226 orders.
Of the 214 orders with any payment recorded. Payment status overall: 121 paid, 59 unpaid, 46 on advance.
Across 63 orders where the first recorded payment was less than the order price (10 sellers), the median of each seller's own median deposit is 50.0% — the figure the trade repeats without evidence. Pooling all 63 deposits instead gives 55.6% (quartiles 42.3% and 73.0%), but two sellers account for 37 of the 63, so the per-seller median is the fairer statistic. The consistency the "50% standard" implies is absent: seller medians run from 8.0% to 87.9%, only 14 of 63 deposits fall between 45% and 55%, and the seller with the most deposits ranges from 2.6% to 71.8% on their own orders. 63 of the 154 priced orders with any payment started with a deposit; the other 91 were paid in full at the first payment.
How it was measured
- Figures come from aggregate SQL queries against WISMO's production database. No individual seller, customer, or order is identifiable in anything published, and no personal data leaves the database.
- Deleted sellers and deleted orders are excluded from every figure.
- A tracking-link "open" is one page load of an order's public tracking page. Repeat loads by the same customer count separately — that is the point, since each one is a status check that would otherwise have been a message to the seller.
- Medians are reported wherever the distribution is skewed. Where a mean is given, it is labelled as one.
- Every citing post states the relevant sample size and period at the point of use, so a figure is never quotable without its denominator.
- A "deposit" is the first payment recorded against an order, divided by that order's price, where that first payment came to less than the full price. Orders with no price set are excluded. Because it is a ratio it carries no currency, so sellers across all 11 currencies are counted together. A seller who takes a deposit but does not record it in WISMO is invisible to this figure.
Limits worth stating
- Small sample. 226 orders from 33 sellers. Individual figures move meaningfully as the base grows, and the numbers here will be revised as it does.
- Self-selected cohort. These are sellers who chose an order tracking app, which likely means they already felt the problem it addresses.
- Tracking opens undercount. Only orders where the seller actually shared a link can register opens, so the 41.2% figure is a floor.
- Lifecycle skews short. The 1.7-day median reflects this cohort's mix of work, not custom orders in general.
Questions about these figures
Compiled by Ashish Vijay, founder of WISMO. If something here looks wrong or you want a figure broken down differently, email support@wismo.live.