Ninety days of social commerce, from evidence to a settled-order decision

Use 90 calendar days to answer one route decision, not to promise national growth. The schedule below assumes an ordinary retail product and a limited trial. Move the live date if eligibility, stock, customer information or claim evidence is incomplete. A missed launch is cheaper than an unreliable transaction.

What to take away

Days 1 to 20: define the evidence

Choose the product group, customer problem, checkout route and England rule. Delivery destination can identify physical orders sent to England, although it cannot show where the original view occurred. Separate platform purchases from referrals to the merchant's website.

Map the complete journey from content to returns. Identify the seller, stock authority, payment record, customer-service route and order ID that connects systems. The GOV.UK distance-selling guide describes information, cancellation and delivery duties for covered UK contracts, subject to exceptions. Arrange qualified review for the actual product and transaction.

The Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 set the duties summarised in that guide. They require pre-contract information, a 14-day cancellation right for most distance sales and delivery within 30 days unless a later date is agreed.

Define a commercial result, a journey diagnostic and a customer guardrail. List every cost category without inserting assumed industry rates:

A limited trial of this kind usually runs with one named owner for content, stock, support and reconciliation, working part time, plus a capped spend on the items above. The figure depends on catalogue size, creator rates and how many orders support can handle. Fix the cap before release.

Interview a small set of recent purchasers, abandoners or returners tied to the chosen journey. Ask what they needed to verify and where they expected to pay. Use these accounts to select one content problem, not to claim a percentage for England. Preserve contrary cases and document recruitment.

Days 21 to 45: prove readiness

Verify the feature in the business account. TikTok Shop's UK registration guide, for example, records seller types and verification steps but does not guarantee approval. Archive the current account result, product status and source date.

Build the catalogue and reconcile test records. Confirm stock updates, totals, confirmation, dispatch, refund and return handling without placing a real customer order unless the test protocol authorises it. Prepare customer-service answers from approved product evidence.

Run an incident rehearsal before sign-off. Remove a test item from stock, flag an inaccurate caption and trace a simulated cancellation through the responsible roles. Record the time, missing access and manual work. Fix the ownership gap rather than writing a more optimistic launch checklist.

For creator work, finish the deliverable, claim, rights, payment, approval and termination terms. Apply the ASA and CAP influencer guide to the actual content format and commercial relationship. Check labels before publication and again in the live interface.

The CAP Code requires that marketing communications are obviously identifiable. A paid or gifted partnership therefore needs a clear label such as 'ad'.

Days 46 to 75: run a controlled release

Release one content and product combination to the defined audience. Keep a dated operations log for stock mismatches, edited claims, customer questions, broken hand-offs, cancellations and complaints. Do not optimise several variables after every fluctuation; preserve a stable window long enough to understand what changed.

Review customer harm and evidence quality more frequently than creative performance. Pause when seller or product information is materially wrong, orders cannot be reconciled, required disclosure disappears or support capacity fails. Record why the decision was made.

Keep variants deliberately limited. If a product demonstration, creator and price all change at once, the result cannot identify what mattered. Log unavoidable stock or offer changes and exclude periods that no longer match the planned comparison where that rule was agreed in advance.

If the route generates post-purchase promotional messages, use the ICO direct-marketing guidance to review purpose, channel, preferences and personal-data use. A service update and a sales invitation should not be combined merely to improve response.

Under PECR, electronic marketing to individuals generally needs consent, unless the soft opt-in applies for an existing customer and a similar product. The ICO enforces PECR and the UK GDPR, so keep a dated record of how each contact was collected.

Days 76 to 90: settle and decide

Stop new exposure at the planned point while fulfilment, cancellations and returns mature. Reconcile retained orders to payment, platform, creator and support records. Show gross ordered value separately from the result after defined adjustments.

Choose expand, revise, hold or stop. Expansion should name the proven product, route, operating capacity and safeguards. Revision needs a new hypothesis and another bounded test.

Set the four thresholds before release and name who signs each one. The template below uses process tests rather than revenue claims, so it needs no invented forecast.

Hold when settlement or evidence remains incomplete. Stop where economics, customer outcomes or operational control fail the predefined threshold. Archive the decision pack so a future team can see what the 90 days established.

The pack holds the signed threshold table, the reconciled orders ledger, the open-items register, the dated incident log, the creator terms and the decision note.

Do not compress the final stage merely to meet day 90. If the product's return or platform settlement process remains open, make "hold" the recorded decision and schedule a later reconciliation.

Before you act

Common questions

What should be done in the first 20 days?

Define the evidence by choosing the product group, customer problem, checkout route and England rule. Map the complete journey from content to returns, identify the seller, stock authority, payment record, customer-service route and order ID. Arrange qualified review for the actual product and transaction.

How should a controlled release be run?

Release one content and product combination to the defined audience. Keep a dated operations log for stock mismatches, edited claims, customer questions, broken hand-offs, cancellations and complaints. Do not optimise several variables after every fluctuation. Pause when seller or product information is materially wrong or orders cannot be reconciled.

What does settling and deciding involve?

Stop new exposure at the planned point while fulfilment, cancellations and returns mature. Reconcile retained orders to payment, platform, creator and support records. Show gross ordered value separately from the result after defined adjustments. Choose expand, revise, hold or stop based on predefined thresholds and archive the decision pack.