Best way to generate order numbers for an online store?

Question

Every order in my online store has a user-facing order number. I\'m wondering the best way to generate them. Criteria include:

• Short
• Easy to say over the

Answer 1

You could do it like a postal code: 2b2 b2b

That way it has some kind of checksum (not really, but at least you know it's wrong if there are 2 consecutive numbers or letters). It's easy to read out over the phone, and it doesn't give an indication of how many orders are in the system.