eCommerce Part 2: The Features Questionnaire

Posted By: Dave Fravel on January 27, 2011

In part 1, we talked about the challenge of finding the right solution for a particular eCommerce Project.  Now in part 2, we start to go into detail about how we go about guiding our clients through the decision-marking process.

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At least once a week someone asks us to provide an estimate for an eCommerce site. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Potential client (PC): I want to setup an eCommerce site
Us: Great! Let's talk about some of the requirements.
PC: I want it to look great and be easy to navigate.
Us: we love the idea so far. What else?
PC: It needs to be live before (insert date of closest upcoming holiday)
Us: sorry, we meant what are the other requirements.
PC: it needs to be easy to navigate.
Us: we think you mentioned that. Do you have any other requirements for the site?
PC: can it be like amazon?

And this is why most clients end up hating their eCommerce sites, and why our questionnaire has grown to seven pages before attempting to estimate an eCommerce project. It's our job to help the client not only create a site that people will visit, use and love, but also one that can be managed, updated and grow as the needs of the business do.

I'd love to say that there is an eCommerce platform as great as ExpressionEngine. In truth, we still haven't found a platform that will fit 90% of our eCommerce projects the way that EE fits our content management ones.

Fortunately, there are a number of great low-cost solutions that can be implemented and extended to fit the specific needs of a project. This is why the questionnaire is so important. Based on the client's requirements for the site and long-term vision we can either recommend an off-the-shelf product or craft a custom solution. 

For the record, we view the creation of a completely custom solution as our last resort. Every off-the-shelf product offers the basics that all eCommerce projects require:

• login controls for returning members
• hooks into the most widely-used payment gateways
• administrative controls to manage product entry
• front end templates to generate the user interface

Here are some of the requirements that we try to gather before creating a proposal:

• what payment types will you accept?
• do you want to accept gift cards?
• do you have a payment gateway selected?
• how will you control inventory?
• are any of your products available for download?
• if so, do the files require an extra layer of protection to prevent copying?
• what integrations are required? For example:
  • quickbooks?
  • constant contact/mail chimp or other email marketing platform?
  • a brick-and-mortar POS system?
• are you planning to offer discounts or promo codes?
• if so, what type of discounting:
  • Percent off a product?
  • Amount off a shopping basket?
  • Buy one, get one?
  • Quantity-based discount?
• will returning customers be able to login and review their buying history?
• have you considered integration with Facebook or other social networks?
• should users be able to:
  • save their carts for later use?
  • create a wish list?
  • email their cart to a friend/relative?
  • store their credit card information for ease of checkout on return visits?

Notice that there are no questions about design, SEO, navigation, target audience or user experience. Those questions are part of a different meeting and questionnaire. Our goal at this stage is to help you determine what the site should do before we talk about what it looks like or how people will find out about it.

If you can't answer these questions yet, have a small budget or are interested in testing the eCommerce waters, there are some great alternatives to explore. Some that we recommend are Shopify, Yahoo Small Business, CoreCommerce and Big Commerce.  

The Questionnaire

We received the original from one of our designer friends (I'm assuming he received it from one of his friends who got it from another friend ... etc) and have been tweaking it based on our own experiences. Feel free to download it and continue the chain. If anyone knows who originally created it, please let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.

Coming up next - Some of our specific experiences

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