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eCommerce Development Check List From Foremost Media

E-Commerce Check List

If you're thinking about selling online, take a look at our eCommerce Checklist.  This checklist is designed to help identify the functionality you will need in your shopping cart solution.

Usability and Basic Functionality
  1. Will clients be conducting transactions on mobile devices?
  2. Do you need multi store capabilities? (Multi store enables you to host more than one front-end store on different domains and manage all admin operations from your single Administration panel. Good for allowing distributors to sell your product online)
  3. Does your store require Multilingual and multicurrency support?
Shipping, Inventory and Taxes
  1. Do you need to track by vendor for drop shipping and inventory purposes (Example- When an order is placed an email is sent to the vendor of each product in the order. The email includes the products, quantities, etc. The vendor then ships the item to the customer on behalf of the merchant)
  2. Do you need to track inventory on your store and does that inventory need to be synced with any internal systems?
  3. Are you required to collect Taxes from your customers?
  4. Does your ERP system have tax tables that can be used to calculate taxes by location?
  5. So you need any integration with shipping programs like UPS World Ship?
Check Out and Credit Card Processing
  1. Who do you currently use for credit card processing?
  2. Will your store accept PO’s from established accounts?
  3. How do you ship your products (Common Carrier, UPS, FEDEX, USPS)
  4. Do you accept call in orders or are other systems taking orders in addition to your online store?
  5. Do you need the ability for customer re-ordering and or order history tracking?
Hosting and Security
  1. Will you be hosting your own website or will we be hosting it for you?
  2. If you have an existing site how many orders a day do you process or how many site visitors do you get per day currently?
  3. Do you already own or use a SSL (Security Certificate) on you site?
Product Information
  1. How many product SKU’s will you have in your store?
  2. How will you be providing us with product details for store content population?
  3. How do you envision your products being organized (Standard categories, by line drawing, other)?
  4. Do your products have Product attributes (Do you need to create attributes for your products such as size and color — each with its own SKU, price, weight, image and stock level) ?
  5. Do any of your products require bundling (e.g. Build your own computer with grouped products)?
  6. Are any of your products access controlled Security. ACL (access control list) on products, categories, and manufacturers?
  7. Do any of your products can require that other products are added to the cart (Product X requires Product Y)?
Pricing Information
  1. How often do you update prices? 
  2. Will prices need to be tied to an external database?
  3. Do you offer custom or discounted pricing to your customers and if so how does it work 
    1. e.g. percent discount off list- Your store contains a % discount off the list price with each customer record
    2. e.g. unique prices for each customer by product -This takes the ERP pricing logic and or a unique price list by sku for each customer stores it in the website. 
Order Processing - ERP Connections
  1. Do you need to push orders into an ERP System or accounting software package?
  2. If Yes, what is that ERP system?
  3. If yes, do you have an internal ERP expert or do you use a 3rd party system to preform maintenance and tasks like custom report writing or process programming?
  4. Does your ERP or accounting package offer web services?
  5. Does your ERP system contain product descriptions, pictures and category information you would like synced with the website?