Playing 20 Questions to determine your e-commerce needs
Jan
15
Written by:
1/15/2012 2:05 PM
I get the opportunity to work with companies both big and small that sell their wares on the internet. I’ve learned over the years that there is no “one product fits all” solution out there. Each company has different needs; the solution they end up with must be a close fit to both their knowledge level as well as their business needs.
When we get that call that starts off with “I need an e-commerce website…”, we find ourselves asking the same questions over and over again. Based on their responses we can then find a suitable match for their needs as well as help guide them down the e-commerce path.
Before we get into the actual questions… it’s important to distinguish the answers from “I want”, “I need” and “I’m doing” answers. If they answer “I’m already doing this now” – count that as valid and part of the core requirements. If they answer “I need to do this” – count that as a “maybe”, and if they answer “I want to do this” – those need to be considered as well, but are not a requirement to the basic needs to move forward.
Playing 20 questions
- What payments do you accept? Keep in mind that it’s more than credit cards – do you need Purchase Orders? E-checks? Payment on Pickup? PayPal transfers? Google Checkout? Wire Transfers?
- What Payment Gateway will you be using? Authorize.net and Paypal are the most widely used in the US – but they aren’t the only ones. This can be a deal killer – in some rare cases the client’s bank may steer them into a gateway that isn’t available to your solution. This is a critical question to get answered up front.
- Will you be charging taxes? In the US, we have to collect state and local taxes based on where we have a presence. If you are collecting taxes outside the US – look at those policies and needs carefully.
- How will you be handling shipping? Will you be charging by weight? Do you have weights for all your items? Will you be charging a flat rate? By order value? Or are you doing free shipping? Is the carrier supported by the product you are looking at? This can be a very complex question to answer and requires a lot of thought and planning. If you are charging a flat rate for shipping in the US…. Remember… shipping to Hawaii and Alaska is often much more expensive. When looking at shipping solutions you need to evaluate those two states when setting the rates.
- How many Products will you have? Finding a solution for managing 10 products is completely different than finding one to manage 1,000 products. When you evaluate possible solutions try to imagine (as a store admin) finding 1 product to update in the product database.
- Do you need Categories for each product grouping? Do those categories need to be nested? Most of the solutions will include this… but look to see if the client needs support for HTML descriptions, images and the ability to have 1 product in multiple categories.
- Do you need to special extensions for the product pages? Do you need to attach files or documents to the product? It could also be a need to attach instructional or promotional videos to the product.
- Will your products have Variants that can be selected? Thinks like size and color are common variants.
- Will the selection of a product variant change the price? If you change the size of the product will it change the price of the product?
- Do you need to assign a user special status after a purchase? Will their user role change for example, is it limited to X days?
- Do you need to track online inventory? Keep in mind that if you have variants, you often have to track inventory on those. You need to know how many “XXL-Red-Your Momma” t-shirts are in stock!
- Do you need to support downloadable or “electronic” goods? If a license file or registration key will be required, how will it be generated?
- Do you need support for Coupons or Discount codes? I don’t care if they say no – this is always a requirement! I can’t tell you how many times someone comes back after the store is setup and asks for this. Closely evaluate how they do their current “specials” and see of it matches your solution.
- Do you need quantity discounts? If they buy 100 of the same product on the same order, is it a different price than if they bought 5 of those?
- Does pricing change based on the user viewing the product? Often clients ask for Role based pricing to handle “Special customers” or wholesale pricing levels.
- How will you handle “Store credit”? Think of “gift cards” here. You have to have some way to manage an account balance in these cases. It’s not $10 off, it’s a $10 credit that carries a balance if they buy a $5 item.
- Do you want upselling opportunities? Customers that bought X also bought Y? Do you want to manage these manually or is there an automated process. A good example of this is looking at amazon.com
- Do you put items on Sale or do special promotions? Do you need to take 10% off an entire product category, or do a special promotional price for a few days. One of the most popular retail methods is to do a “Buy one Get one Free” offer, or “Buy X and get Y free”.
- Do you want item reviews? This can actually be achieved a lot of different ways and I usually don’t recommend this as an evaluation item... but if you are going to use it as part of your criteria make 100% sure that there is a way to moderate the reviews.
The last and most important question you need to ask is…
20. What is the comfort level and involvement of the store administrator?
Remember – you can build the store, you can stock the store, but rarely will you be running the store. Your client must be able to perform day to day functions without having to return to you for instructions. If the module/solution you choose can’t be operated by the store owner – it won’t be a success.