Questions to ask your client who wants an e-commerce website.

A lot of times, clients come with a vague one-line statement - I want to build an online/e-commerce store.

Mostly, clients themselves might not have thought about all the aspects of an e-commerce store.

Here’s a list of questions to ask yourself to get a clear idea of what does it mean to start an e-commerce website.

1. What products are you going to sell?
2. Who are you selling your products to? What is your target market? - countries / region.
3. Do you have the product information ready in an excel file?
   • Name of Product
   • Description
   • Price
   • Image for the product
   • This product belongs to which category/categories?
4. How many products? Rough estimate.
5. What are your main categories? Think of it as the main menu on a website.
6. Are your images ready or does it required to be resized/worked on by a graphic designer?
7. Do you have the products in stock or is it a dropshipping business?
8. Do you want your website to be in a single language or multiple languages?
9. Do you want your website to show prices in the same currency to all the users in the world? Or should it change currency based on the country of the users?
10. How are you planning to receive money? - Cash on Delivery/Card Payment/ Wallets (Payment Gateway).
11. If Payment gateway, do you have business documentation such as Trade License?
12. How are you going to ship your products?
13. Do you accept returns? What is the process if a customer wants to return your product?
14. Do you sell items as pre-orders?
15. Once the website is built, who will manage it? Do you have any technical staff or yourself?
16. Are there any particular features that you would like to have?

I ask these questions to all my clients as a first thing. This helps me define the scope of the project and set expectations for myself and the client right.

Are there any questions you would like to ask to further clarify the scope of the e-commerce project?

Comments

[lili]

What is an Ecommerce solution and how does it work?E-commerce software is a stand-alone program or software suite that enables you to sell your products and services online. Learn more about e‑commerce software and how it works in this guide.