Guide Planning
Ecommerce website requirements: what to decide before you build a shop
By Studio Swing
Before anyone designs or builds your shop, write down seven decisions: how your products are organized, how orders are delivered and what that costs, how tax is handled, how you take payment, what happens when something is returned, who processes each order, and who writes and photographs every product. Most of these are business decisions that no platform makes for you. A shop built before they are settled gets rebuilt around them later, usually at the moment real orders arrive.
On this page
A shop that sells leather bags, three weeks before launch
This guide is platform-neutral. It applies whether the shop ends up on Shopify, on another hosted platform, or custom-coded. Choosing between those is a separate question, covered in custom website, Shopify or a website builder.
Say you make leather bags and sell them to customers in two countries. You have forty products. A designer has produced a handsome product page and a build is about to start.
Then three questions come up that nobody had answered. Does a bag in "tan, large" count as one product with options, or as four products? Which country do you ship from, and does the second country pay import duty at the door or at checkout? What do you do when a customer wants to return a monogrammed bag that you made to order?
None of these is a design question. Each one changes the shape of the catalog, the checkout and the policy pages. Answering them on day one costs a conversation. Answering them in week three costs a rebuild of the product template and a rewrite of the checkout.
The seven decisions
1. How the catalog is organized
Decide what counts as one product and what counts as an option of a product. A bag in three colors and two sizes is usually one product with six variants. A bag in a different leather with different hardware is usually its own product.
Then decide the structure shoppers will browse: the categories, whether a product can sit in more than one, and which attributes shoppers will filter by. Filters only work if the attribute exists for every product, so the list of attributes is a requirements decision, not a design one. Our guide to ecommerce category pages covers what shoppers need on those pages.
Also decide what you do with products that are out of stock, discontinued or made to order. Each state needs a different page, and a different promise to the shopper.
2. How orders are delivered, and what shoppers see about it
Write down where you ship, which carriers or services you use, how you calculate the price (a flat rate, by weight, by region, free above an amount), and where you promise the item will arrive.
This decision matters more than it looks. In the survey results Baymard publishes on checkout abandonment, the most common reason, at 40%, is "extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)", and 12% say they "couldn't see / calculate total order cost up-front". Another 20% say delivery was too slow. We go through these figures in checkout and abandoned carts. For requirements, the lesson is that shipping costs, and the date the order will arrive, belong in the plan from the start. A shopper should be able to see them before the last step.
3. How tax is handled
Tax rules depend on where you sell from, where your customers are and what you sell. Your site needs to know whether prices are shown with or without tax, which regions you collect tax in, and how tax appears on receipts.
This is a decision for your accountant or a local adviser, and not for a developer. Shopify's own store setup checklist begins with the same advice: find local experts "to get advice about taxes and laws that are related to your business." Bring the answer to the requirements discussion, so the shop is built to match it.
4. How you take payment
Decide which payment methods your customers expect (cards, a wallet, bank transfer, cash on delivery where that is common) and which payment provider you will use. Then ask your provider and your platform one practical question: where are card details entered and stored? The PCI Security Standards Council states that its data security standard is intended for "entities that store, process or transmit payment account data". Whether you must validate compliance is decided by your payment brand or bank. Choosing a setup in which you never handle card details yourself is a requirement worth writing down.
Also decide the payment edge cases: what happens when a card is declined, whether you take part payments or deposits for made-to-order items, and whether you issue invoices to business buyers.
5. What happens when something goes back
Decide your returns and refunds rules before the shop is built, because they appear in four places: the product page, the checkout, the confirmation email and a policy page. State how many days a customer has, who pays return shipping, which products cannot be returned (made-to-order, personalized, perishable) and how fast you refund.
Baymard's abandonment list includes 13% of shoppers who said the "returns policy wasn't satisfactory". A policy written in week three tends to be a copied template that contradicts what you actually do. Whatever you publish, you must follow. Shopify's help page on policies says so plainly: "you're responsible for following your published policies." Have a local expert check the legal side.
6. Who processes each order, and how
Write the day-to-day routine as steps: an order arrives, someone is notified, someone packs it, someone prints a label, the customer receives a tracking message, stock goes down by one. For each step, name the person and the screen they will use.
This is where small shops find gaps. If you sell on a marketplace as well, does stock update in both places? If a bag is made to order, does the shop show a lead time, and who updates it when you are busy? If two people handle orders, who can refund? These questions decide which admin features and which integrations the shop needs.
7. Who writes, photographs and updates every product
A shop is mostly content: a title, a description, a set of attributes, photographs and a price for every product, and the same again for every variant. Decide who produces this for launch and who maintains it afterwards. Forty products with three photographs each is 120 images before any variants.
Product information also feeds search. Google's ecommerce documentation recommends marking up products with structured data, and points to Merchant Center for fuller participation in shopping features. Complete, consistent product data makes both possible. Gaps in the data cannot be fixed by the platform.
Smaller decisions that still need an owner
Customer accounts. Do shoppers need one? Baymard's list gives 18% as the share who abandoned because the site "wanted me to create an account." Many shops offer guest checkout, and let a customer create an account after the order.
Sales to businesses. Will you offer trade prices, account terms or quotes? A shop built for retail buyers does not handle these well. If most of your buyers will ask for a price, a different kind of site may fit better.
Languages and currencies. Each extra one multiplies the pages, the policies and the tax decisions.
Discounts and gift cards. List the offers you expect to run in the first year.
Email. Order confirmations, shipping notifications and abandoned-cart reminders are written content. Someone has to write them.
Legal pages. Privacy, terms, shipping and returns. Platforms provide templates. They are a starting point to review, not a finished policy.
Measurement. Decide which numbers you will read, so the shop records them from day one. Our guide to ecommerce KPIs lists the few worth watching.
What to hand over to whoever builds the shop
You do not need a technical specification. A short document in plain language is enough, with one section for each decision above. The more concrete it is, the less the build depends on guesses.
For each section, write:
the decision, in one sentence;
the reason, in one sentence ("we ship from Portugal, so duties are paid at checkout");
what you do not know yet, marked clearly as open.
A good builder will turn the open items into questions in the first week. If you are still choosing who to work with, our guide to what to prepare and what to ask before you hire a web designer goes further, and the related guide on how to write a website brief covers the document itself.
What this will not do
Writing the decisions down does not make them right. Shipping costs, tax rules and return rates are things you learn from real orders, and several of your first answers will change after launch. The aim is to make the first version coherent, so that changes are small adjustments and not reconstruction. It also does not replace advice from an accountant or a lawyer on tax and consumer rules in the places where you sell.
A checklist you can use without us
Checklist
- I can say which items are one product and which are options of a product.
- I have a list of the categories and the attributes shoppers will filter by.
- I know where I ship, to whom, at what price, and how long it takes.
- A local adviser has told me how tax applies to my sales.
- I know which payment methods I will offer and who provides them.
- My returns rules are written, including the exceptions.
- Someone is named for each step from order to delivery.
- Product text and photographs exist, or have a date and an owner.
- I have decided whether customers need an account.
- I know which five or six numbers I will read each month.
Where to go next
If you are planning a shop and want a second pair of eyes on these decisions, see how we work on ecommerce websites. To see how a shop can be planned, look at our original concept for an outdoor gear shop: Larchmark Outfitters. It is an invented shop that shows how we think, not a client project. Next, Shopify, WooCommerce or custom helps with the platform choice.
When you are ready, you can discuss your project. More guides are in the Learn library.
Sources
Baymard Institute, 50 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics (reasons for checkout abandonment): https:/
Shopify Help Center, Shopify store setup checklist: https:/
Shopify Help Center, Adding policies (refund, privacy, terms of service): https:/
PCI Security Standards Council, About us (who PCI DSS is intended for, and who decides on compliance validation): https:/
Google Search Central, Include structured data relevant to ecommerce: https:/