Before you ask anyone for a store quote, you will save yourself weeks if you can answer a set of plain questions about your own business. Developers ask them anyway, one email at a time, and every unanswered one either delays the build or turns into an assumption you later pay to change.
This ecommerce website requirements checklist gathers those questions in one place, grouped the way a store is actually built. Work through it with a notebook or a spreadsheet. You do not need technical words; “I want customers to pay on delivery only in Kolkata” is a perfectly good requirement. Where you do not know an answer yet, write “not sure”. That is useful too, because it tells the developer where you need advice.
How to use this checklist
- Write answers, not ticks. “Yes, we need shipping” says nothing. “We ship across India, by courier, rates by weight” says a lot.
- Mark each item as launch, later or never. This one habit keeps the first quote honest.
- Send the same document to every developer. Then the quotes are comparable.
- Keep it updated. A finished ecommerce website requirements checklist becomes the reference for the build and for anyone who maintains the store later.
1. The business behind the store
- What do you sell, and who buys it? Individuals, businesses, or both?
- Where are your customers? One city, all of India, abroad?
- Do you already sell somewhere: a shop, a marketplace, social media? What works there?
- Who in your team will run the store day to day, and how comfortable are they with computers?
- Is the business GST-registered, and does that affect what you can sell where?
- What does a successful first year look like? Rough order numbers are enough.
2. Products and catalogue
- Roughly how many products at launch, and how many in a year?
- Do products have options such as size, colour or weight? How many combinations?
- Do you have photos and descriptions ready, or do they need to be created?
- Where is your product information now: a spreadsheet, billing software, a supplier file, your head?
- Does stock need to stay in step with another system?
- Any products with special rules: made to order, pre-order, age-restricted, perishable, digital?
Catalogue size and complexity are among the biggest influences on build cost, so this section deserves care. Our post on how catalogue size changes the work explains why, and how to prepare your data.
3. Payments
- Which payment methods do you want: cards, UPI, netbanking, wallets, bank transfer, cash on delivery?
- Do you already have a payment gateway account, or does one need to be opened?
- Will you accept international cards or other currencies?
- Any partial payments, advance deposits or payment on account for business customers?
- Who will see the gateway dashboard, and whose bank account receives settlements?
Gateway approval needs business documents and often includes a check of your website’s policy pages, so start the application early.
4. Shipping and delivery
- Where do you ship, and from where? One warehouse or several?
- Your own delivery, a single courier, or a shipping aggregator?
- How should customers be charged: free, flat rate, by weight, by order value, by area?
- Do some pin codes need different rules, or no delivery at all?
- Local pickup from your shop?
- Delivery date or time slot selection?
- Do you have real weights and box sizes for each product?
If you plan to use an aggregator, read our guide to connecting Shiprocket to a WooCommerce store before deciding; it changes what the store itself needs to do.
5. Tax and invoices
General information only, not tax advice. Ask your accountant what they need, then write it here.
- Do prices include tax, or is tax added at checkout?
- Do different products carry different tax treatment?
- Do invoices need to be generated by the store, or by your billing software?
- What must appear on the invoice, and how should invoices be numbered?
- Do business buyers need to enter their tax registration number at checkout?
6. Customers and accounts
- Can people buy as guests, or must they create an account?
- What should customers see in their account: orders, invoices, addresses, tracking?
- Different prices or access for trade, wholesale or member customers?
- Do you need customer reviews, and will they be moderated?
- How should returns and exchanges be requested?
7. Communication
- Which emails should customers receive, and who in your team gets order alerts?
- SMS or WhatsApp updates? Who will provide and pay for that service?
- Live chat, a contact form, a phone number on every page?
- A newsletter sign-up, and which email marketing tool you use?
8. Design and content
- Do you have a logo, brand colours and fonts?
- Two or three stores you like, and what exactly you like about each.
- Which pages besides the shop: about, contact, size guide, FAQs, blog?
- Who writes the text, and in which languages?
- Policy pages: privacy, terms, shipping, returns and refunds. Who drafts them?
9. Accounts, ownership and access
This section is often skipped and later regretted.
- Who owns the domain, and in whose name is it registered?
- Who buys the hosting, and whose account is it in?
- Paid plugins and theme: in whose name are the licences bought?
- Payment gateway, courier and email accounts: whose login?
- Who gets administrator access, and who gets a limited staff role?
The safest answer to most of these is “the business”, with the developer given access rather than ownership.
10. Security, speed and data
- Will the site have an SSL certificate from day one? (It should; payments depend on it.)
- Where will backups be stored, how often, and who can restore one?
- Do you expect traffic spikes, such as festival sales or ad campaigns, that the hosting must handle?
- Which analytics do you want, and who needs access to the reports?
- What customer data will the store collect, and what does your privacy policy say about it?
- Are you moving an existing store or customer list, and does order history need to come across?
What one good answer looks like
To show the level of detail that helps, here is a single filled-in item from the shipping section, for an imagined spice brand:
“We ship across India from one location in Howrah. Most orders are under a kilo. We want free shipping above an order value we will set, a flat charge below it, and no cash on delivery to areas our courier marks as non-serviceable. We do not have product weights yet; we will weigh each pack before the build starts. Launch item.”
That paragraph answers five developer questions in one go, flags a gap the owner is already closing, and says when it is needed. Aim for that on every item that matters to your business.
11. After launch
- Who adds products, updates prices and processes orders?
- Will the developer train your staff, and is a short written guide included?
- Who applies updates, takes backups and tests checkout afterwards?
- How are changes requested and charged once the build is finished?
- What are the online store requirements for your next phase: new categories, a second language, wholesale?
Common gaps in a first requirements list
Certain gaps are easy to miss when you write your first list. Look out for these:
- Nothing about returns. Every store gets them. Decide the process before customers ask.
- Product weights left blank. Shipping rates cannot be right without them.
- No owner for content. Missing photos and descriptions hold up launches more often than code does.
- Everything marked “launch”. A first version that tries to do everything takes longest and costs most.
- No mention of who runs it. The store has to suit the person who will use it every day.
Turning the ecommerce website requirements checklist into a brief
Once the answers are written, tidy them into a short document: a paragraph about the business, then each section above with your answers, then a list of launch items and later items. Attach the product spreadsheet and any brand files. That is enough for a developer to quote properly. If you are also commissioning other pages or want a fuller format, our guide to writing a website brief for a developer shows how to lay one out.
With a brief like this, two quotes can be compared line by line. You will see which developer has included product upload, which has assumed flat-rate shipping, and which has left invoices to you. That is when the price becomes meaningful, and our guide to online store development cost in India explains how those lines usually add up.
What a good developer does with your list
Expect questions back. A careful developer will point out conflicts (“you want guest checkout but also mandatory accounts for wholesale”), suggest simpler ways to meet a requirement, flag items that need paid plugins or custom work, and confirm in writing what is included. If a quote comes back with no questions at all on a detailed list, ask how they read it.
When your list is ready, our WooCommerce store development page explains what a store build covers. Whoever you send your list to, send it as it is, gaps and “not sure” answers included; those are the parts worth talking about.
Next in this series: Shiprocket WooCommerce Integration: How It Works
