Managing an eCommerce Build (Part 1): Prepare your requirements

You are in charge of building the eCommerce shop in your company, or more probably, migrating from the current outdated shop to a new one. Great!

In this series, we’ll help you by outlining the process you should expect, the decisions you’ll have to make, and the things to pay attention to during this new build. Since migrating from an existing shop is more challenging than creating a new shop, we’ll focus on the migration scenario.

So let’s get started.

The process you’ve about to embark on will have the following phases:

Draft your requirements
Select a solution and solution integrator
Project planning & kickoff
Build phase
UAT & Launch

Draft Your Requirements

Outlining your requirements is the first step in your process, and it’s an important one. The solution you choose will largely depend on what your needs are. The solution providers you’ll evaluate will offer solutions based on what you outline as your requirements. Therefore, doing a great job in this phase will save you a lot of pain in the future.

Business Requirements

The first thing you need to write down is your background and business requirements: who your customers are, what are you selling, what sets you apart from your competition, what do your customers expect from your shop, etc.

Start your requirements document (aka Request For Proposal) with a few paragraphs on the general business aspects; that will help you put some clarity into your mission and help the readers of the documentation set the proper context for the rest of the document.

Features Required

The next step is to describe the features your shop needs. You might start by writing out some bullet points, but most custom functionality will need detailed descriptions. Since you’re talking to professionals experienced in building a shop, you should not focus on bland functionality: elements like products listed on category pages, filtering, sorting, having a cart and checkout, or a wishlist shouldn’t get more than a sentence, since they are trivial requirements that are clear to all parties involved. Writing two pages about the most common functionality and giving that equal space to the tailored functionality you’re looking for will make it more difficult for readers to spot and focus on the relevant parts.

Certain features that you don’t see on most other websites from other verticals or functionality you know you’ve paid for on your current solution is considered custom functionality. When describing it, start with outlining the business requirements, why you need it, the business outcome you want to achieve, and then explain how you see that problem resolved. Not focusing on what you want but rather on why you want it will allow the solution providers to propose potentially better solutions than the solutions you originally outlined. But they can’t do that without context or if your requirements are too rigid.

Technical Requirements

If you have any preferences for the technologies used, you can outline them in this section, but we recommend presenting them as preferences and not fixed requirements. Examples of technical requirements you might be interested in:

having a Progressive Web Apps (PWA) frontend for optimal user experience
running on Magento since your team is already familiar with the platform
use Open Source technologies

Non Functional Requirements

Finally, present the requirements you have around speed, accessibility, backup, usability, and others so that the companies you’ll be discussing your project with can take these into account when proposing a solution.

Validation

Congratulations! You’ve created the RFP that you can use to select the solution and partner to work with to build your shop.

But before you take the next step, it’s paramount for you to validate everything you’ve prepared with the rest of your team and internal stakeholders in your business.

Not getting internal alignment around the requirements for the new shop is a sure recipe for failure.

In the next article, we’ll continue with the recommendations around choosing the solution and solution provider you’ll use in building your project.