Webshop development: specification before requesting a quote

You wouldn't believe how complex web store development is, and how much information must be taken into account to ensure that the hours and money spent, really do produce a result that everyone is happy with. It's a good idea to be prepared and think of a few things before you ask for a quote. Let's take a look at them!
The allure of e-commerce is prompting many retailers or companies to move their products online and offer them to the public. As a result of the pandemic, the volume of online shopping has increased. For example, while trade stagnated in the first three quarters of 2020, the online market grew by 21% in the first quarter, 47% in the second quarter, and 19% in the third quarter (GKI).

An online shop offers many opportunities for traders. 

• it is easier to start a webshop than a physical shop both in terms of set-up time and costs
• many things can be automated,
• maintenance costs can be rationalized,
• webshop systems are easy for anyone to use,
• the stock can be flexible and tailored to needs,
• there are no physical barriers, distance is not an obstacle.

As we see, there are many advantages of having an online store, and if you are clever with the design, you can get off to a flying start. The emphasis, however, is on prudence. If the development process, and even the tendering process, starts in a frenetic manner, there is bound to be a lot of extra costs and unnecessary work.

To avoid this, it is worth starting the process by preparing the business specification.

What is a specification in business terms?

The business specification is the presentation of your dream webshop in a clear, concise, and to the point way. What is a webshop? How will it work? What is the purpose? What will be available to buy and how? How can I pay? How will the customer receive the product? These and similar questions should be answered before the development.

Why create one?

Having relevant business insights and market understanding can make the development of your online store much smoother. The whole process, therefore, starts with the compilation of the business specification. This will allow you to request quotations from different development companies.

Thanks to the fact that there is a detailed description, companies can make a more accurate offer. The more information this document contains, the easier and more targeted it is to estimate the time needed for the development and the costs involved in what is required.

Of course, this does not mean that this cannot be changed. The development company will certainly have suggestions for the development of the webshop, and in the meantime, the needs may evolve. However, you must start somewhere, and in this case, the business specification is that particular 'stove'.

If you get it right, you can save a lot of time and effort later. Not to mention the fact that any decent development company will ask for such a specification, as it is the only basis for estimating and calculating.
It is therefore clear that the zero-steps in webshop development is to prepare the specification from a business perspective. But what should this document contain?

What should be included in the specification for web store development?

Business indicators

The developer should be able to assess how big the webshop should be. How many visitors per day are expected? How many purchases? What value will be purchased? Based on these, it can be determined what capacities need to be deployed.
It is also worth considering in this section who the customers are. Who is the target group and what is the typical customer like? Can foreign customers be expected, i.e., from a development point of view, is it necessary to have a multilingual webshop, with prices available in different currencies?

It is very important to describe the business purpose of the webshop. What do you expect from it? What role does it play in the business? This is particularly important if there is a shop involved. Then what is the aim: to complement the offline shop or is the aim to eliminate the shop?

Product data

The operation and structure of an online store are fundamentally determined by what the product is. Many questions can arise here, we will list some of them without being exhaustive. From a fundamental development point of view, whether the products can be personalized, whether a so-called product designer is needed or whether static images will illustrate the products.

The form in which you want to present the products you want to buy is crucial. How long will the descriptions be? Are there photos? Videos? Will the product pages need to recommend additional products?

Typically, list pages collect the different products, from here you can navigate to the product pages. An important question is how this should be presented, how much filtering and sorting of the results should be possible? Do we want to be able to compare products with other products that can be bought in the webshop?

It is also worth providing information on the background of the webshop. For example, how many products they will want to stock? How will product descriptions and photos be uploaded to the website? How will prices be displayed? Is it important that certain registered members see different prices?

In any case, how the stocking of products will take place should be addressed. Will everything always be in stock, or will this change dynamically? Should it be indicated how much of each product is in stock?

Payment and delivery

From a developer’s perspective, the choice of payment methods available to customers may be important due to the integration of banking systems. Similarly, it is also worth including in the specification how the goods will be delivered to the customer. It should be noted here that the webshop will probably also need to be linked to external billing software!

To ensure that the development of the webshop goes smoothly, there are many aspects to consider and even more questions to answer. However, these will help you to build a much more accurate picture of the webshop, which is useful for both the client and the developers.