eCommerce Solutions
ShaneWebGuy develops and optimizes online stores, including platform setup, product and category structure, payment integration and checkout. Define your store’s requirements before development so the platform, catalog and checkout support your business goals.
The two basic types of carts are self-hosted and hosted as a provided software service:
Self-hosted:
When considering a self-hosted store, review its software license, hosting requirements, code access and ongoing maintenance needs before choosing a platform.
For platforms you are considering, confirm which changes your developer can make and how those changes will be maintained.
Options to review:
- Review software, hosting, maintenance and support costs before choosing a platform.
- Confirm access to the code needed for your planned customizations.
- Review the software license and your rights to use and modify it.
Responsibilities to plan:
- Plan responsibility for updates, maintenance and security.
- Agree who will maintain the store and manage its security.
- Confirm the support available for the software and integrations you select.
Shopping cart software as a service.
When considering a hosted store service, review the provider’s current plan, support, maintenance responsibilities and options for design changes and integrations. Confirm that the service supports your catalog, checkout and business requirements before committing to it.
Options to review:
- Confirm the support channels and availability included in your plan.
- Confirm which maintenance and security responsibilities the provider handles.
Responsibilities to plan:
- Review ongoing service and integration costs.
- Confirm that the service supports the functionality your store requires.
Plan your ecommerce platform and store requirements
- Shipping:Define the shipping methods and requirements alongside the payment and checkout setup. How the cart will add shipping and any potential discounts will need to be examined to verify if the cart will support it.
- Live VS flat rate shipping:It is important to understand whether the cart will use flat rate, live rate calculated shipping, or if it will connect to a carrier server to determine shipping costs based on the customer’s address, product weight and quantity. Confirm how available carrier rates will be calculated and presented. It is important to understand if the cart that is being picked will support this method of shipping.
- Discount shipping considerations:This can be an area that can also cause problems if the cart does not natively support the desired process flow or the configuration that the business model dictates. Confirm how the platform will support your shipping requirements before development. This will determine what cart is the best fit for your business.
- Sales Tax Considerations / Configurations:Define your tax configuration requirements before selecting the platform. It is important to flag anything that would be more involved in adding a tax rate percentage per the customer state. In some cases, the business requirements dictate that some products have sales tax and some do not. This type of configuration would need to be well defined before selecting the cart platform.
- Product Configuration:How a product is configured and any variations of the product is an important consideration when selecting the best cart. The best example of a project variant is a t-shirt. A t-shirt will be a single product but contains variations that the user can select (color and size). Define your product options and confirm how the selected platform will support them.
- Product / category relationship:Define your product and category structure before selecting the platform. Anything that is more complex such as a product related to multiple categories or anything involving sub-categories should be listed out in advance.
- Featured products:A featured product is used to define products the company wishes to feature in a particular area of the cart, such as the home page or category pages. This is normally on the home page, but they can be on any page that will support cart products. Any featured product requirement should be well defined in the scope of the project.
- Related products:A related product is a product that is shown to the user as one that is likely to be purchased based on the initial product. A generic example is if you were purchasing hotdogs, the related product could be hotdog buns. Define the related-product relationships you need and confirm how the selected platform will display them.
- Product discounts:Define the discount rules your store needs. One possible discount workflow lets a customer enter a coupon code that applies a configured discount to the purchase. This can be as a fixed discount or a percentage of the sale. This would depend on how the cart is set up and to what level it will support discounts.
- Product Images:Define the product images your store needs. Where it would be important to clearly define it is when the product contains multiple images related to that product. This may possibly require an add-on or customizations, depending on the specific cart.
- Product data:How the products will be populated into the cart is a major consideration. In a small cart with a stable and defined number of products, this can be easily managed by a single administrator of the cart. If the cart has thousands of products coming from multiple vendors, this will take extra considerations in order to keep the cart populated with the correct data. Each vendor may or may not have a method to automatically populate data into the cart. This may require extensive modifications to the cart.
- Payment Configuration:How the payment is processed within the cart, or if it pushes to a third party web site will be important to define. Confirm support for your required payment gateway and checkout flow before development.
