E-Commerce Checklist

If I’m building you an online store, here is a lovely checklist of things I need to know. If you have no idea what some of these things mean, don’t worry. I can explain all.

Have you chosen a payment gateway?

  1. 1. Some payment gateways take some time to setup and authorize/verify. You don’t want to be all psyched and ready to launch your store, only to find out that your account won’t be verified for another 5 days. Get the payment gateway stuff out of the way.
  2. 2. Make sure you know your payment gateways e-commerce requirements. Most payment gateways require that you at least display your return policy, sales policy and shipping policy somewhere on you site.

Do you know the sales tax requirements for your location?

  1. 3. If you have no idea what we are talking about, check out my Things to Keep in Mind checklist

How you are going to calculate shipping? (if your product requires it)

  1. 4. If shipping by weight – have you weighed all of your products? It’s far easier to enter the product weights when you are adding your products, instead of going back and adding them in the end.
  2. 5. If shipping by flat rate – is there going to be a flat rate per product, an overall flat rate, or both? What are the actual rates?
  3. 6. If shipping by table rate – what is the rate going to be for each level?

How do you want to group your products?

  1. 7. Are there specific categories? Brands? etc?

Does your products have variations (i.e. options)

  1. 8. For example, if you are selling clothes do they come in different sizes or colors?
  2. 9. Do the variations affect the cost?
  3. 10. Do the variations affect the weight?

Do you have the following information for each of your products?

  1. 11. Product Name
  2. 12. Price
  3. 13. Description
  4. 14. 1Tags (for categorization and SEO purposes)
  5. 15. Images
  6. 16. Stock quantity (in case you only have a limited number)
  7. 17. Weight (if you are shipping by weight)
  8. 18. Shipping fee (if you are shipping by flat rate)
  9. 19. Variations (if they apply), and the associated price and weight for each variations (if the variations affect the price and weight of the product)
  10. 20. If your product is something that can downloaded, do you have the actual files ready to upload?