Defining a complete specification is essential to start a project to create or redesign an e-commerce website.
This is the mapping of the construction of the project. This working document allows you to follow its evolution and avoid errors. Three steps are essential to the drafting of the specifications of an e-commerce site:
- Present the company,
- formalize the needs,
- Set the budget.
What you need to know before writing your e-commerce site specifications
To correctly write your e-commerce specifications, you still need to understand what it is all about and why this document is important!
What is an e-commerce specification?
A specification is a referencedocument that helps professionals working on the same web project to understand its parameters. It is a roadmap to which providers must respond.
This document also allows your web agency to assess the technical constraints of the project and to guide you towards more realistic solutions while meeting your needs.
This is a contractual document. The agreement of both parties is therefore necessary to modify it once the whole has been validated.
Why write specifications?
The specifications allow all the actors of the project to have a global vision of the creation of your e-commerce website: its context, its purpose, its limits, etc. It also allows providers to understand your needs, your requirements (functional and visual). This document also secures your project. In particular, it avoids misunderstandings and therefore certain easily avoidable errors.
Writing specifications will save you time on setting up the project. It allows information to be structured and its evolution to be monitored. This even if you use a digital agency to pilot the project.
The stages of writing an e-commerce specification
Now that you understand the challenges of creating an e-commerce site specification, you have to start writing it. In order not to forget anything and avoid misunderstandings with your service providers, we advise you to follow a certain methodology.
Present the company and the project
This is not the biggest part of your specifications, but it remains an essential step. It allows your web agency to understand your motivations and the challenges of your project to create an e-commerce site.Validate the fact that the crawled page is really not a non-strategic page for your SEO for Psychologists.
In a few lines, present your company: its history, its sector of activity, its positioning on the market, its competitors (2 or 3), and its target clientele. If you have physical points of sale that you want to partly digitize, it is important to share this too.
If it is a redesign, you will need to inform your web marketing agency about your current metrics: turnover, number of visits, conversion rate, etc.
To guide its work, it is necessary to communicate to your service provider the motivations and objectives of this project: the launch of a new product, an international deployment, a drop in turnover or traffic, etc.
Define your needs
The expression of needs is the longest part of your specifications since it determines the construction of the project. This step corresponds to what you want to implement (and why you want to implement it).
You will then have to delimit a certain number of functional and technical parameters around the project:
- The domain name: you can check its availability on sites such as nom-domaine.fr. If it’s a redesign or you already have web hosting, specify it! And give the characteristics: name of the host, shared server, cloud server, disk space, etc.
- the product catalogue : your agency needs to know the number of products to be listed, the categories of products, the logistics around inventory management, the means of payment to be put in place, the management of deliveries (Which carriers? What costs of delivery? In which countries do you deliver?), the management of product photos.
- The graphic charter: if you already have a visual identity in place, you will have to communicate your HTML color codes, your typographies, your logo, the desired ergonomics, etc. If not, communicate your expectations. You can make a quick mockup (with tools like Canva.com) or share existing sites with the provider that are similar to what you want. If certain things are prohibitive, it will be necessary to do some too.
- The marketing strategy: do you have a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter page? Would you like to set up a newsletter (recommended)? Who takes care of the natural referencing and the writing of your product sheets? Have you thought about your sales funnel?
- Commercial actions: what do you want to put in place to build customer loyalty? A referral or affiliate program? A point’s loyalty program? Discount codes? Gift vouchers to offer?
Assess your budget
Before embarking on the realization of your project, it is essential to define the budget of the latter. The ideal is to conduct a market study to determine a forecast turnover of SEO agency.
In this context, it is therefore important to anticipate the potential number of visits per day, per week or even per month, as well as the conversion rate.
How many successful visits will it take to reach your revenue goal? What is my current turnover? For there to be a real return on investment, how much can I afford to spend to make my project profitable?
If you would like support for the drafting of your specifications, contact us!
