Many eCommerce owners start their businesses without having a clear path to follow, so they usually fail. However, there is a way to establish pillars for your eCommerce, allowing you to measure the scope of the tasks you set for yourself.
Business requirements for eCommerce may sound familiar to you; however, what is behind this activity? How are eCommerce business requirements created? Since eCommerce sells products over the Internet, having suitable business website requirements is a must.
In this post, I will tell you about the process of developing a business requirement for your eCommerce website and how you can use them to improve the growth of your business.
So, read more about your business requirements for eCommerce websites!
- What Are Business Website Requirements?
- How Do Business Requirements Affect The Website Development Process?
- Business Requirements For eCommerce Website
- Functional And Non-functional eCommerce Requirements
- Document Functional And Non-Functional Requirements
- High-Level Requirements VS Low-Level Requirements
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion
What Are Business Website Requirements?
Business website requirements are the first objectives to be defined in a project, often written in a website requirements document or the project charter.
Thus, business website requirements comprise the goals, objectives, and expected results that describe why a project is being developed. They can apply to an entire company, a business area, or a specific initiative.
Pro Tip:
Business website requirements usually refer directly to improvements or business objectives that the organization wants to achieve to get a successful website, so they also serve as indicators of the success or failure of the company.
Examples of business website requirements
A few examples of requirements for your eCommerce are the following:
- Automate customer relationship management to reduce average response time by 70% in the next six months.
- Optimize customer order intake to double the number of orders that can be processed in a month.
The examples I just explained are related to a success indicator, so they can be used to measure the outcome and determine whether or not the requirement has been met.
Read on to find out more!
How Do Business Requirements Affect The Website Development Process?
Business website requirement makes it possible to evaluate whether the web project meets the expectations of its customers and stakeholders. Each developed process is a link between what customers expect and what the web development team has to build.
Although many of the principles of business website requirements can be adapted to all types of projects, it is in software development projects where they acquire their whole meaning. They ensure good process management and serve as a basis for controlling changes in the project. It often includes elaborating specific plans for different aspects such as requirements gathering, management, and integration.
Did you know it?
Business Requirements For eCommerce Website
When you want a good positioning for your business website, functional and non-functional requirements must be considered in SEO.
Some of the requirements for the eCommerce website are as follows:
Functional requirements
- Content editor shows SEO score for each article in the back-end
- eCommerce store updated to the latest WooCommerce version
- Generate keywords for the web page
- Responsive design
- URL structure reflect product category tree
- Data exchange between WooCommerce and ERP
- Data exchange between WooCommerce and CRM
- User can pay with PayPal and VISA/Master cards
- Website visitors can register and create an account
Non-functional requirements
- The system must have a user-friendly interface
- Minimalistic and light design
- Google Pagespeed Score on mobile devices 80+
- Scalability when entering new markets – ensuring that the system can scale to meet expected traffic and order volume at normal and peak times
- GDPR Compliance ensures that the platform is sufficiently documented
What business requirements are you currently applying?
Functional And Non-functional eCommerce Requirements
Here I explain the functional and non-functional requirements for your eCommerce website.
Functional requirements
Functional requirements are statements on eCommerce and how it will react to specific prompts. When we talk about inputs, we are not necessarily talking only about user inputs. They can be interactions with a content management system, automatic responses, predefined processes, etc.
In some cases, eCommerce functional requirements also explicitly state what not to do.
Pro Tip:
It is important to remember this, an RF can also be a negative statement. The result of its behavior is a functional response to the user or another system.
Non-functional requirements
These are requirements that do not refer directly to the specific functions provided to the eCommerce but its properties, such as site performance, security, availability, etc. In simpler words, these do not talk about “what” eCommerce does but “how” it does it.
In addition, non-functional requirements originate from user needs due to budgetary constraints, organizational policies, the need for interoperability with other software or hardware systems, or external factors such as security regulations and privacy policies.
Major non-functional requirements
Once you know the functional and non-functional requirements of eCommerce site, you need to find out the main non-functional requirements for your own website.
1. Usability:
Web usability is the part of web design that refers to the efficiency and satisfaction achieved when users interact with your website. The easier it is to navigate a website, the more likely the user finds what they are looking for.
It is why usability is closely related to the satisfaction obtained from the user experience. And it focuses on layout, visual design, branding, sound, and interaction.
2. Security:
Web security consists of every action or tool adopted to prevent information from being exposed or prone to attacks by cybercriminals.
These measures also protect users, such as eCommerce customers, blog readers, and even hosting.
3. Performance:
A web page’s loading speed is one factor that influences its SEO positioning and user experience.
It is because when people browse the internet, they love to see the information in their browsers at high speed. So, Chrome Developers posted an article where asseverated that speed is now used as a ranking factor for mobile searches.
Users do not like to wait either in digital life, so have you already improved the loading speed of your eCommerce?
4. Maintainability:
Regular website maintenance allows you to attract and retain customers with new information, products, and services. It also helps you to maintain or improve your ranking on Google.
5. Scalability:
The hardware, software, code, and web design characteristics determine business websites’ scalability. When designing a scalable website, the primary goal should be to ensure efficient resource management.
Pro Tip:
If you want to achieve this, measures in both the user interface and data storage should be planned and implemented well before implementation, considering the available resources.
Document Functional And Non-Functional Requirements
The main objective of website requirements document is to continue with the definition of the eCommerce website to be developed. As a starting point, it takes the general requirements, and the use cases in its initial version and considers the business objectives and the business model to be implemented.
Characteristics of the requirements
A website requirements document should have the following features:
- Requirements should be well written to facilitate understanding by all project participants. They should use terms from the problem domain with which customers and users are familiar and which should appear in the glossary terms.
- The requirements cannot be misleading, and their wording must help them to be understood in one and only one way by all project participants.
- They must be both grammatically and photographically correct.
- It is written so that one or more tests of reasonable cost and time can be defined to verify that the eCommerce website to develop meets the requirement in question.
- There must be traceability to other requirements or higher-level documentation objects on which it depends.
- Establish requirements that can be implemented using existing technology and at an affordable cost within the project budget.
Remind to apply these tips to get high-quality sites!
High-Level Requirements VS Low-Level Requirements
The high-level requirements of an eCommerce website describe what the target audience should get from a website. These include the minimum required features, the eCommerce site’s interface, and what it should do.
On the other hand, low-level requirements are detailed specifications of how each element of the high-level requirements should work. Low-level requirements are also referred to as design requirements or low-level technical requirements. And they usually include precisely how each website element should be built, including all HTML code and CSS styles. High-level requirements should be written by a person who knows the business better, such as a marketing manager or CEO. At the same time, low-level requirements can be written by someone with technical knowledge, such as web developers or an experienced web designer.
Frequently Asked Questions
To create a business requirement for your website, you must define what your eCommerce needs at this moment. If you require a structural improvement, you should focus on creating a new high-level requirement. It could be, for example, to start optimizing the website loading to get better positioning and improve your search engine marketing.
On the contrary, if you only need to improve a specific aspect within an area, you should create a new low-level requirement, analyzing the options that can give you the result you want. Following the previous example, once you focus on improving the website’s loading, you can focus on how to lighten the weight of the images.
Ecommerce has a series of legal requirements like any other business with a physical store. For example, they are issuing VAT invoices, identifying primary business data, or offering systems for complaints and queries.
However, opening an eCommerce has significant differences from opening a physical store. On the one hand, you must comply with specific regulations protecting your target audience’s data. You must also comply with obligations regarding distance selling, cookie policy, and consumer protection.
Many factors go into the success of your eCommerce, such as product quality, design, website usability, and payment processing options.
How you approach these variables will affect your eCommerce results, so be sure to do your research before you begin.
There are many business requirements that you must implement in your eCommerce; however, I point out what I consider to represent the main ones:
Attractive, intuitive, and responsive design: Whether it is a new website or not, the web design is critical; that’s why you need a mobile-friendly website with a clean interface to ensure that you meet user expectations.
Fast loading: The consumer 3.0 loves immediacy; therefore, one of the requirements of eCommerce is to ensure that the loading speed is fast.
Payment gateways: The payment gateways and shopping cart are decisive for the user to decide to complete the purchase happily.
Shipping: Pay attention to each online shipping and, in case of an incident, try to solve it assertively and helpfully.
Customer service: Facilitate multiple contact channels, promptly resolve user queries and, once the purchase is completed, handle orders efficiently.
Conclusion
When starting an eCommerce website, it is essential to understand the business requirements. It will allow you to create a website that meets all the expectations you have in mind.
This way, you can have an excellent online presence, increase your traffic to generate leads, convert your target audience, increase your sales, and more.
Therefore, if you want an effective eCommerce website, you must know how to employ the business requirements, as I explained.
What are you waiting for to start your journey to success?
