What an Online Store Needs Before Development

An online store is not a website with a “Buy” button. It is an operational sales system: catalogue, payments, delivery, documents, and processes that must work together from day one. Here is what to clarify before development starts.

The catalogue: data is half the work

Every product needs a name, description, price, photos, stock level, and category. It sounds obvious, but with 200 products that is 200 rows of decisions. Prepare a spreadsheet early and decide:

• Are there variants (size, color) and how are they priced?
• Who maintains stock — a person or an integration with inventory software?
• Which filters are genuinely useful for the customer?

Payments

Standard practice combines several methods: card payments, cash on delivery, and bank transfer. Each has fees, settlement times, and operational consequences. Cash on delivery brings more orders but also more refusals — plan a policy for them.

Delivery

Courier integration saves hours every week: automatic waybills, tracking, office and locker maps. Decide in advance who pays for shipping, whether there is a free-delivery threshold, and how returns are handled.

Legal groundwork

• Terms and conditions and a GDPR-compliant privacy policy.
• The 14-day right of withdrawal and a clear returns procedure.
• Correctly displayed prices, including VAT and delivery costs.

The operational process

Who gets notified about a new order? Who confirms it, packs it, and hands it to the courier? If the answer is “we do not know yet,” the store will produce chaos instead of sales. A short written flow — from order to delivery — prevents most future disputes.

The takeaway

The earlier these decisions are clear, the faster and more predictable development becomes. We go through every one of these points with a structured questionnaire before the proposal — so you know what you are getting and why.