E-Commerce Build Checklist: What to Settle Before You Hire a Team

Why does an e-commerce build need a checklist?

Most proposals for an online store look alike: a design phase, a platform, a launch date. The differences that decide whether the store works show up later, in how the catalog is managed, how orders reach the ERP, and who answers the phone when checkout slows down during your busiest week.

Netsam treats commerce as an integration problem first and a design problem second, because most stores that convert badly do so when the data behind them is unreliable. The checklist below is the one we use in discovery for e-commerce platform engineering projects. It works just as well for comparing any team's proposal.

What should the storefront and catalog requirements cover?

Start with how people actually buy from you, not with a page list. A DTC brand with a small catalog has very different needs from a distributor with thousands of SKUs and account pricing.

• Your real buying paths: browse, search, reorder, quote request or quick order by SKU.
• Catalog size, product variations and the attributes shoppers filter by.
• Who updates products, prices and promotions, and whether changes are staged and reviewed before going live.
• Search behavior, including misspellings, part numbers and synonyms.
• Step-level funnel reporting from launch, so you can see where shoppers leave.

Which ERP, CRM and inventory integrations will the store need?

Integrations are where most e-commerce builds go over time and budget, usually because they were discovered late. List every system that touches orders, stock, pricing and customers, and agree up front which one owns each fact.

Ask any team you are considering how they will document each integration: which data moves, in which direction, how often, and what happens when a message fails. A good answer includes retries, logging and an exception queue where a person resolves what automation cannot. Our order processing and customer portal project is an example of that pattern, with AI reading incoming order documents and staff approving exceptions.

• ERP: orders, invoices, price lists and stock on hand.
• Warehouse or inventory system: allocation, receipts and fulfillment status.
• CRM: customer accounts, history and contact preferences.
• Shipping, tax and marketing tools.

How should checkout and payments be designed?

Checkout should be short, fast and built around your real customers: guest checkout for consumers, saved addresses and purchase order fields for business buyers, and wallet payments for mobile shoppers. Shipping costs and delivery dates should appear before the final step, not as a surprise.

Payments should run through a tokenized payment provider, so card numbers never touch your servers and PCI DSS scope stays as small as possible. Your business still keeps its own PCI DSS validation, but a smaller scope means fewer systems to protect and document. Ask how the team will control which scripts run on checkout pages and how checkout will be monitored after launch.

Do we need a mobile app, or is a mobile storefront enough?

For most stores, a fast, responsive mobile storefront comes first. It serves shoppers arriving from search, ads and email without asking them to install anything. Test it on real phones over ordinary connections, not just on a designer's desktop, and measure page speed against agreed targets.

A progressive web app adds app-like features, such as home-screen access and faster repeat visits, without an app-store install. A native app is worth its ongoing cost when you have frequent repeat buyers who would use features like saved lists, scanning or fast reorder. We recommend one where the experience justifies it, not by default.

Who will host and maintain the store after launch?

This question is often left until the end, and it shapes everything. When one company builds the store and another hosts it, performance problems become an argument between them. Netsam hosts what it builds, so performance targets, patching and monitoring sit inside the same accountability boundary as the application.

Ask about staging environments, patch schedules, restore testing and load testing before peak season. Then ask how the team will keep improving the store, because launch is the start of the work. You can read more about our process on how we work.

If you are scoping a new store, a B2B portal or a replatform, tell us about your project or call 866-294-3489. We work with retailers and distributors in Dallas–Fort Worth, across Texas and the Southwest, and nationwide.

Frequently asked questions