Creating and developing online stores is now essential in the world of digital commerce. However, running a successful online store means much more than simply creating a nice-looking sales page, which is why webshop onboarding is necessary. This process is critically important to ensure that at every development step on the website, we take the customer’s perspective into account. How does this process work with us? Let’s see!
What is webshop onboarding and why is it important?
Onboarding for website development is a process based on deeper understanding, during which we, as service providers, strive to get to know the new customer’s business, needs, and goals. The fundamental purpose of this is to use this information to create a web store that truly meets the customer’s expectations and helps them achieve their goals. The discussions during onboarding allow us to make every development decision based on the customer’s needs and the specific characteristics of their business. This includes the types of products they offer, customer behavior, and the functions needed to achieve business goals.
A thorough and attentive onboarding process helps build customer trust, as it becomes clear to them that we are truly committed to ensuring that our joint work meets their specific needs. For this reason, we have created a form that helps facilitate the entire process.
How does webshop development onboarding work with us?
Taking into account a thorough understanding of customer needs, we have created a webshop development form that helps us request precise data and information for the development. The customer’s only job is to fill out this form, and we analyze the incoming data, and once we’ve discussed everything, the joint work can begin!
What does the form contain?
Everything that someone who wants to create a webshop might not naturally think of, yet this information is essential for developing a functioning webshop. By filling out the form, the customer provides their billing information, chosen domain name, and reveals whether they want a rented or custom-developed webshop. Additionally, we request detailed information about contact and legal information, as well as the webshop’s appearance and functionality. It is important to us that we thoroughly understand every aspect of the customer’s needs so that the webshop we develop truly meets their expectations and works perfectly.
Rented or custom webshop?
It is very important to determine whether the customer wants a rented/boxed (such as Shopify, ShopRenter), or custom-developed webshop, because in those cases development options are limited since ready-made modules are available. In this case, we cannot develop for the webshop, only modify the external appearance of the page.
Contact and legal information
Contact and data management information is essential for the proper functioning of a webshop. For this reason, we ask customers to determine what contact information they want to display on the webshop (company name, email address(es), phone number(s), colleagues’ contact information). Also, it is vital to include legal information, which will require documents such as privacy policy and general terms and conditions, Data Protection Policy, Impressum, etc.
Appearance
An important question is whether the customer has contracted with us for brand identity design or not. If they have, we need to precisely define even the smallest appearance details, such as: font type, letter colors, guidelines, etc. If a customer doesn’t need brand identity design, we usually ask them to upload their existing one as an attachment so we can adapt to their current appearance.
Functionality
Product data is very important to us because we need to know what products are expected to be sold. In this section, we focus on filter attributes. We are interested in characteristics such as: product category (shirt – women’s), product tag (summer, winter), and attributes (color, size). Based on this, we request details about the products, including product images.
Shipping methods
Regarding the webshop, interesting information for a buyer is also how they can receive the customer’s products. Is there home delivery, or are packages placed at a pickup point, and is there free shipping or not? We also need to display this information on the webshop and create the so-called cart rules for it, which is why they are important.
Payment methods
For development settings, we need to know the payment options determined by the customer. For example, whether there will be card payment or not. Card payments are typically processed through an external service provider (Simple Pay, Barion, Stripe, etc.), so the customer needs to register with such a provider and then send us the login information needed to connect. The same applies to setting up automatic invoicing.
Other content
In the miscellaneous category, the customer needs to list any content that is not directly related to the webshop purchasing process. This could be an About Us page, gallery, contact page, etc.
Webshop development onboarding is therefore critically important during web development, because our primary interest is to understand our customers’ businesses and needs in order to provide them with the best possible result.
If you feel that your business also needs a new webshop, reach out to us with confidence!
