Having a good, detailed concept is the first step in creating a profitable business. It all starts with functional and non-functional requirements of eCommerce platforms. Your project will collapse without this solid foundation.
For example, such a famous e-commerce development company as IT Delight, always starts with clarifying the client’s functional and non-functional requirements for their project. This ensures that they meet client expectations for their services, while allowing the client to make necessary adjustments to the project’s scope and providing users with a pleasant shopping experience.
Functional Vs Non-Functional Requirements
The what of your website is outlined in its functional requirements (FRs). The features and procedures that make your online business useful to customers are included into this category. In fact, they are the foundation of the platform development lifecycle. As an illustration, a home renovation online store may lack the following filtering features: price, popularity, power rate (Watt), heating area (m2).
How your website works is described in its non-functional requirements (NFRs). Known as the system’s “quality attributes,” they shape the user’s overall impression and establish broad, generalized assumptions about the product.
Summing up, the functional requirements may be the basis of the non-functional requirements, which are then realized as a collection of web features.
Functional Requirements: The Core Of Your Store
A company’s specific goals and market niche will dictate the types of functional criteria that must be met by their online store management system. Websites catering to the fashion industry often let customers choose certain product qualities (color, size, etc.), while those serving travelers may need a chatbot to help them, and those devoted to jewelry may require a zooming option on their product detail pages.
The following are a few universally required feature sets for online marketplaces.
1. External Integrations
Select the external applications you wish to integrate into your fresh website. This requirement applies to both client payment gateways that are adaptable and systems that streamline corporate processes (such as those for customer relationship management or product information management). Setting a limit on the number of third-party integrations can help organize your e-commerce infrastructure and prepare it for future growth.
2. Mobile-Friendliness
It’s widely known that websites with applications that are optimized for mobile devices get more visitors. Statista reports that in the United States, mobile device conversion rates have now caught up to those of desktop computers. Therefore, making your website mobile-friendly is a worthwhile investment that may bring in additional cash and some satisfied returning customers.
3. Product Characteristics
Your product detail pages will comprise a number of product attributes, and the development company has to be aware of them in order to incorporate the appropriate features. Will there be no more options except size and color for the customer to make? Can you play videos on a PDP? Is it planned to include product features on a pull-down menu? You should provide your programmers with a list of all the features your website needs.
4. Flow Of Orders And Payments
When writing functional requirements for an e-commerce platform, be sure to detail how orders are handled and whether or not this process may be improved. Indicate whether or not guest checkout is available or if registration is required. Specify which order updates you’d want to see. Outline your plans for handling orders from businesses. In a nutshell, it’s important to provide as much information as possible concerning the ordering and payment processes.
Non-Functional Requirements: The flair Of Your website
As was previously noted, non-functional criteria specify the intangible qualities of a website that contribute to its superior usability and peak efficiency. Every online store’s requirements document must include the following non-functional requirements.
1. Security
Dealing with money and private information requires a high level of security. Instilling trust in your website and converting customers into brand enthusiasts requires little more than an SSL certificate and a data protection policy.
It’s also about assigning powers and functions to users so you can manage their access to administrative features like creating, viewing, copying, editing, and deleting data. If your company operates in a country with strict regulations regarding the storage and disclosure of personal information, then security is a top priority.
2. Usability
In the end, it doesn’t matter how big or small your company is, you always want your website to be simple and straightforward to navigate. Users will decide whether or not your site is worthwhile in roughly 0.05 seconds.
Consequently, you should focus on making your site more engaging, clear, and straightforward to navigate and purchase from if you want to avoid losing customers in the crucial first few seconds. Usability of a website may also be described as how quickly and effortlessly consumers complete activities in-store and how effectively they utilize the store’s layout.
3. Website Performance
If you want more people to visit your website, you need to make performance a top non-functional requirement. This NFR is frequently encountered in briefs from large businesses or websites with legacy architecture: regardless of the number of integrations and sales seasons, they expect their online stores to load quickly.
Indicators of success might include time to preview, maximum number of stock-keeping units, or anything else relevant to your company’s needs. However, you shouldn’t include in the time taken by third-party systems; if a business transaction is dependent on an API call to another database, your engineers won’t be able to change it.
4. Maintainability
Budgeting for the ongoing expenses of running a business is notoriously difficult. It will take less time and money to find and fix system errors in the future if the website is designed to be maintainable from the beginning of its development.
Despite how discouraging it may be, there is no way to prevent future problems from occurring, and there are plenty of lessons to be learned about keeping an e-commerce site up and running. However, it is your responsibility to ensure that the system can be easily maintained from day one.
In Conclusion
Don’t let your eCommerce website’s functional and non-functional needs hold you back; use them to your advantage. Time and effort may be saved by thoroughly filling out the brief and outlining your requirements. Be proactive and answer the developers’ queries before they ask them to speed up the release process.
