How to Assess an E-Commerce Developer
Web Commerce Today, Issue 23, June 15, 1999
When you're ready to set up an online store for your business, one of the most important decisions you'll make is selecting an e-commerce developer to set it up for you.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that a good deal of your success will depend upon your developer. These days a lot of people claim to be e-commerce developers. How do you evaluate the quality of your prospective developer? Here are some questions you might ask a prospective developer and some things to look for.
What websites and online stores have you built in the past?
The best single guide to a developer's future performance is their track record. Notice the difference between "websites" and "online stores." Though there are many similarities, e-commerce is new to many developers. Make sure they aren't learning on you. If they haven't built an online store before, be very careful. You won't be buying much in terms of experience, and experience is what separates the newbies from the experts.
Everybody makes mistakes. That's how we learn. But you shouldn't be put in a situation where the developer makes mistakes at your expense. The developer should have made all the "appropriate" mistakes on pilot projects and test stores, not yours.
Ask to see URLs of sites and stores the developer has built. Look carefully and "kick the tires." Try out purchasing a product and see how easy the ordering process is. Make a list of your observations about the store -- things you like and things you didn't like -- to ask about during your next contact.
Be sure to ask what the developer's role was in the project. Sometimes developers claim experience on projects, but they only played a minimal role. However, it is entirely legitimate to learn about e-commerce as part of a team. Often this learning is better since it is guided learning.
Who are some past clients I can contact as references?
If you can talk to storeowners who have worked with your developer in the past, you'll learn a lot about how easy he or she is to work with, and how smoothly things went. Sometimes people are hesitant to say anything bad about a developer. You might try this question: "Knowing what you know about this developer, would you hesitate to hire him again for a project you were involved with?" If you hear any hesitation in the answer, there may be something you haven't been told.
What store-building software are you most familiar with?
It's common for developers to have experience with just one or two varieties of store-building software. After all, they can't spend their time learning the ins and outs of every product. The danger is that the developer will try to fit your store into the software they're most familiar with, even if it isn't best for your particular situation.
Try this question as a follow-up: "For what number of products is this software ideal?" If the developer answers, "Oh, it'll handle any number of products," that's good cause for rejection. The truth is that some software is great for up to 500 products, but begins to struggle with 750 or 1000. If the software is designed to handle 100,000 products, you don't want it for a store of 200 products; it'll be overkill.
Should our store have static or dynamically-generated pages?
If the developer gives you a blank stare to this question, that should tell you something. Static pages are created and remain visible on the Web for search engines to see, even if there's no customer looking at a particular page. Dynamically-generated pages are form from a database and a template, and only exist in real time when a customer is viewing them.
In a perfect world static pages are usually best, since each page will be indexed by the search engines (unless the path has a /cgi-bin or some exotic page type). But when you get to thousands of products, manipulating the thousands of webpages needed becomes extremely cumbersome. Then dynamically-generated pages are much easier to maintain.
If you have more, say, than 500 to 1000 products, the chances are your developer will suggest dynamically generated pages. If not, ask why. If the developer suggests dynamically generated pages for 150 products, ask why also.
What do you do to maximize the store's "conversion rate"?
Conversion rate is the percentage of customers in your store who actually make a purchase. This can often vary from 0.5% to 5%, depending upon many factors. Any increase in the conversion rate will have a dramatic effect on profitability. Moving from 0.5% to 1.0% conversion rate, for example, will make your day!
Any computer whiz can build an online store, but few will understand customer online shopping psychology. In the same way, any box boy can stock products on grocery shelves, but decisions about what goes on what shelf are often made by highly-paid store planners who track shopping behavior.
We haven't reached that degree of scientific analysis in the online store building business yet (though it's possible in existing stores with careful traffic analysis software). But we've learned how to offer specials in a way that encourages impulse buying, for example. We've learned to keep product hierarchies as flat as possible in categories and subcategories. We've learned to use multiple navigation systems to get the customer to the product in a hurry.
We also know that decreasing the number of clicks required to place an order will have a dramatic difference on the percentage of shopping carts left in the aisles at the end of the day. A skilled store designer will work out the easiest way for a customer to place a product in the shopping cart, and then subtly prod her towards the checkout stand with multiple opportunities to complete the order.
What security measures will protect me and my customers?
Security isn't much of a concern for website developers, but e-commerce developers must consider it very carefully, since customers are sometimes fearful of their credit card information being stolen by hackers. At the very least expect your developer to tell you about SSL (Secure Socket Layers) protection between the order form and the shopper's web browser. Ask if you'll need a digital certificate. This depends on how the hosting service configures their server. Ask if the system your developer recommends can be easily upgraded to adopt the SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) protocols when SET becomes more popular.
Be sure to ask if you will be able to pick up orders using an SSL secure interface. I was amazed recently when I reviewed a well-known store software package that recommended downloading batches of orders using FTP, an insecure order transfer method. It's your developer's job to design a secure system.
How will you select a web hosting service for the store?
The larger and more traffic you expect in your online store, the sturdier the platform you'll require. Typically, stores of 2,000 products and up will probably require a monthly hosting fee of $300 to $500, since they require special database serving capabilities. High traffic sites will go far higher that. Smaller stores can be hosted for $40 to $50 per month.
Some developers do their own hosting. While this may be appropriate, there could be problems. Some companies are mainly in the development business, and their hosting is for their own clients only. They may skimp on hardware, security, high capacity connections to the Internet. Other companies are mainly in the hosting business, but do some development on the side.
Still other developers get their clients' sites hosted by high quality web hosting companies and resell these services to their clients. Some developers may have the storeowner contract separately with the hosting company.
If you are a larger company and already have IT personnel on staff, you may be better off hosting the store in-house -- though don't do this unless there are pretty good reasons to do so, such as increased security, better access to data, faster updating. When possible I recommend outsourcing hosting, at least at first.
However it is done, make sure you understand what your developer has in mind. There's no one right way. I would be very careful, however, of a developer hosting your online store using his own webserver unless you know it is an extremely well-run operation.
Who will own the site when you have finished your work?
Finally, make sure that all rights are transferred to your company upon completion and final payment for the project. Getting this kind of information in writing can save you some pain later on.
Who should provide day-to-day maintenance of the store?
I am convinced that any successful webstore needs to day-to-day maintenance done by in-house staff, not outsourced to a developer. The developer's essential role is to get the store up and running with excellence. Then the developer needs to turn over operation of the store to the storeowner. Ask what training is necessary to enable staff to be ready to do the maintenance themselves and who will do the training. Distrust a developer who offers to do it all for you -- it's likely to diminish your control over your business while fattening the developer's pockets.
What kind of team do you have to develop this project?
Realize that excellent online stores require a number of disciplines to come together in the development team. The developer may have these skills in-house, or he may outsource certain elements to subcontractors. Here are the skills needed:
- Webpage design and HTML . This is pretty basic, and all developers will possess this expertise.
- Graphic design . Your developer may outsource some of the artistic elements of your site.
- Navigation design . This is especially important in stores with hundreds or thousands of products. If you can afford it, you might want to specify a usability expert to be part of the team.
- Ordering system design . Even though a developer can't change certain elements of off-the-shelf store software ordering system, many elements can be customized to make ordering efficient. The goal is to make purchases with the fewest number of clicks.
- Database programming . The larger the store the more important the product database becomes. Stores with hundreds and thousands of products are by necessity run with product templates and online databases. Customization of these templates sometimes requires database programming ability.
- Merchandising design . Your products can be displayed tastefully and with full information, or in haphazard fashion. And the product display has a lot to do with whether customers will click on the order button.
- Marketing design . Unless the store is designed with marketing in mind, you could miss a lot of potential traffic.
It's quite appropriate to ask a developer how his firm will handle each of these elements, and give you good insight into the breadth of experience your developer has at his disposal.
What time frame will be required for completion?
Be fair to the developer. Time for completion begins counting after you have given the developer your product database and photos. An appropriate time period is two months for projects that don't require a lot of programming to six months for projects that do. You'd be wise to calendar various checkpoints with your developer to make sure he stays on track.
How much will this project cost?
Notice that cost is one of the last questions, not the first. Of course, you need to be on the alert for price gouging. But any price is too low if the developer is inexperienced.
It might be helpful to work with a single developer to prepare the information you need for him or her to give you a firm price. Take those parameters, and ask several firms to give you a bid. Don't send the bid to them without pre-qualifying them and talking with them. Busy developers -- and the good ones are very busy these days -- don't have time to prepare bids unless they think the client is serious.
Expect the bids to vary widely. After you've looked them over, ask the highest bidder why her price is thousands of dollars higher than the mid-range. They may be building in services you desperately need. Ask the lowest bidder how he can undercut the median bid by thousands of dollars. You may find that what he offers is perfectly adequate.
Keep the project cost in perspective. Two years from now it won't matter so much how much you paid for your online store, if it is bringing in the orders that are your business's lifeblood. Then you'll know that the hard work you did selecting the right developer paid off in business success.
Sidebar: Why Not Set Up Your Own Online Store?