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Want to start an online business? It’s never been easier thanks to the wide availability of tools and resources for eCommerce owners on the internet, it’s never been easier. On the other hand, competition in online sales has never been more fierce. Only those with knowledge, patience, and experience know how to win.
This article explores the most essential eCommerce website requirements in 2025. As a result, you can focus only on the important factors for success and build a brilliant digital store.
>> Also find:
- Magento Open-source Feature List
- How to create an eCommerce business plan in 2025?
- 14 Must-Have Features for Successful Ecommerce Websites
Functional requirements of an eCommerce system checklist
Functional requirements for an eCommerce system define the essential features and operations that the system must support to provide a seamless shopping experience for users. Here are the key functional requirements typically associated with an eCommerce platform:
| Functional Requirement | Description |
| 1. User Account Management | – Registration and Login – Password Recovery |
| 2. Product Catalog | – Product Listings – Product Categories – Search Functionality – Filtering and Sorting Options |
| 3. Shopping Cart | – Add/Remove Items – View Cart – Save for Later |
| 4. Checkout Process | – Guest Checkout Option – Shipping Options – Payment Processing – Order Review |
| 5. Order Management | – Order Tracking – Order History – Returns and Cancellations |
| 6. Inventory Management | – Stock Levels Monitoring – Inventory Updates |
| 7. Content Management System (CMS) | – Blog/News Section – Banner Management |
| 8. Customer Support Features | – Live Chat Support – FAQ Section |
| 9. Analytics and Reporting | – Track user behavior, sales data, and inventory levels |
| 10. Integration Capabilities | – Ability to integrate with third-party services like CRM systems, ERP systems, and shipping providers |
Infrastructure requirements for eCommerce website checklist
The infrastructure requirements for an eCommerce system encompass a range of hardware, software, and services necessary to support online transactions and ensure smooth operations. Below are the key components of eCommerce infrastructure:
| Infrastructure Component | Description |
|---|---|
| 1. Web Servers | Hardware or software that stores and serves web pages to users via HTTP. They handle visitor requests and deliver content. |
| 2. Database Servers | Systems that store, manage, and retrieve data essential for online transactions and customer information. |
| 3. Shopping Cart Systems | Software that facilitates the addition of products to a cart, enabling users to review and finalize purchases. |
| 4. Payment Gateways | Secure systems that process online payments, ensuring safe transactions between customers and merchants. |
| 5. Inventory Management Systems | Tools that track product availability, manage stock levels, and facilitate reordering processes. |
| 6. Order Processing Systems | Software that manages order fulfillment, including processing, shipping, and tracking orders. |
| 7. Security Tools and Protocols | Measures such as firewalls, encryption, and fraud detection systems to protect sensitive customer data and transactions. |
| 8. Load Balancers | Systems that distribute incoming traffic across multiple servers to improve performance and reliability during high demand. |
| 9. Backup Systems | Solutions for regularly saving data to prevent loss in case of system failures or breaches. |
| 10. Content Management System (CMS) | Software that allows for easy management of website content, including product descriptions, images, and blog posts. |
| 11. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) | Tools for managing customer interactions, tracking sales data, and enhancing customer service efforts. |
| 12. Analytics and Reporting Tools | Systems to monitor website performance, user behavior, sales trends, and inventory levels for informed decision-making. |
| 13. Scalability Solutions | Infrastructure designed to accommodate growth in traffic and transactions without compromising performance. |
| 14. Integration Capabilities | Ability to connect with third-party services (e.g., shipping providers, marketing tools) for seamless operations. |
Detail eCommerce website requirements checklist
1. Fast, stable & secure web hosting
To launch your eCommerce website successfully, you need a reliable web hosting service. Web hosting provides essential facilities for launching, storing and maintaining websites on the internet. Hosting plays a critical role in ensuring your site’s speed, uptime and security—factors that are essential for meeting ecommerce website requirements.
We will get into each factor now.
Security
As cybersecurity remains a top priority for all internet users, creating a secure environment is critical to meeting ecommerce website requirements. Customers need to feel confident that their personal and financial information is safe during checkout.
For example, web browsers alert users when they visit a site without an SSL certificate, identified by the “HTTP” prefix. This warning alone can discourage potential buyers from trusting your online store. Implementing SSL encryption not only secures your site but also fosters trust, which is essential for successful eCommerce operations.
For store owners, a secured website brings additional benefits. It provides protection against cyberattacks, data theft, and other risks that can jeopardize business operations. By prioritizing security, you ensure compliance with key requirements for eCommerce websites while safeguarding both your customers and your brand reputation.
Stability
If your eCommerce store unexpectedly goes offline while customers are shopping, you risk losing sales and damaging your reputation. For online businesses, ensuring continuous availability is critical. Digital stores must remain live at all times, except during planned maintenance.
A key metric for meeting ecommerce website requirements is uptime. Ideally, your website should maintain an uptime of at least 99%, meaning it’s accessible to customers almost all the time. Downtime, including periods for maintenance or unexpected system issues, should account for less than 1%.
Speed
Over a decade ago, Amazon revealed that every additional 100ms in loading time could cost them 1% of their sales. This insight remains as relevant today as it was then. Major platforms like Amazon, Google, Netflix and Facebook prioritize fast-loading pages because customers have grown accustomed to these seamless experiences.
In fact, Google recommends that no web page take longer than 2 seconds to load—a benchmark for eCommerce website requirements. Achieving this goal is crucial for improving customer satisfaction and boosting conversions.
While your website’s speed performance depends on factors like its size and technical structure, web hosting is equally important. High-quality hosting plans offering better bandwidth and CDN (Content Delivery Network) features ensure faster page loading times. Choosing the right eCommerce hosting provider can address several critical requirements for eCommerce websites, including performance, security, and stability.
For those who prefer not to manage technical details, SaaS platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce offer a simplified solution. These platforms handle all aspects of hosting, allowing you to focus entirely on growing your business and optimizing your product offerings.
>> Read more: eCommerce Hosting: all you should know + best options
2. Highly-responsive mobile site
Responsiveness ensures your online store can adapt seamlessly to various screen sizes, which is a vital aspect of meeting ecommerce website requirements and delivering a flawless customer experience.
Consider these statistics: According to Shopify, 71% of Black Friday Cyber Monday sales in 2021 were made via mobile devices, with desktop sales accounting for just 29%. These trends underscore the importance of mobile optimization for all eCommerce stores.
To create a seamless mobile shopping experience, store owners should focus on key details. For instance:
- Enhance usability: Use larger call-to-action buttons for easy fingertip navigation and ensure text banners are fully visible on smaller screens.
- Leverage PWA technology: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) significantly improve mobile performance, enabling faster loading, offline shopping capabilities, and web push notifications. This technology creates an app-like experience directly within the browser.
- Consider a native app: If your store has a large product catalog (SKUs) or aims to build a loyal customer community, a dedicated mobile app can maximize engagement and revenue.
The Siminia Theme is a perfect solution for enhancing the mobile experience of your eCommerce store. Built on PWA Studio, Siminia transforms your website into a fast, engaging, and mobile-friendly headless storefront. This theme optimizes performance and delivers an app-like user experience, meeting the most crucial requirements for an eCommerce website while maximizing mobile conversions.
CLICK HERE to install Siminia Theme to your Magento store for free!
>> Read more:
3. User-friendly web design
UI/UX design is crucial in capturing customers’ attention the moment they land on your site, showcasing your products and brand in the best possible way. While creativity can set your store apart, the cornerstone of an effective design is user-friendliness—a key element of ecommerce website requirements.
Before getting into details, here’re some stats from Hubspot that speak:
- 42% of visitors leave a website due to poor functionality.
- 38.5% of web designers identify outdated designs as a major cause of high exit rates.
- 22% of first-time visitors are drawn in by eye-catching colors, while 21% leave if the colors feel too extreme.
- 38% of visitors focus on understanding layouts and finding navigation links when browsing a website for the first time.
(Source: Hubspot)
Websites that fail to deliver intuitive, visually appealing, and responsive designs often struggle to meet the expectations of modern shoppers. These shortcomings highlight the importance of adhering to requirements for eCommerce website design.
For a modern eCommerce website, a user-friendly design allows visitors to:
- Easily navigate the website
- Browse products effortlessly
- Access information quickly
- Complete the checkout process without frustration
At the same time, such designs captivate users with attractive visuals and clean layouts, creating an enjoyable browsing experience.
- Clean Design: Avoid overly complicated visuals that overwhelm visitors.
- Balanced Colors: Use colors that are visually pleasing—neither too dull nor overly flashy.
- Clear Layouts: Organize content intuitively with straightforward navigation menus.
By following these ecommerce website design requirements, you can build an engaging and functional online store that meets user needs while driving sales.
>> Read more
4. Robust operation systems
Efficient inventory and order management systems are crucial for meeting ecommerce website requirements, saving time on manual tasks and enabling smooth operation of your digital store.
For example, your eCommerce platform’s backend can handle key inventory tasks such as managing stock across multiple warehouses, batch-importing catalogs and customer information, calculating tax rates based on location, and setting low-stock alerts. These functions simplify complex processes, ensuring your store runs efficiently.
Popular platforms like Magento, Shopify, and Wix provide robust inventory and order management features, though their specific offerings vary:
- Magento: Ideal for managing multiple online stores simultaneously, Magento excels in advanced inventory control and scalability, making it a top choice for businesses with complex requirements.
- Shopify: Perfect for dropshipping or print-on-demand businesses, Shopify offers a wide range of supporting extensions and has low startup costs, making it highly accessible.
- Wix: A user-friendly option for smaller businesses, Wix offers straightforward inventory management features tailored for simplicity.
Selecting the right platform based on your business model ensures you meet critical ecommerce system requirements, paving the way for a seamless shopping experience for your customers.
>> Related articles: Best Order Printers for Shopify
5. Fast checkout process
Seven out of every ten customers leave their cart abandoned. This means that 70% of customers do not complete the transaction for what they intended to buy.
One of the most prominent reasons is the complicated checkout process.
Lots of buying decisions are impulsive. Consumers buy when they are in the mood for it. Lengthy checkout, meanwhile, destroys their patience and motivation to buy.
A smooth checkout enables payments to be made in no time while customers are still excited to buy, thus, maximizing sales potential.
To meet ecommerce website requirements and improve conversion rates, there are some essential things to be done for checkout pages:
- Consider social login for customers who are lazy to create an account
- Use one-page checkout instead of a multi-step checkout
- Show transparent, real-time shipping fees and avoid adding hidden costs
- Integrate with common payment gateways in your country
6. Transparent brand information pages
For an eCommerce website, the homepage, category pages and product pages are crucial—they showcase your products and highlight their value. However, it’s equally important to pay attention to other informational pages that support the shopping experience and build trust with your customers. These include:
- About Us
- FAQ
- Terms & Policy
- Size Guide
- Contact Us
- Return Policy
Each of these pages serves a specific purpose. The About Us page allows you to communicate your brand values and connect with customers, encouraging them to make a purchase. Meanwhile, the Return Policy page provides clear expectations about returns, helping avoid misunderstandings or disputes.
In general, these information pages contribute to a seamless shopping experience and are critical in meeting ecommerce website requirements. They provide valuable details that influence purchasing decisions, demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction, and enhance your store’s credibility.
>> Read more: How to write an eCommerce returns policy?
7. SEO-friendly web pages
SEO (search engine optimization) is the practice of getting your eCommerce website found on search engines like Google and Bing.
Just like a sausage vendor wants their trucks to be parked in the busiest locations to attract the most customers, you want your eCommerce store to rank high on search engine result pages to drive significant traffic. While appearing on every search result page may not be necessary, it is crucial for your website to show up in search results relevant to your products.
A study by Search Engine Land reveals that 52.3% of website traffic comes from organic search results, and 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. Since platforms like Google are trusted sources for consumers to discover and research products, having an SEO-friendly eCommerce website is essential to attract potential customers.
The best part? SEO often requires little to no financial investment.
To improve your rankings, you need to understand SEO requirements for an eCommerce website, tailor your site content, and make necessary technical adjustments. Choosing SEO-optimized themes or templates is a smart move. For instance, if you’re using Shopify, selecting the best SEO-friendly Shopify themes can simplify your efforts by providing built-in tools, excellent user experience (UX), fast-loading pages, and minimal maintenance. These features help meet the requirements for achieving high visibility on search engines.
>> Read more: Best eCommerce SEO practice for beginners
8. Smooth sales channels integration
When planning your ecommerce website requirements, consider seamless integration capabilities, omnichannel functionality, and tools for effective advertising campaigns. Meeting these requirements ensures a consistent customer experience and maximizes your business potential.
Connecting your online website with your brick-and-mortar stores unifies inventory & order data as well as leverages customer experience.
For example, while shopping in a physical store, buyers can scan QR codes to browse product information on thone store’s online sites & use vouchers sent in their emails to purchase.
Besides, from social media like Facebook, Instagram to marketplaces like Amazon, expanding your sales channels increases your chances of getting found online, which means more revenue.
Many Shopify stores that are successful with their unique product lines integrate with Amazon to reach more potential customers. Moreover, using Instagram ads to drive users to eCommerce sites is also a common tactic to increase sales.
Omnichannel experiences like these improve customer satisfaction, foster brand loyalty, streamline operation, unify data sources and boost sales.
Plus, ever since the pandemic, consumers have shifted to buying online. The trend is expected to last even after Covid-19 when consumers take advantage of both digital and physical shopping.
9. Product reviews
Besides price consideration, customers also have many doubts before buying products from a brand they haven’t purchased before. It’s especially true if you sell high-value products like electric goods or furniture.
Besides, product reviews are by far the most convincing way to break this barrier and boost new customers’ buying confidence. People purposely turn to reviews to find trust and information. On the other hand, if a site has little or no reviews, they will question the brand’s reliability and, in many cases, end up not buying.
For this reason, any eCommerce newbie should make a good effort to collect reviews & testimonials.
10. Personalized product recommendations
Whether you’re refining your current platform or building a new one, consider personalization a critical component of your ecommerce website development requirements.
Instead of showing random product recommendations, the personalization practice is based on various sources of data like customer browsing history and your site’s real-time bestsellers to promote products. These suggestions are more relevant to the specific needs of each customer, which increases the chance of sales.
It has been proven to be an effective upsell & cross-sell tactic. In fact, 35% of Amazon’s revenues come from personalized recommendations alone.
>> Read more: Personalization Product Recommendation – Best examples
11. Low shipping fee
It’s common for giant eCommerce websites like Amazon, Alibaba to take advantage of their advanced fulfillment systems to offer free shipping. The bad thing is, consumers are so accustomed to getting freeship that they take it quite seriously. 61% of customers are “somewhat likely” to stop buying if there is no free-delivery offer.
On the other hand, small businesses with limited budgets can not offer free shipping the way the big guys do. The challenge is to make it as affordable as possible, while still maintaining shipping quality.
For businesses evaluating ecommerce website requirements, here are some suggestions:
- Offer free shipping if customers’ order values reach a certain threshold
- Increase inventories across locations to reduce the shipping distances
- Since shipping cost depends on your packages’ sizes and weights, check order history to see how many products you often send at once & figure out the most common package size of your orders. This will help you find the type of shipping boxes that best fit your brand’s products in general.
12. Integration with a digital advertising service
Many ecommerce website requirements include integrating ad tools and analytics to optimize advertising efforts effectively. While paid ads like Facebook Ads and Google Ads can deliver quick visibility and sales, they can also become a costly trial-and-error process for beginners.
To maximize ROI, new eCommerce businesses often use their initial campaigns to gather valuable insights rather than focusing solely on conversions. This experimentation phase helps brands identify which platforms resonate with their target audience, what messaging drives engagement, and how to refine their strategy.
By pairing this learning process with robust ecommerce system requirements, such as tracking tools and analytics, businesses can build a data-driven approach to advertising. Over time, this allows for creating high-performing campaigns that not only convert but also align with the broader objectives of your online store.
13. Integration with an email marketing tool
Besides acquiring new customers, nurturing your existing customers and turning them into frequent buyers should be a priority for every eCommerce brand.
While it may take lots of effort, from ads to promotions to product reviews, to get people to buy the first time, it’s easier to encourage them to buy again once they’ve loved your products and services already.
Moreover, sending eCommerce emails with personalized product recommendations, promotion notifications, and other engaging content builds customer relationships & converts perfectly.
According to statistics, for every $1 spent on email marketing, you can earn $37 in revenue. Overall, eCommerce marketing experts estimate that email marketing contributes to at least 30% of a brand’s total revenue.
Integrating your eCommerce website with an email marketing tool is the essential first step. Additionally, implementing creative pop-ups on your site can help you effectively collect a high-quality email list to kickstart your campaigns.
>> See more: eCommerce personalized emails
14. Blogs
Blog is an effective content marketing channel to attract new visitors and turn them into loyal buyers. It helps increase SEO visibility significantly, which means more customers will find your eCommerce site.
Also, by providing useful tips, reviews, instructions & entertaining content for your users, you can keep customers coming back to your website and build brand loyalty.
Building a useful blog can take time and effort, but it can be totally free. A blog is a great way to build up a successful eCommerce website from scratch with only knowledge and creativity needed. It’s particularly true for small businesses when investing in ads or other paid marketing tools can cost greatly.
15. Report + Analytics tool
Reports are essential to measure how your website performs to decide the next action.
Besides revenues and the number of products sold, there are other metrics worth knowing. For example, sales conversion rate, website traffic, email opt-in rate, average customer value and cart abandonment rate.
Any popular eCommerce platform that you may use can provide some sort of analytics and data. For instance, Magento features reports for sales, taxes, abandoned carts, most viewed products, and more.
Of all analytics tools, Google Analytics is the most common. Google Analytics helps measure SEO performance, understand different sources of customers, your best-viewed web pages, and more.
As your business grows, you can integrate with more data tools to take advantage of AI and big data analytics for a deeper dive into your customer insights.
Questions to ask when building a ecommerce website
Why do you need an eCommerce website?
- Wider Reach: Access to a global customer base 24/7.
- Cost-Effective: Lower operational costs compared to physical stores.
- Customer Insights: Ability to track user behavior and preferences for better marketing strategies.
- Convenience: Provides customers with a seamless shopping experience from anywhere
What are basic modules of eCommerce website?
- Product Catalog: Organizes and displays products with categories and descriptions.
- Shopping Cart: Allows customers to add, remove, and manage items for purchase.
- Payment Gateway Integration: Processes online payments securely.
- Order Management System (OMS): Manages order processing, tracking, and fulfillment.
- Customer Account Management: Enables user registration, login, and profile management.
- Content Management System (CMS): Manages website content like blogs and banners.
- Analytics: Tracks user behavior and sales data for insights.
- Security Measures: Protects customer data and secure transactions
What is needed to build an eCommerce website?
- Domain Name: A unique web address for the store.
- Web Hosting: A server to host the website.
- eCommerce Platform: Software like Shopify or Magento to build the site.
- Payment Gateway: To handle transactions securely.
- SSL Certificate: For secure data transmission.
- Design and Development Tools: For creating the website layout and functionality
What are server requirements for ecommerce website?
- Web Server: To host the website and serve content to users.
- Database Server: To store product information, customer data, and transaction records.
- Load Balancer: To distribute traffic evenly across servers for performance optimization.
- Backup Solutions: Regular backups to protect against data loss.
- Security Infrastructure: Firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and SSL certificates for secure transactions
Over to you!
These are the basic requirements to start a successful eCommerce website in 2025. We have weighed up and down many factors to consolidate the list. Hope it helps you gain some great insights for your eCommerce plan.
Lots of them are included in package plans offered by popular eCommerce platforms.
