What to ask at the first meeting for an online store
The list of questions we go into the first e-commerce discussion with — including those that sometimes dampen the enthusiasm.
The first meeting for an online shop isn't like one for a presentation website. We don't talk about design in the first hour. We talk about stock, couriers and who writes the descriptions.
How many products do you have, and where do they come from?
A shop with forty manually managed products and a shop that takes a daily feed from a distributor are two different projects. If products come from a feed, half the work is mapping categories and dealing with cases where the supplier changes names without notice.
We also ask who manages stock today. If the answer is "in an Excel file that my colleague updates", we discuss what happens when someone orders a product already sold in the physical shop.
How do you deliver and how do you get paid?
The courier and online payment decide part of the architecture. Cash on delivery plus a fixed courier fee is simple. Delivery with the company's car in the city, with a time slot, plus a courier for the rest of the country, is another story — it introduces zoning logic that we need to test piece by piece.
For online payments, the merchant account is approved separately from us, by the bank or the processor. That timeframe doesn't depend on us, and I can't promise a date.
What happens with product descriptions?
This is where we most often lose time. A shop without its own descriptions looks identical to dozens of others that take text from the same supplier. We usually split the work: the client provides technical details and use cases, we format and structure them.
When the client doesn't have time, we choose: either we start with a small number of well-described products, or we publish everything with supplier text and accept that the SEO part starts later. The second option is legitimate, but it's worth stating from the beginning.
The final question
"What happens on the day the first order comes in?" Who sees it, who packs it, who answers the phone if the person calls. We launched a handcrafted products shop where the technical side was fine, but orders sat for two days because notifications went to an address nobody checked. We moved the alert to the phone and wrote a one-page procedure. Trivial, but exactly the type of thing that ruins a launch.
How long a shop takes depends heavily on these answers, not on the number of pages.
If you want to open a shop and aren't sure what you've prepared and what you haven't, let's go through the list together on the phone.
Answers that change the project
Not all questions matter equally. A few change the shop's structure and delivery timeframe; the rest are details we sort out along the way.
| Question | If the answer is "yes" | If the answer is "no" |
|---|---|---|
| Do you have stock for multiple variations (size, colour)? | Needs variation management, configuration takes longer | Simple catalogue, we move faster |
| Do you already have descriptions written? | We start with them and tidy them up | We block the project until they appear, or we write them separately |
| Do you invoice automatically? | We link the invoicing software, request access in the first week | Remains manual at first, can be added later |
| Do you deliver with one or multiple couriers? | Integration for each, plus cost rules | A single delivery cost, simple |
| Do you sell outside the country? | Needs additional language, currency, tax rules | We stick to a single market |
The row about descriptions is the one that delays most shops. Not the technology, the texts.
What the client tells us, but we check anyway
"I have the photos ready" usually means phone photos, taken under different conditions. It's not a problem in itself, but it matters for how the product list looks. We ask for three real examples in the first meeting and, if necessary, recommend a day of photography before launch.
A shop with good products and inconsistent photos looks cheaper than it is. It can be fixed, but better before launch than after.
What we don't discuss in the first meeting
Colours, fonts, which plugin we use. Not because they don't matter, but because an hour on aesthetic discussions leaves us without answers to the things that affect the deadline. Design comes at the second meeting, after we know what we're selling and how it reaches the customer.
When we recommend not opening a shop now
If you have under ten products and already sell well on WhatsApp and Instagram, sometimes a simple presentation website with an order form is more useful. It's not the answer that brings us the bigger project, but it depends on where you are with sales.
If you want to know what might delay your own shop, let's have a short call and go through the questions above.
What else we add to the list of questions
Not after a checked list, but after a simple question: if a new customer came across this topic tomorrow, would they find the answer here that would change their decision? If not, something is missing, and it's usually a practical detail, not an entire section. We revisit texts after a few months, when we see what people ask us on the phone and what wasn't written anywhere.
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Written by
Andrei MunteanuHead of Development, RebeDesign
Builds the websites and online stores: speed, stability and an admin you can use without us.
Updated: 3 September 2026