E-commerce Store
Catalogue, customers, payments, shipping, integrations, growth, and compliance.
Reach for it when: A store build or replatform, where fulfilment and payments drive the scope.
- sections
- 10
- questions
- 35
- required
- 6
- AI assisted
- 35
Every section, every question
This is the template as it ships. Edit the wording, reorder the sections, or delete what does not apply to your studio.
About Your Business
- Business name*Short text
- IndustryShort text
- Company sizeSingle choice
- Geographic marketSingle choice
- Primary products soldShort text
Current Store Situation
- Do you currently sell online?*Single choice
- Current platformSingle choice
- Why are you looking for a new store?Multi choice
Products & Catalog
- What type of products do you sell?*Multi choice
- Approximately how many products do you have?Single choice
- Do products have variants?Multi choice
- Do you need inventory management?Single choice
Customers & Sales
- Who is your primary customer?*Long text
- Business modelSingle choice
- What is your primary sales goal?Multi choice
- What does success look like?*Long text
Payments
- Which payment methods do you need?Multi choice
- Do you sell internationally?Single choice
- Multi-currency support required?Single choice
Shipping & Fulfillment
- How will orders be fulfilled?*Multi choice
- Shipping regionsMulti choice
- Do you need real-time shipping rates?Single choice
- Returns management required?Single choice
Integrations
- Which systems need integration?Multi choice
- Additional integration detailsLong text
Marketing & Growth
- Which marketing channels do you use?Multi choice
- Do you currently use analytics?Multi choice
- Most important KPIsMulti choice
Technical & Compliance
- Compliance requirementsMulti choice
- Hosting preferenceSingle choice
- Existing data migration required?Single choice
- Estimated number of customer recordsSingle choice
Budget & Timeline
- Desired timelineSingle choice
- Budget rangeSingle choice
- Anything else we should know?Long text
* marks a required question. Every question in this template has AI suggestions available while the client is writing.
How to write an e-commerce project brief
Two stores can look identical in a brief and be completely different builds. Fifty simple products shipped from one location, versus five thousand variant SKUs across a third-party fulfilment partner in four countries — same sentence, different projects, different platforms, different prices.
This is the e-commerce store brief in Coligna — ten sections, thirty-five questions — and it's built to separate those two before anyone quotes.
The ten sections, and what each one is for
About Your Business. Industry, size, market, and what they sell.
Current Store Situation. Whether they sell online today, on what, and why they're replacing it. A replatform and a first store are different projects with different risks — migration is the difference.
Products & Catalog. Product types, catalogue size, variants, and inventory needs. One of the two sections that decides the build — see below.
Customers & Sales. Primary customer, business model, primary sales goal, and the definition of success. B2B and B2C stores differ in pricing, tax, approval flows and account structure.
Payments. Methods, international selling, multi-currency. Each one added is real scope, and "we might expand internationally later" is worth pinning down now.
Shipping & Fulfillment. Fulfilment method, regions, real-time rates, returns. The other section that decides the build. Returns in particular get waved through at brief stage and turn into a workflow project of their own.
Integrations. Systems to connect, plus detail — ERP, accounting, email, analytics.
Marketing & Growth. Channels, analytics tools, and the KPIs that matter.
Technical & Compliance. Compliance requirements, hosting preference, data migration, and customer-record volume.
Budget & Timeline. Range, horizon, catch-all.
Two questions clients answer badly — and two the brief doesn't ask
"How many products, and how many variants?" — and get the variant number specifically. Clients answer the product count. A hundred products in five sizes and four colours is two thousand SKUs, and it changes the platform decision, the import work, the inventory design and the price.
"How do you fulfil orders?" — and follow it to returns. Self-fulfilment, dropship and third-party logistics are three different integration projects. Returns are where the answer usually stops and the work doesn't.
Two more worth asking in the kickoff call, even though the template doesn't ask them:
"Who updates the catalogue after launch, and how technical are they?" The admin experience is a requirement, and it's usually specified by nobody.
"What's your peak day, and what happens on it?" A store that's fine all year and falls over on a seasonal peak has failed at the only moment that counted.
From brief to project
A submitted brief arrives in your inbound queue, sectioned and typed. It becomes an estimate, and the accepted proposal becomes a live project carrying the catalogue and fulfilment answers the client gave — the two that the build keeps referring back to. See how the full lifecycle works →
A PDF gets filled in once and filed. A brief-capture link needs no account and starts the work at submission.
Frequently asked questions
What should an e-commerce brief include?
What's sold and at what catalogue complexity, who buys it and on what model, how payments and fulfilment work, what it integrates with, and what compliance and migration is involved.
Why do variants matter so much?
Because they multiply. Catalogue size drives the platform choice, the data import, the inventory model and the admin workload, and variant count is the number that turns a modest catalogue into a large one.
Is this brief for a new store or a replatform?
Both. The second section separates them, and the data-migration and current-platform questions exist because a replatform carries risk a new store doesn't.
What happens after the client submits it?
It arrives as structured answers, ready to review, estimate and convert into a project without re-typing anything. See pricing for what each plan includes. Building a brochure site rather than a store? The web design brief is the closer fit.