They say successful businesses begin with an idea. We say they all begin with functional and non-functional requirements for ecommerce websites.
Functional and non-functional requirements are the pillar of your project. They articulate your needs and wishes and specify the tasks for your development team. You can start writing them down soon after issuing your ecommerce RFP to have a clear picture of your website by the time you choose a vendor.
All of our projects at Elogic start with a brief clarifying the client’s functional and non-functional requirements for the online shopping project. Unless a client sends a list directly to us, we issue a document for them to fill out (see it as a downloadable bonus at the end of the article!). This way, we’re sure that we understand their business needs, while the client can adjust the project budget and scope and deliver positive online shopping experiences on the website.
In this article, we’ll explain the difference between the functional and non-functional requirements for online shopping systems and present a list of the most common ones based on our clients’ real-life examples. We’ll also share some tips on how to organize the requirements and what they should look like.
The main difference between functional and non-functional requirements of ecommerce websites lies in their scope and purpose.
Functional requirements (FRs) are the what of your website. It is all about the functions and core operations of your e-store that enable a user to take action on the website. They can be implemented as a single website feature and form the basis of the whole software development process.
Functional requirements for a website examples: Add the following product filtering features to our home improvement webstore: price, popularity, power rate (Watt), heating area (m2), and usage (bathroom, kitchen, etc).
Non-functional requirements (NFRs) are the how of your website. Named quality attributes of a system, they form user experience and imply some global, abstract expectations from the product. Non-functional requirements of online shopping systems may derive from a sum of functional requirements for an ecommerce website and are implemented as a sum of web features.
Non-functional requirements for online shopping website examples: Products should be easily found and have an appealing display on the website.
Insider tip: Tweaking and adjusting the requirements can change the scope and budget of your project.
It’s not recommended to save on ecommerce functional requirements that form the core of the project, so don’t be afraid to see many of them in your website specification document. But beware of adding up the non-functional requirements which will drive up the cost of your project.
If you can afford that — great! Your store will be a customer magnet delivering optimal user experience. If, on the other hand, you’re tight on budget, consider adding only the essential non-functional requirements that will satisfy your users. Ideally, you’ll want to find the golden mean between the functional and non-functional requirements for an ecommerce website and balance them bearing in mind your business goals and objectives.
Functional and non-functional requirements are the basis of larger instructions issued to a development agency at the beginning of the project. Learn all the tips and tricks on how to write a website requirements specification document in our related guide.
