The questions to ask an ecommerce developer are less about design and more about ownership, platform fit, checkout, integrations, security and support after launch. Ask them before you sign, score every answer the same way, and the right development partner usually becomes obvious.
The short answer
- Check the basics before the first meeting: relevant past work, both design and development in-house or clearly managed, and references from recent clients.
- Ask who will own the code, the hosting account, the domain and the customer data. The answer should be you.
- Ask how the developer handles payments, integrations, SEO during migration and security updates. Vague answers here cost the most later.
- A good ecommerce developer asks you as many questions as you ask them.
- Score each answer against the same checklist so you compare partners on substance, not on the slickest pitch.
What should I check before choosing an ecommerce agency?
Before choosing an ecommerce agency, check four things without a single meeting: work in their portfolio that resembles your store, proof they handle both design and development, recent clients you can speak to, and a track record of delivering on time. These checks filter out most poor fits before you spend hours in sales calls.
Look past the pretty homepages in the portfolio. Open the live stores, add a product to the cart and go as far as the checkout. A portfolio full of brochure sites tells you little about a store with thousands of products and an ERP connection.
Call two or three recent clients. Ask what went wrong and how the agency handled it, because every project hits a problem at some point.
Design and development should be covered under one plan, with one accountable lead. A design agency that hands a design file to an unnamed offshore developer and steps back creates a gap where most problems fall. This article is the ecommerce layer: checkout, payments, stock, integrations and the data a store runs on. For the general version of this process, see my list of questions to ask when hiring a web design company.
Which questions show a developer understands my business?
The questions that show whether an ecommerce developer understands your business are the ones the developer asks you. A strong partner wants to know your margins, catalogue size, fulfilment process, existing systems, customers and growth plans before recommending a platform. A partner who quotes a solution before asking is selling what they already know.
Ask directly:
- What do you need to know about my business before you recommend anything?
- Which platforms do you build on, and when would you tell a client not to use your preferred one?
- Can you show a store similar to mine in size and complexity?
- How do you run discovery, and what do I receive at the end of it?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. A developer who only builds on one platform will recommend that platform, and you should know that going in.
A first-hand example. A lifestyle brand selling both to shops and direct to customers came to us running WooCommerce, but its stock and wholesale operations had outgrown how the store was set up. Even though WooCommerce is our main ecommerce specialism, my team scoped a move to Shopify with stock synchronisation, starting with a discovery phase to map every existing function before committing to a launch date. The honest recommendation is sometimes the one that doesn’t suit the developer.
My guide to writing a web design brief covers what to send before the first call.
Who owns the code, the platform and the data?
Agree the rights and access in writing. The business should control the eligible domain registration and key merchant accounts, and receive the agreed rights to custom work and its data exports. Third-party software, fonts, stock assets and hosted platforms have their own licences; buying a build does not transfer ownership of all of them.
Proprietary and custom-built platforms can work well, but they tie you to one vendor for every change. Open source platforms such as WooCommerce, or a widely used hosted platform such as Shopify, mean there is a large pool of developers who can pick up the work.
My team often takes over stores built by other developers. One owner came to us with a complex site carrying a custom theme, custom plugins and custom shortcodes from a previous developer. A handover like that is only straightforward when the owner holds the code and the accounts. Without them, a rebuild is often the only way out.
Questions to ask:
- Will the domain, hosting, payment gateway and analytics accounts be registered in my name?
- Will I receive the full source code, including any custom plugins?
- Are any parts licensed to you rather than to me?
- What happens to my store if we part ways?
What should I ask about checkout, payments and integrations?
Ask which payment gateways the developer has integrated, how they keep the checkout short, how stock, orders and customers will sync with your other systems, and how they handle shipping and tax rules. Checkout and integrations are where most ecommerce projects run over time and budget, so specific answers matter more here than anywhere.
The checkout is worth the scrutiny. Baymard Institute estimates that the average large ecommerce site can gain as much as a 35% increase in conversion rate from checkout design changes alone. Ask the developer to walk you through a checkout they built and explain each decision.
Ask how the chosen payment integration meets its applicable PCI scope, including scripts that can affect a payment page. PCI SSC guidance distinguishes integration and assessment routes; a hosted gateway or a removed analytics tag is not by itself a compliance certificate. Have the provider identify the requirements that apply to your implementation.
Integrations deserve their own questions: inventory or ERP, accounting, email, CRM, shipping and marketplaces. Ask what happens when a sync fails overnight. My overview of the components of an ecommerce website is a useful checklist for this part of the conversation.
What should I ask about SEO, speed and migration?
Ask how the developer protects your search rankings during the build: URL structure, duplicate pages from filters, redirects from every old URL, page speed targets and structured data for products. A developer does not need to run your SEO, but a build that ignores SEO can undo years of rankings in a weekend.
Migration is the riskiest moment. When my team planned the merger of several websites into one for a group that had bought a handful of smaller businesses, a real slice of their search traffic came from people ready to buy, landing on pages that would change address. That traffic was what the migration could not afford to lose, so redirect mapping sat at the centre of the plan. Ask to see a redirect plan from a past project.
Questions to ask:
- How will you map every old URL to its new home, and who checks it after launch?
- What page speed targets will you commit to, measured how?
- How will you stop filter and search pages creating duplicate URLs?
- Will product pages include structured data that matches what shoppers see?
If you are weighing a platform change, my Shopify to WooCommerce migration guide shows what a careful migration involves, and my notes on what I fix first in ecommerce SEO cover filters, product data and redirects in more depth.
What should I ask about support, security and updates after launch?
Ask what support looks like after launch: who handles updates, how fast security patches go out, whether changes are tested on a staging site first, how backups work and how quickly the team responds when the store is down. A store is never finished, so the support model matters as much as the build.
Patchstack’s 2026 report found a five-hour weighted median to first observed exploitation for its heavily exploited vulnerability sample. That is not a deadline for every flaw or every site. It is a reason to ask for an urgent exposure-assessment and mitigation route alongside routine maintenance.
Uncontrolled updates cause problems of their own, and the villain is usually the arrangement, not the code. An outdoor gear retailer came to us with an unstable WooCommerce store, security alerts and plugins updating themselves on the live site. Nobody was controlling what changed on the live store, and requests were scattered across email threads. My team switched off auto-updates, put routine updates through a staging site first, and moved requests out of email into one shared task board. With the store steady, the work could move on to an international checkout instead of firefighting.
Routine updates need a tested release path; an actively exploited flaw needs an urgent decision. Ask who assesses exposure, chooses a patch, disables a feature or applies a verified mitigation, checks the business journey and preserves recovery evidence. Backups, ongoing orders and the risk of a breaking patch all affect the response. Do not mistake a monthly schedule or a generic firewall promise for that plan.
Get the contract terms in writing: fees and payment milestones, deadlines, what is in and out of scope, support terms after launch, and who owns what. For the case for ongoing care, see why your website needs maintenance.
How do I score ecommerce developers fairly?
Score ecommerce developers fairly by asking every shortlisted partner the same questions, rating each answer zero, one or two, and weighting the questions that carry the most risk. A written score stops the most confident presenter from winning by default and shows exactly where each partner is weak.
| Question | A strong answer sounds like | Red flag | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| What do you need to know about my business? | Asks about margins, catalogue, fulfilment, systems and growth | Quotes a price before asking anything | 3 |
| Which platform, and when would you advise against it? | Explains trade-offs, names cases where another platform fits better | One platform for every client | 2 |
| Who owns the code, accounts and data? | You do, in writing, with admin access in your name | Accounts held by the agency, code licensed to them | 3 |
| How will the checkout and payments work? | Walks through a past checkout and explains each choice | Talks only about design | 3 |
| How will integrations sync and fail safely? | Names the systems, sync method and error alerts | “It just connects” | 2 |
| How will you protect SEO during the build? | Shows a redirect plan and speed targets | “We’ll install an SEO plugin” | 2 |
| How are updates and security handled? | Staging first for routine updates, an emergency patch path, backups, named response times | Auto-updates on the live site, no staging | 3 |
| Who is my day-to-day contact? | A named project lead and a shared project board | A generic support inbox | 1 |
Treat the score as a way to make the conversation honest, not as a formula that decides for you. A worked example, with made-up partners: Partner A scores 34 out of a possible 38, but zero on ownership because the agency keeps the hosting account. Partner B scores 30 with no zeros. By my rule, B goes forward and A gets one chance to fix the ownership answer in writing. Change the weights if your store’s risks differ, but decide them before you read the proposals.
For any weight-3 answer, ask for an artefact: a redacted handover, a test record, an incident route or contract wording. A confident yes is not the same as an implemented control. Keep the score alongside the evidence and unresolved conditions so the total does not hide the risk you most need resolved.
What to do next
- Shortlist three developers whose portfolios include stores like yours, and call one recent client of each.
- Send each the same brief and the same questions from the table above.
- Score the answers in writing before you look at the quotes side by side.
- Insist on ownership of code, accounts and data in the contract.
- If you want a second opinion on a proposal you have received, book a free call with me and my team through the contact page.
Frequently asked questions
How many ecommerce developers should I talk to?
Talk to three ecommerce developers. One gives you nothing to compare, and more than four turns selection into a part-time job. Send all three the same brief and questions, so the differences you see come from the partners, not from the way you asked. Then score the answers before comparing quotes.
Should I choose a freelancer or an agency for my online store?
A freelancer can suit a small store with simple needs and a modest budget. An agency suits stores with integrations, larger catalogues or a need for cover when one person is away. Ask either option the same ownership, security and support questions. The risk with any single person is continuity.
What is the biggest red flag when hiring an ecommerce developer?
The biggest red flag is a developer who keeps your accounts, domain or code in their own name. Ownership problems are expensive to fix and can trap you with a partner you no longer want. Other strong warning signs are quoting before asking questions and having no staging site for updates.
Should my ecommerce developer also handle SEO?
Your ecommerce developer should build SEO into the foundation: clean URLs, redirects during migration, fast pages, controlled filter URLs and product structured data. Ongoing SEO, such as content and link building, is a different skill set. Many businesses use a specialist for ongoing SEO alongside their developer.
What should be in an ecommerce development contract?
An ecommerce development contract should cover fees and payment milestones, deadlines, scope and how changes are priced, ownership of code, accounts and data, warranty after launch, support terms, and what happens if either side ends the relationship. Read the ownership and exit clauses first, because they matter most if things go wrong.
