The Modern Commerce RFP Builder

Looking for a new commerce vendor but not sure where to begin? Use this RFP builder to select key categories, customize questions, and export everything as a spreadsheet. It’s fast, easy — and tailored to fit your needs.

Customer Profile

General

  • What is the GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) range of your customers?

  • What is the median GMV range of your customers?

  • Please explain your "typical" customer in a few sentences:

  • What verticals do you most often sell to? What's your most common vertical? What are some verticals you don't often sell to?

  • In what year was your platform first commercially available?

  • Does your platform meant to be purchased as part of a larger suite, or as part of a best of breed collection of products?

  • How is your company structured? (Public / Private, Partnership, Joint Venture, Subsidiary, etc.)?

  • Please outline your company’s strategic vision / roadmap for the next 5 years:

  • How many people do you employ and in how many locations?

  • What verticals do you most often sell to? What's your most common vertical? What are some verticals you don't often sell to?

  • What selling channels do your customers typically sell through?

Deployment Architecture

Platform Architecture

  • What delivery models are supported (on-premises, managed hosted, single-tenant SaaS, multi-tenant SaaS, etc)?

  • Do you have to provision environments for new customers? If so, how long does that take per environment?

  • What parts of your platform are auto-scaled? What parts require manual scaling?

  • Internally, how are new instances of your platform provisioned? Please describe your architecture.

  • How many separate independent microservices (own database, own application, own teams) does your platform have?

  • Internally, do microservices read/write from each other's datastores? Or is access strictly through APIs/events?

  • Internally, does your platform have a way of separating reads from writes using an architecture like CQRS?

  • To what degree do you use eventing internally? What's exposed externally?

  • What kind of datastore(s) do you use? Why?

  • To what extent does your platform conform with each of the 12 principles listed in Twelve-Factor App Manifesto?

  • What Open Source do you use? What do you contribute back to the community?

Underlying Infrastructure

  • What cloud vendor do you use for hosting your platform?

  • Which cloud region(s) do you serve your platform from?

  • Internally, do you leverage fault domains/availability zones to ensure your application is as available as possible? If so, how many regions? Please describe your architecture.

  • Are customers able to choose which region they use?

  • Does data ever leave a region?

  • Where are your data centers or servers physically located?

  • Internally, do you deploy to two or more data centers? If so, is it active/active or active/passive?

Release Management

  • Explain your process for releasing new versions of software. How often are major/minor versions deployed? What do customers have to do to uptake those new versions of software?

  • Are individual microservice teams able to release independently, or is the entire platform released as one atomic unit?

  • What is your support policy for older versions of software?

  • Does your platform have scheduled downtime when updates are made?

Ops

  • What monitoring data does your platform expose?

  • Over the past two years, how much planned and unplanned downtime has your platform had?

  • How are outages communicated?

  • How quickly can you provision new instances of your platform to meet a sudden spike in demand that cannot be met using currently provisioned capacity?

  • Is there a plugin system for creating own extensions?

  • Must extensions/customizations to your platform be deployed to a specific cloud vendor/location?

  • Describe how the software can be monitored (at all tiers) for availability and performance?

  • Describe how the platform supports containerization?

Security

Ops Practices

  • Does every single administrator within your company have individual user accounts to every system?

  • Does your platform log changes made by individual administrators? What data is captured and how long is it retained?

  • What measures do you take to keep bots and other malicious actors out of your system?

  • Have you experienced any security breaches that caused any outages or data leaks? Describe.

  • Do you conduct whitebox testing? If so, at what frequency?

  • Do you conduct blackbox testing? If so, at what frequency?

  • Do you hire a third party to conduct penetration testing? If so, what type of testing is performed and how frequently?

  • In the event that a security issue needs to be fixed, how quickly can the change be pushed and adopted by users?

  • Please describe your platform Backup & Restore capabilities?

  • Are there options to encrypt data at rest in your platform?

  • Describe the resiliency models or strategies applied in the product. E.g. Fault Resiliency, Latencies, Limiting expensive resources

  • What measures are employed to ensure business continuity in case of major incidents or disasters?

Certificates and Compliance

  • Does your platform comply with SAS 70?

  • Does your platform comply with SAS 90?

  • Does your platform comply with SOC and SOC2?

  • Does your platform comply with SSAE16?

  • Does your platform comply with ISAE 3402?

  • Does your platform comply with HIPAA?

  • Does your platform comply with ISO 9000?

  • Does your platform comply with ISO 27001?

  • Does your platform comply with PCI-DSS 3?

  • Does your platform allow you to comply with GDPR?

Authentication

  • What forms of authentication are supported for APIs?

  • Are pluggable identification/authentication providers supported for APIs? If so, which are available as pre-built integrations?

  • What forms of authentication are supported for business user tooling?

  • Are pluggable identification/authentication providers supported for business user tooling? If so, which are available as pre-built integrations?

  • Is multi-factor authentication supported for business user authentication?

  • How is authentication for GraphQL handled?

Authorization

  • How are roles and privileges used to authorize access to APIs? Please describe your approach.

  • Can roles and privileges for APIs be externally managed? If yes, where?

  • Can roles and privileges for API authorization be hierarchial? Can they be inherited?

  • Is the OAuth 2 protocol supported for API authorization? If so, are scopes supported too? How granular are they?

  • How are roles and privileges used to authorize access to business user tools? Please describe your approach.

  • Can roles and privileges for business user tools be externally managed? If yes, where?

  • Can roles and privileges for business user tools be hierarchial? Can they be inherited?

Data Protection

  • Is 100% of data encrypted while it is "in motion" throughout your platform (between load balancer -> front-end, front-end -> back-end, back-end -> database, database -> storage)? If so, what types/levels of encryption are employed between each system?

  • Is 100% of data encrypted while it is "at rest" in storage? If so, what types/levels of encryption are used?

  • Besides when it is actively being processed in-process, is there any time that data is not encrypted?

  • How is data secured in transit between your enterprise applications and the commerce platform?

Data Processing

  • What third party companies have access to personally identifiable information? Please explain what data is available and what types of data processing agreements you have in place.

  • Does your platform allow to delete customer data on a request, including from backups?

APIs

General

  • Does your platform provide APIs? Please describe your general approach to APIs.

  • What percent of the functionality of your platform available through APIs? Is there any functionality only available through a UI, script, or by accessing a database directly?

  • What functionality and data is not accessible over APIs in your platform?

  • What percent of your customers only use your APIs to access your platform's functionality and data?

  • Do your platform's APIs conform to a third party specification like RAML or Open API? Is your specification published publicly? To what degree to you leverage those ecosystems?

  • What percent of your customer use a 3rd party Content Management System / Web Content Management System / Digital Experience Platform to render the front ends?

  • Was your platform built from the start to be API-first?

  • What Richardson Maturity Model Level are your REST APIs compliant to? Why?

  • Do your REST APIs support multiple formats (XML, JSON). If so, which one(s)?

  • Which CDNs and load balancers front your APIs?

  • Do you support binary-level encoding alternatives to XML or JSON such as Google Protocol Buffers?

  • Are all of your API calls idempotent?

  • As you add new functionality, do your APIs evolve in a backwards-compatible manner or are they versioned?

  • Do you offer a web-based UI or IDE where developers can try executing APIs against your platform?

  • What type of API metrics are exposed? For example, does vendor expose number of API calls, average response time, etc?

Extensibility

  • What means do developers have to inject custom logic before/after API calls are made?

  • Does your platform allow you to take actions in response to API calls? For example, do you support eventing, calling serverless functions, web hooks, etc?

  • Can the data model of objects (profiles, products, carts, etc) be extended/configured using APIs?

  • Can your API store/retrieve arbitrary JSON data/custom objects?

SDKs

  • What native SDKs do you offer over your APIs? Please list the supported programming languages (including version numbers).

  • What language-specific features do your SDKs offer over plain REST APIs? For example, does your Java SDK allow you to use Lambda Expressions?

  • How is each SDK supported? Is it commercially supported as part of the product, or is it unsupported open source?

  • How are SDKs updated over time? How frequently are they released? How do customers uptake new versions?

  • Do you release your REST APIs first and then later your SDKs, do you always release them together, or do you release your SDKs first and then your REST APIs later?

GraphQL

  • Does your platform API support GraphQL?

  • What percent of your platform's data and functionality is exposed over GraphQL?

  • Do you support GraphQL mutations, or just queries?

  • What protections do you have in place against malicious queries? For example, could someone issue a query to retrieve your entire product catalog?

  • Do you have any special integrations with GraphQL clients like Apollo and Relay?

  • Do you use GraphQL in any of your reference applications?

  • Are GraphQL endpoints supported the same as traditional REST APIs?

Implementation

General

  • How long do B2C implementations typically take? What's a cost estimate for implementations?

Approach

  • What is your company's general approach to implementation support? Are systems integrators responsible for implementations or do you do them yourself?

  • What types of professional services does your company offer?

  • What percent of your company's revenue comes from professional services?

  • Do you retain ownership of code and other intellectual property created as part of a professional services agreement? Is any of that code legally allowed to be shared with your other customers?

  • Can your platform be consumed in smaller granular pieces or does it have to be purchased and implemented as one indivisible platform? If it can be purchased in granular pieces, how does that work both contractually and technically?

Partner Network

  • Who are your top five implementation partners?

  • Do you have a formal certification program for partners?

  • How many certified implementation partners do you have per region in which you operate?

Vendor Support

  • Do you have any blueprints or step-by-step guides for implementing your product?

  • What training and enablement programs are provided for initial and ongoing training for developers, administrators and business users?

  • How can the data be imported into your platform? Which connectors do you offer for importing data into your platform? Are the connectors part of your product or are they custom implementations?

  • How are new product features publicized? For example, are there quarterly workshops or webinars?

  • Do you support access to your platform to develop a POC or MVP during the selection process?

Technical Support

  • State the processes and procedures for managing and resolving support tickets:

  • Does the platform offer 24/7 365 support?

  • Does the platform offer the ability to engage Professional Services on an on-going basis to assist with extensions to the implementation? Is this provided by the vendor themselves or through third-parties?

  • Does the platform have a mature and stable support model? Are there any plans to apply changes to the support model within the next year?

  • Is documentation available to our technical support teams? Explain how this documentation is delivered.

  • Does the platform provide the following communication channels within their Support team for managing incidents: telephone, email, online chat?

  • Does the platform provide the following communication channels within their Support team for maintenance windows: telephone, email, online chat?

  • Does the platform provide adequate notice of maintenance windows (advised at least 7 days in advance)?

  • Please list training and documentation that is offered around your system:

  • Describe your technical support model, escalation procedures, communication, time zones, forums.

  • What is the method of delivery for product updates (via download if other state) and is this a supported process?

  • Please describe the levels of support, and the escalation processes:

  • What is the preferred method of communication used to raise an incident or user query? Please demonstrate this for the different severity levels. E.g. Critical, low priority calls?

  • What communication process does the vendor follow during incident resolution?

  • How does the vendor provide updates to the platform? Are there any updates we need to deploy or manage on our servers?

  • Does the platform provide any web-based technical support, including documentation? Please indicate whether you would be willing to provide our team access to these resources as part of our vendor evaluation.

  • What is your SLA (for the platform and content delivery)?

  • Provide your SLA response and resolution times:

  • What are your SLA terms?

  • Does the platform define acceptable SLAs? Please specify response, resolution and availability SLAs. What remedies are available for breach of these SLAs?

  • Please describe your technical support process (including tools) along with standard SLA’s:

  • Describe your SLAs including uptime, issue resolution, etc.:

  • Does the platform provide all services in-house? Please indicate the areas, which will be sub-contracted, and detail the nature of the relationship with any sub-contractors?

  • Why do companies renew their contracts with your business?

  • How often are service reviews conducted and what data is provided for review?

Product Catalog

Strategy

  • Does your platform include a dedicated PIM?

  • What percent of customers use your product as a standalone PIM for the whole enterprise?

  • Did you build or acquire your PIM? Please explain its heritage.

  • Is your PIM business user tooling separate from the rest of your platform's business user tooling?

  • What product catalog-related data do your customers typically enrich using your business user tooling?

  • Is your data versioned (a mutable copy of each object being edited)?

Core Functionality

  • How can the data model be customized/extended?

  • Do changes to your data model require changes to a database schema?

  • What type of datastore do you use to store your product catalog (e.g. relational, NoSQL, etc) ?

  • Can physical goods be modeled as products?

  • Can digital goods be modeled as products?

  • Can services be modeled as products?

  • Can different product catalog data be maintained per country?

  • Can different product catalog data be maintained per language?

  • Can different product catalog data be maintained per channel?

  • Can different product catalog data be maintained per organization (in a B2B context)?

  • Can categories be moved within the category hierarchy?

  • Can products be moved between categories?

  • Can a single product exist in multiple categories without it being duplicated?

  • Can custom objects be added to the product catalog? Please explain how that works.

  • How are product images managed in your platform?

  • Are Custom Product Attributes supported?

  • Can custom slugs be auto-generated?

  • Can open graph tags be captured?

  • What are the various ways that data can be fed into the product catalog? Which of the following are supported: Bulk file loading, API calls, eventing? What is out of the box as part of the product vs. professional services vs. partner?

  • Does your platform provide ability to publish product catalog to social media stores, like Facebook and Instagram? Are these productized integrations or is custom code required?

  • What third party ERPs have you integrated with? For each integration, please describe whether it's part of the product and how it's supported.

  • What third party PIMs have you integrated with? For each integration, please describe whether it's part of the product and how it's supported.

  • Does your platform allow you to shop within a specific physical store?

  • Does your platform offer product reviews? Please explain its functionality and heritage. If it's not a native offering of your platform, please describe which third parties you integrate with and the support policy of those integrations.

Publishing

  • Can multiple changes be grouped together into an atomic unit, like a "Project"?

  • Please explain how changes are deployed from the authoring environment to the production environment.

  • Can deployments be scheduled?

  • Once a new product or a change to a product is published, how long does it take for that change to be reflected in the search index?

  • Can workflows be implemented to allow for different people to have different roles in the content lifecycle?

  • Can deployments be rolled back? Please explain your strategy for reverting changes.

  • Can restrictions be put in place to forbid specific users from publishing?

Scalability

  • How many total items (categories, products, SKUs, etc) can be in your catalog without suffering performance degradation or other issues? Please list the names and totals of the customers with the most items.

  • What is the maximum number of SKUs that can belong to a single product without suffering performance degradation?

  • What is the maximum number of products that can belong to a single category without suffering performance degradation?

  • What is the maximum number of attributes/properties an item (category, product, SKU, etc) can have?

  • How many items can be deployed as one atomic unit?

Business User Interface

  • What is the business user interface for managing product catalog data? Please describe the underlying architecture and technologies used.

  • Does your business user interface ever access data or functionality by bypassing your platform's API?

  • Is there a process for business users to download data to a spreadsheet, make changes offline, and then upload changes?

  • What image management functionality is offered in your business user interface?

  • Can permissions be restricted in the business user interface so that only specific people or groups of people have the ability to modify data? Can permissions be extended down to the field-level?

  • As there the ability to restrict business users to viewing catalogs, categories, products and SKUs belonging to a catalog, physical store, or some other horizontal faction?

  • Is there any aid given to business users who are categorizing products? For example, does your platform auto-suggest categories that your product should be assigned to?

  • What is the process for adding a property/attribute to a product? Can a business user do it or does it have to be done by a developer?

  • Can business user create arbitrary product bundles?

  • Can types of objects (catalogs, categories, products, SKUs, etc) be read-only in business user tooling?

  • Can individual categories, products, SKUs, etc (for example, the Men's Running Shoes category) be made read-only in business user tooling?

  • Is there any Machine Learning used to aid business users in their daily tasks?

  • Can the configuration/settings of various screens be saved by individual business users?

Pricing

General

  • Can your platform set validity dates/times, so that a given price is only active between the start/end date. Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support individualized pricing (per customer)? If so, what are the factors that can be used to generate that pricing? How do business users influence these?

  • Does your platform support segment-based pricing? Please explain the segments that business users can define and what is exposed to business users in business user tooling.

  • Does your platform support geographic pricing (per country, per region, per state, per city, etc)? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support channel pricing (mobile, web, in-store, etc)? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform have ability to change prices based on effective date and time? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support tiered volume discount pricing? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support configuration product pricing? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support built/configure-to-order pricing? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support bundled product pricing? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform have ability to set contract-specific terms? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform have ability to set contract-specific pricing? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform distinguish pricing levels for wholesalers, retailers or both? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support pricing that is unique to individual user accounts? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Does your platform support pricing by customer group? Is this functionality exposed to business users in business user tooling?

  • Can your platform get prices from an ERP system, standalone pricing engine, or some other source?

  • How fast can business users publish price changes to production?

  • Can business users publish price changes to production when the platform is under heavy load?

  • What is the highest level of price precision that your platform supports, both in the back-end and in business user tooling?

  • What is the maximum number of prices per product/SKU that your platform supports?

  • Does your platform allow business users to visually see what factors contributed to a price that the customer sees?

Checkout

General

  • Can an order be constructed and placed with one API call? If not, how many different APIs must be called to place an order?

  • Do you offer a one-click checkout (like Bolt, Bold, Fast, etc.)?

  • Can products be added to a shopping cart that don't exist in your your platform's product catalog?

  • Can carts be persisted? For how long? Is cart persistence a scalable feature? Please explain your approach.

  • Can changes to prices and availability of items in a persisted cart be easily displayed to customers?

  • Can pre-ordered products be part of an order? Please explain how that works.

  • Can 3rd party checkout engines like PayPal Checkout be used? Please explain.

  • Is guest checkout supported?

Payment

  • Which currencies are supported out of the box?

  • Does your platform accept payment using gift cards as a tender?

  • Can your platform integrate with a third party for balance lookup?

  • Does your platform allow for split payments? For example, between a gift card and a credit card? If so, across how many payment methods may a purchase be split?

  • Does your platform support prepaid orders?

  • Does your platform ever touch credit card or other sensitive financial information? Or is it passed directly to the payment gateway?

  • Which payment gateways are supported out of the box?

  • Does your platform and the reference app support wallets like Alipay, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and so on?

  • Does your platform and the reference app support cryptocurrencies? If yes, which ones?

  • Does your platform support cash on delivery as a payment method?

  • Does your platform support credit (B2B, not consumer cards) as a payment method?

  • Does your platform support purchase orders as a payment method?

Tax

  • Which countries does your platform provide the ability to calculate sales tax?

  • Does your platform support VAT calculation?

  • Which countries does your platform require third party integration?

  • What third party tax calculators does your platform integrate with out of the box? How are the integrations supported?

  • By whom?

  • Does your platform allow you to set arbitrary tax amounts?

  • Can your platform capture if shopper is tax exempt (for example non-profit)?

  • Does your platform support VAT ID validation?

  • Does your platform support tax levels by customer segment?

  • Does your platform have the ability to specify tax rounding mode?

Inventory

  • Can users configure rules to control items and quantities available for order by specific customer and/or consumer groups?

  • Does your platform allow you to view the inventory of a specific physical store?

  • Does your platform support the ability to show and restrict inventory by channel?

  • Does your platform support reserving on line for in store pick up (ROPIS)?

  • Does your platform check real-time inventory during checkout? Is this a productized feature or does it require custom code? How are these checks performed in a performant manner for high-volume SKUs, like iPhones?

Shipping

  • Does your platform perform address verification?

  • Does your platform support shipping methods based on item?

  • Does your platform support shipping restrictions based on item?

  • Does your platform support ship alone items?

  • Does your platform support PO Box/APO/FPO shipping?

  • Does your platform support bounded shipping calculation based on order cost?

  • Does your platform offer ship to store functionality?

  • Does your platform support shipping cost calculation?

  • Does your platform support estimated delivery date based on shipping calendar/time in transit?

  • Does your platform support shipping cutoff times and dates?

  • Does your platform support scheduling delivery for a given day?

  • Does your platform support lookup for available delivery by zip code?

  • Does your platform support multiple shipments in a single order based on delivery address?

  • Does your platform have ability to ship from store?

  • Does your platform support ship to store?

  • Does your platform support address validation of international addresses by third party service? If so, which ones?

Returns/Exchanges

  • Does your platform support customer-initiated returns?

  • Does your platform support re-opening orders for amendment? Or do all changes to orders result in a new order being created? Please explain

  • When an order is being amended, are prices, promotions, inventory, etc all re-calculated from the point in time when the order was initially submitted, or the present time?

Fraud

  • Does your platform support fraud integration to third party system?

  • Does your platform support holding orders based on fraud score for review?

  • Does your platform support using client tracking client in order for fraud?

  • Does your platform have ability to offer a real time alerting system that can be managed in order to highlight potential instances of fraud?

  • Does your platform provide fraud analysis indicators such as the distance between shipping address and registered address, or number of payment attempts?

  • Does your platform provide support for the implementation of third party fraud software? If so, which ones?

OMS

  • Do you have a dedicated OMS solution in your commerce platform? If yes, what percent of customers exclusively use it for OMS functionality?

  • Which third party Order Management Systems have you integrated with? Which of those integrations are productized vs. custom one-off integrations?

Promotions

General

  • How can business users model promotions? Is there a user interface? What capabilities does that user interface have?

  • Can custom promotions be modeled using code, should a business user not be able to model the promotion using the out of the box template?

  • What is the maximum number of conditions a promotion may have?

  • Can promotions be templatized? How does that work?

  • Does your platform support order-based promotions?

  • Does your platform support promotions based on tender used to pay for the order?

  • Can promotions be augmented with customized properties?

Product promotions

  • Does your platform support product-based promotions?

  • Does your platform support stack item promotions?

  • Does your platform support BOGO (Buy One Get One) promotions (e.g. buy one t-shirt and get one t-shirt 50 percent off)?

  • Does your platform support promotions for specified set of products (buy item X get item Y)?

  • Does your platform support tiered price break promotions (e.g. different amount of discount based on number of items purchased)?

  • Does your platform support spend Y get gift with purchase, e.g. getting gift with purchase conditional on spending the specific amount Y?

  • Does your platform support spend Y in X get gift with purchase, e.g. getting gift with purchase conditional upon spending amount Y on product X?

  • Does your platform support buy item X get gift with purchase, e.g. getting gift with purchase conditional on buying the specific product X?

  • Does your platform support gift with purchase promotions?

  • Does your platform support brand-based promotions?

  • Does your platform offer the ability to (in a performant manner) show all of the discounts that could apply to a given product for a given customer? How does that work?

  • Does your platform have ability to show available coupons applicable to the cart/products?

  • Does your platform support time-based product discounts?

Order promotions

  • Does your platform support order-based promotions?

  • Does your platform have the ability to provide a discount criteria for the entire order and deduct a percentage amount off an entire order?

  • Does your platform support promotion tied to geography or excluded by geography?

  • Does your platform support promotions by channel including web, mobile, affiliate and social?

  • Does your platform support time-based order discounts?

  • Does your platform support promotions allowing customers to get discount on their spendings in a specific time period?

  • Does your platform support shipping promotions?

  • Does your platform support shipping discounts for specific products?

  • Does your platform support shipping discounts conditional upon customers placing an order in a specific time period?

Discount Codes

  • Does your platform support discount codes?

  • Can discount codes be auto-generated by the platform?

  • Can discount codes be auto-generated by business users from an administrative user interface?

Front-end

General

  • What is your front-end strategy? Does the platform have full content management capabilities, or is the platform expected served headless?

  • Are front-ends typically built or bought (packaged CMS, WCMS, DXP, etc)? What percent of customers build vs. buy?

  • Please explain the heritage of your platform's content management capabilities. Was that functionality built in-house or acquired? If acquired, from whom?

  • Do you work with any none content management vendors (like Contentful)?

  • Do you work with any none content management vendors (like Contentful)?

  • Do you work with any headless content management vendors (like Contentstack, Amplience, Contentful, etc)? Please explain and name your partners?

  • Does your platform offer date/time-based preview? For example, can a business user preview how the mobile app would look on Black Friday? How does that work?

Mobile

  • How does your platform provide support for modes of mobile delivery such as mobile web, mobile and tablet applications?

  • Does your platform provide PWA support? If not, which vendors do you work with that offer support?

  • Does your platform provide AMP support? If not, which vendors do you work with that offer support?

  • Does your platform offer a Swift or Android SDK?

  • Is the physical GPS location of a customer taken into account by the platform for personalization or other purposes?

  • Does your platform have ability to send targeted offers, messages and promotions to shoppers in physical stores?

  • Are passbooks/wallets supported within your reference application?

  • Are location based technologies (e.g. Beacon, Wifi, GPS) integrated with your app? Please describe.

  • Is bar-code scanning supported within your application?

  • Does your platform support integration of push services?

Reference/Starter Applications

  • What reference/starter applications are included with your platform? Please describe the following for each: intended channel (web, mobile, etc), language it's written in + version (e.g. Java 9, Node.js 8.11), and support policy.

  • Are these applications intended to be used as a demonstration of your platform's functionality? Or a starting point for development?

  • Are your reference/starter applications supported as a product and continually updated, or are they considered professional services-like code once forked?

  • How often are reference/starter applications released? Are they re-released immediately as the platform is updated? Or are they on a separate release cycle?

Clienteling

  • Does your platform offer an application or any other functionality to support clienteling?

SEO

  • Does your platform support remarketing tag integration? Please explain.

  • Does your platform adjust images to be SEO friendly?

  • Can the platform render URLs using slugs?

A/B / Multi-variate Testing

  • Does your platform provide A/B testing capabilities?

  • Which third parties do you partner with to provide A/B testing? Are those integrations productized? How are they supported?

  • Does your platform provide multi-variate testing capabilities?

  • Which third parties do you partner with to provide A/B testing? Are those integrations productized? How are they supported?

Marketplace

Product Catalog

  • Can product catalog data be managed individually per retailer?

  • Can your platform create and maintain individual assortments per retailer?

  • Does your platform allow publishing and unpublishing products or variants per retailer?

  • Does your platform allow business users to create promotions per retailer?

  • Does your platform have ability to optimize products using marketplace templates?

  • Can your product catalog data be exported to 3rd party marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, etc? Please explain how each integration is supported.

Pricing Management

  • Does your platform have ability to set up price list by marketplace?

  • Does your platform have ability to edit price lists?

  • Does your platform have ability to automatically match pricing for select products?

  • Does your platform ability to manually match pricing for select products?

  • Does your platform have ability to manage campaign pricing?

Order Management

  • Does your platform have ability to consolidate marketplace orders with orders from other channels?

  • Does your platform have ability to track order status from the admin console?

  • Does your platform have ability to change/cancel orders?

  • Does your platform have ability to fulfill orders using the same delivery and fulfillment system?

  • Does your platform have ability to fulfill orders using marketplace-specific delivery and fulfillment systems?

  • Does your platform have ability to manage returns and replacement?

Inventory Management

  • Does your platform have ability to allocate inventory by marketplace?

  • Does your platform have ability to allocate inventory by location?

  • Does your platform have ability to allocate inventory by product?

  • Does your platform have the ability to track inventory by marketplace?

  • Does your platform have the ability to track inventory by location?

  • Does your platform have the ability to track inventory by product?

  • Does your platform have the ability to consolidate marketplace inventory reporting to a single view?

Fulfillment

  • Does your platform have ability to create rules for fulfillment?

  • Does your platform support integration with fulfillment partners?

  • Does your platform have ability yo track delivery status from the admin console?

Reports

  • Does your platform have ability to report sales by marketplace?

  • Does your platform have ability to report sales by product category?

Customer Service

  • Does your platform have ability to route customer inquiries to CSR?

  • Does your platform have ability to transfer customers among CSR with conversation history?

  • Does your platform have ability to integrate IM, email, calls to common CSR platform?