10 Questions Every Ecommerce RFP Should Include

Choosing the right commerce partner is a long-term business and operational investment that directly affects revenue growth, scalability, and organizational efficiency.

Research from Deloitte shows that nearly 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail to achieve their intended outcomes when they lack alignment with broader business strategy and rely on subjective success metrics rather than measurable financial impact.

This is where an ecommerce RFP makes a difference. As a strategic tool, it determines whether potential partners align with the organization’s business model, operational complexity, integration landscape, and long-term growth objectives.  

The quality of the questions included in an ecommerce RFP is the key differentiator, revealing how vendors approach architecture, scalability, delivery predictability, risk management, governance, and ongoing optimization within complex enterprise ecommerce environments spanning integrations, pricing models, custom workflows, and distributor networks.

Below are 10 questions organizations can use when developing an ecommerce RFP template to move beyond surface-level vendor comparisons and identify partners capable of supporting both immediate and long-term ecommerce transformation.

1. Can the eCommerce RFP Support the Current Business Model Over the Next 3-5 Years?

An effective ecommerce RFP aligns organizational requirements with future objectives by identifying scalable platforms and partners. This ensures the ecommerce RFP looks beyond present-day features and reduces the risk of selecting solutions that cannot support new sales channels, markets, or business models.  

In turn, vendors must demonstrate an understanding of the organization’s business model, growth plans, operational complexity, and required ecommerce platform functionality over the planning horizon including the ability to support business evolution through:

• Experience supporting multiple business models such as B2C, B2B, DTC, marketplace, or hybrid commerce

• Capacity to handle internationalization, multi-brand, multi-site, and multi-currency requirements

• Platforms flexibility to enable new channels, regions, or customer types

• Transparent explanation of platform limitations, upgrade paths, and scalability considerations

• Integration readiness for emerging technologies and evolving commerce capabilities

How this protects investments

Addressing long-term business alignment in an ecommerce RFP shifts evaluation toward vendors with a strategic approach to long-term platform viability, including scalability, adaptability, and total cost of ownership, enabling a more sustainable commerce foundation and business expansion.

2. What Experience Does the Vendor Have with Similar eCommerce RFP Projects?

Every business has goals, constraints, and technical complexity such as legacy systems, integration requirements, organizational processes, and scalability considerations. In ecommerce, where complex pricing, custom catalogues, account management, and ERP integrations are common, vendors with experience navigating these challenges are better positioned to anticipate risks and avoid costly missteps.  

An ecommerce RFP should therefore assess delivery capability by validating whether vendors have successfully delivered similar projects. To support vendor evaluation over the planning horizon, the ecommerce RFP template can incorporate the following:

• Examples of projects with similar business models, scale, and complexity

• Case studies demonstrating business outcomes, such as conversion improvements, revenue growth, operational efficiency, or performance gains

• A detailed description of the vendor’s role in each project, including strategy, design, development, integrations, and optimization

• Client references with similar requirements and operating environments

How this improves vendor selection

Incorporating these elements into the ecommerce RFP vendor selection requirements ensures evaluation of proven delivery experience rather than theoretical readiness. This facilitates prioritization of vendors with proven ecommerce implementations, success stories, and documented lessons learned.

3. How Are Discovery and Requirements Defined in the eCommerce RFP?

Many ecommerce projects encounter issues such as inconsistent estimates and misaligned proposals, particularly when multiple workflows, customer hierarchies, pricing models, and system integrations are involved. An ecommerce RFP can address these challenges by assessing how business goals are translated into documented, actionable requirements through the following:

• A structured discovery process, including workshops, stakeholder interviews, technical audits, and data analysis

• The methodology used to document, validate, and prioritize business, technical, and user requirements

• How findings inform scope definition, solution architecture, and implementation recommendations

• The process for identifying assumptions, dependencies, risks, and unknowns during discovery

• How discovery practices contribute to estimate accuracy and risk mitigation

How this reduces project risk

Defining discovery and requirements in the RFP is a foundational part of ecommerce RFP vendor selection requirements, helping identify vendors that prioritize planning and clarity over early estimates. This results in more accurate proposals, fewer change orders, and a seamless transition from strategy to execution.

4. How Are Integrations with Existing Systems Addressed in the eCommerce RFP?

Given requirements such as real-time pricing, inventory visibility, customer-specific catalogues, and account hierarchies, integration expertise is essential in ecommerce. However, system integrations are among the most challenging aspects of commerce projects, and many organizations continue to rely on legacy RFP templates that were once effective but place limited emphasis on integration strategy or technical depth.

As a result, integration planning becomes a key indicator of delivery readiness. The ecommerce RFP should surface how vendors intend to connect the commerce platform with core business systems, such as ERP, CRM, PIM, OMS, marketing automation, and fulfillment, revealing their approach to architecture, data flow, and long-term maintainability by examining the following:

• Experience delivering integrations with similar technical and operational complexity

• Approach to API-based integrations versus middleware or iPaaS solutions

• How data synchronization and monitoring are managed

• Security considerations for data transfer

Integration planning should be reflected in the discovery process and carried through to scope, timelines, and pricing, particularly in ecommerce initiatives with complex system dependencies.

How this prevents costly surprises

Addressing this in an ecommerce RFP reduces the risk of unexpected technical challenges, budget overruns, and timeline extensions, while improving the likelihood of selecting a partner that understands the ecommerce storefront and the broader technology ecosystem.

5. How are Out-of-the-Box Capabilities and Customization Evaluated in an eCommerce RFP?

The decision to rely on out-of-the-box or custom functionality represents a core architectural consideration in any commerce project. When built-in capabilities are well understood, many requirements can be met through configuration rather than custom development.  

This distinction informs how built-in features and customization are evaluated within the ecommerce RFP, with attention to trade-offs between speed, cost, flexibility, and long-term maintainability, by examining:

• How business requirements are assessed against platforms capabilities

• Criteria used to recommend configuration versus customizations

• Examples where built-in capabilities reduced cost and complexity

• Examples where customization was required and why

• How customization impacts upgrades, performance, and total cost of ownership

How this supports long-term success

These considerations within an ecommerce RFP template reduce the risk of over-engineered solutions and fragile custom codebases, while prioritizing partners that design sustainable architectures capable of evolving with the business.

6. How Does the eCommerce RFP Address Performance, Scalability, and Uptime?

Performance, scalability, and uptime have a direct impact on revenue, customer experience, and brand trust. As a result, ecommerce RFPs benefit from highlighting how performance and reliability are established and maintained, particularly across different business models such as B2B and B2C ecommerce, where large orders, complex catalogues, and integration-heavy workflows place sustained pressure on infrastructure.

An ecommerce RFP should therefore require vendors to demonstrate how their proposed solution is designed to operate under real-world conditions, including traffic spikes, seasonal demand, peak-order volumes, integration load, and long-term growth, by outlining:  

• Hosting and infrastructure approach, including cloud architecture designed for redundancy and failover to ensure availability and uptime

• Performance optimization strategies, such as caching, CDN usage, and front-end and back-end optimization

• Load and stress testing practices

• Monitoring, alerting, and incident response procedures

• Uptime targets and service-level commitments

• Instrumentation and observability practices to monitor performance, detect issues, and support rapid incident response

How this protects your revenue

Requiring vendors to address performance, scalability, and uptime in the ecommerce RFP reduces the risk of slow sites, outages, and reactive fixes, while enabling organizations to select partners that support stability and growth from the outset.

7. What Security and Compliance Requirements Should Be Included in an eCommerce RFP?

Ecommerce environments should establish security standards and regulatory requirements to protect customer data, payment information, and business systems.

Given the elevated risk exposure associated with payment information, customer data, customer-specific contracts, and integrated systems, ecommerce platforms are frequent targets of cyber threats.  

These include attack patterns such as malicious JavaScript injection into storefront code to capture payment details during checkout, reinforcing the importance of establishing security and compliance controls within the ecommerce RFP vendor selection requirements, including:

• Compliance with relevant standards and regulations, such as PCI DSS 4.0 / 4.01, GDPR, SOC 2 Type II, and HIPAA, as well as regional data protection regulations

• Ongoing security validation, monitoring, and protection of integrated systems

• Secure development practices and code review processes

• Data encryption methods, both in transit and at rest

• Identity and access management controls

• Vulnerability scanning, penetration testing, and patch management processes

• Incident response and breach notification procedures

How this reduces risk

Security and compliance expectations within an ecommerce RFP reduce operational, financial, regulatory, and reputational risk by ensuring shortlisted vendors meet governance and data protection requirements before implementation begins.

8. What Should an eCommerce RFP Include About Implementation Timelines, Roles, and Risks?

Standardized ecommerce RFP templates result in proposals with high-level timelines that lack sufficient detail to assess feasibility or risk, producing unrealistic expectations and delivery uncertainty. To address this, an ecommerce RFP should present an execution roadmap that emphasizes:

• Project phases and major milestones

• Estimated timelines, dependencies, and assumptions

• Roles and responsibilities across vendor and client teams

• Governance structure and communication model

• Risk identification and mitigation strategies

• Change management approach for scope, budget, or timeline  

How this improves predictability

Well-defined timelines, roles, and risks in an ecommerce RFP provide transparency into how delivery will be managed, enabling more informed planning, reducing delivery risk, and increasing confidence in implementation outcomes.

9. What Ongoing Support and Optimization Should Be Covered in an eCommerce RFP Template?

An ecommerce RFP template that focuses primarily on implementation while leaving ongoing services and support undefined makes it difficult to evaluate long-term fit. Without defined post-launch expectations, organizations risk selecting partners who can deliver a project but cannot effectively support, scale, or optimize the platform over time.

Ongoing support and optimization therefore serve as key indicators of a vendor’s long-term partnership model. The ecommerce RFP should outline requirements for post-launch services and maintenance across the commerce platform lifecycle, surfacing how vendors plan to sustain platform stability, adapt to change, and drive continuous enhancement through the following areas:

• Post-launch support and maintenance services

• Service-level agreements (SLAs) and response times

• Bug fixes, security patches, and platform updates

• Ongoing optimization services (UX, conversion optimization, performance, SEO)

• Analytics, reporting, and insight-driven recommendations

• Dedicated account management or defined support team structure

How this supports long-term success

Addressing ongoing support and optimization in an ecommerce RFP reduces long-term operational risk and reinforces a stable, adaptable commerce foundation beyond initial implementation, contributing to improved site performance, customer experience, and business growth.

10. What Case Studies and References Should Vendors Provide In an eCommerce RFP?

Case studies and client references validate delivery capability and credibility. To enable objective, evidence-based comparisons that align proposals with business needs, an ecommerce RFP template should specify the proof vendors are expected to provide, including:

• Case studies from projects with similar business models, scale, and complexity

• Examples demonstrating measurable outcomes, such as revenue growth, conversion improvements, operational efficiency gains

• Description of the vendor’s role and responsibilities across strategy, implementation, and delivery

• Key challenges encountered and how they were addressed

• Client references willing to discuss their experience

How this builds confidence

Establishing documented evidence requirements in an ecommerce RFP supports informed vendor evaluation and reduces reliance on claimed capabilities, enabling organizations to assess consistency, execution discipline, and long-term delivery performance before selecting a business partner.

Whether developing an ecommerce RFP, refining an RFP template, or navigating complex vendor selection requirements, the right advisory partner enables successful outcomes.

Tidal Commerce provides advisory support across platform evaluation, architecture planning, and implementation strategy to help teams make confident, informed decisions. Connect with us to learn how we can support your ecommerce RFP process.