FROM PREVIEW TO REAL STORE

Business readiness checklist

Use this checklist to track what Kitabistan needs before it can safely accept real customer orders.

1. Store essentials

Make it easy to understand what you sell and trust what arrives.

Add real product photos and accurate titles, authors, editions, publishers and publication years. Set correct prices, stock quantities, product condition and edition-specific notes. Add complete categories and make every category filter match real products. Add product detail pages with condition, provenance, dimensions and any defects. Add contact details, business name and customer-support hours. Test search, category filters, sorting, cart quantities and mobile layout.

2. Checkout and payments

Required before customers can pay and orders can be fulfilled.

Connect a secure backend and database for customers, orders, inventory and order status. Connect a payment provider account and test payment success, failure, refunds and webhooks. Never collect or store raw card numbers or CVV in your own website. Configure shipping fees, delivery PIN-code coverage, free-shipping thresholds and delivery estimates. Decide whether cash on delivery is offered and define eligibility, confirmation and return rules. Recalculate prices, stock, shipping and totals on the server before accepting an order. Send order confirmation, payment receipt, shipping updates and cancellation/refund notices.

3. Policies and legal

Have these reviewed for your business and the places you sell.

Publish shipping, delivery, cancellation, returns and refund policies. Publish privacy policy, terms of sale, cookie/analytics disclosures where applicable. Show business contact/address details and applicable tax/invoice information. Confirm GST, invoicing, consumer-protection and other legal obligations with a qualified professional. Explain how rare-book condition, authenticity and provenance claims are verified.

4. Security and operations

Protect customer information and make orders manageable.

Deploy with HTTPS and secure environment variables; keep secret API keys out of frontend code. Add admin login with role-based access to edit products, inventory and orders. Add backups, error logging, spam protection and a process for security updates. Test checkout on mobile and desktop, including empty cart, out-of-stock items and failed payment. Run a complete test order, packing workflow, shipping label and refund before launch.

5. Growth and customer care

Optional at first, useful as the store grows.

Set up a business email address and customer support workflow. Configure analytics, search indexing, social previews and a custom domain. Add abandoned-cart follow-up only with appropriate consent and privacy controls.

This checklist is a practical planning aid, not legal, tax or payment-provider advice. The current checkout is a prototype; it does not process payments or submit orders.