The Complete E-commerce Website Checklist for Indian D2C Brands

A launch-ready ecommerce website checklist india D2C brands can actually trust covers roughly 40 items across six areas: payments (UPI, cards, COD), GST-compliant invoicing, shipping and logistics, performance, trust and legal, and analytics. Get the first three right and you remove the most common reasons an Indian shopper abandons a cart. Skip them and even great products lose 60-70% of ready buyers at checkout.

We build and audit D2C stores out of Gurugram, and the same gaps show up again and again - a beautiful catalogue bolted onto a checkout that fights the customer. This is the pre-launch list we run before any store we touch goes live, written for founders who are evaluating who to hire or what to demand from their current build.

What payment methods must an Indian D2C store support?

In India, payments are the make-or-break layer, and the defaults are different from the West. UPI is non-negotiable - it now drives the majority of digital retail transactions, so a one-tap UPI / QR option must be the most prominent choice at checkout, not buried under cards. Beyond UPI you need debit and credit cards, net banking, popular wallets, and EMI for higher-ticket products. And you need Cash on Delivery: COD still accounts for a large share of orders outside metros, and removing it quietly kills conversions in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities even if your Gurugram and Delhi customers rarely use it.

A few payment must-haves people forget: enable UPI AutoPay if you sell subscriptions, show saved cards via tokenisation (RBI rules mean you cannot store raw card numbers), and make sure failed-payment recovery exists - a "retry payment" link sent on WhatsApp recovers a meaningful slice of dropped UPI transactions. We wire all of this during ecommerce development rather than treating payments as an afterthought.

Which payment gateway should you choose?

Most Indian D2C brands choose between Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU, and CCAvenue. They are broadly similar on the surface but differ on pricing, settlement speed, and the extras that matter at scale. Indicative standard pricing is below - negotiated rates drop as volume grows, so treat these as starting points, not final numbers.

Gateway	Typical fee (UPI / cards)	Setup / annual	Standard settlement	Notable for
Razorpay	~0% UPI / ~2% cards	Nil setup	T+2 working days	Best developer docs, widest plugin support
Cashfree	~0% UPI / ~1.75-2% cards	Nil setup	T+1, instant available	Fast settlements, strong payouts
PayU	~2% cards (UPI low)	Nil setup	T+2 working days	High success rates, EMI options
CCAvenue	~2% + slabs	May charge annual	T+2 to T+4	Most payment options, multi-currency

For most early D2C brands we recommend Razorpay or Cashfree: zero or near-zero UPI fees, no setup cost, clean integration, and fast settlement that keeps your cash cycle healthy. CCAvenue earns its place when you sell internationally or need every exotic payment option. Whichever you pick, confirm two things before launch - the gateway is fully KYC-activated (not in test mode) and refunds work end to end, because a broken refund flow generates support tickets and chargebacks fast.

Is your store GST-compliant?

This is the section most template stores get wrong, and it creates real trouble at scale. Your checkout and invoicing must handle Indian tax correctly. That means each product carries the right HSN code and GST rate, and the system applies CGST + SGST for intra-state orders and IGST for inter-state orders based on the delivery state. Every order should generate a proper GST tax invoice showing your GSTIN, the customer's state, the HSN-wise tax breakup, and a sequential invoice number.

If you are below the turnover threshold and not yet registered, that is fine - but the platform should be built so GST can be switched on without re-plumbing checkout later. For brands selling above ₹5 crore turnover, e-invoicing (IRN) rules apply, so confirm your stack can integrate with an e-invoicing provider. Getting tax right from day one saves a painful migration and keeps your accountant - and a future GST audit - happy.

Have you sorted shipping and logistics?

Logistics quietly decides your margins and your reviews. The practical setup for Indian D2C is an aggregator like Shiprocket, Delhivery, or Pickrr that gives you access to multiple couriers, automatic courier selection by pincode and weight, and a single dashboard for labels, tracking, and returns. Your store must do a few things before launch:

• Pincode serviceability check on the product and cart page, so customers learn upfront whether you deliver to them and what COD availability looks like.
• Real shipping rates calculated by weight and destination zone, or a clearly stated free-shipping threshold - surprise shipping charges at the final step are a top abandonment cause.
• Automated tracking updates over email, SMS, and ideally WhatsApp, because "where is my order?" is the single biggest support load for any D2C brand.
• A clear returns and RTO workflow - Return-to-Origin is expensive, so add COD confirmation calls or partial prepaid incentives to cut RTO on high-value orders.

Wire your gateway, your logistics aggregator, and your store together so an order flows from payment to label to tracking without anyone copy-pasting between dashboards. That integration work is exactly what separates a hobby store from one that can handle a Diwali sale spike.

Will the store actually load fast enough to convert?

Indian shoppers browse on phones over variable 4G, and they leave slow stores. Performance is not a nice-to-have; it is a revenue lever and a ranking factor. Your pre-launch performance checklist should hit these targets and habits:

• Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on a mid-range Android over 4G - test on a real ₹15,000 phone, not your laptop.
• Compressed, next-gen product images (WebP/AVIF), lazy-loaded below the fold, because image weight is what kills most catalogue pages.
• A CDN serving assets from edges close to your customers, and caching that survives traffic spikes during sales.
• Mobile-first checkout with minimal fields, address autofill from pincode, and guest checkout - never force account creation before purchase.
• Core Web Vitals in the green in Google Search Console, since these feed both ranking and real user experience.

If your current store is sluggish, a focused website optimisation pass often lifts conversion more cheaply than any ad spend. And building the storefront for speed and discovery from the start - clean URLs, product schema, fast pages - is the heart of custom web development done properly.

The trust, legal, and analytics checklist

The last mile is credibility and measurement. Before launch, confirm you have an SSL certificate (the padlock), visible trust signals (genuine reviews, return policy, secure-payment badges, a real address and phone number), and the legal pages Indian e-commerce expects - Terms, Privacy Policy, Refund/Return Policy, and Shipping Policy, all required under consumer protection and e-commerce rules. Add a GST-compliant invoice on every order and a clearly stated grievance/contact channel.

On measurement, install analytics and the Meta and Google conversion pixels before you spend a rupee on ads, set up server-side or enhanced conversions where possible, and verify the full funnel fires: view product, add to cart, begin checkout, purchase. Abandoned-cart recovery over email and WhatsApp should be live on day one - it is one of the highest-ROI features in all of D2C. Plan your budget against these tiers with our transparent pricing before you commit.

FAQs

How much does an e-commerce website cost in India?

A solid, production-grade D2C store in Delhi NCR typically runs ₹1.5-6 lakh depending on catalogue size, custom design, and integrations like ERP or a loyalty programme. A lean store on a managed platform with a clean theme and proper payment, GST, and logistics wiring can launch lower; fully custom platforms with inventory, multiple roles, and complex offers run higher. The cost driver is rarely the design - it is the number of integrations and edge cases.

Should I use Shopify or a custom-built store?

Shopify (or WooCommerce) is excellent for getting to market quickly and is often the right first step for a new D2C brand. You outgrow it when platform fees, transaction cuts, or rigid checkout flows start costing more than a custom build would, or when you need deep India-specific logic, performance tuning, and integrations that off-the-shelf plugins handle clumsily. Many of our clients start on Shopify and move to a custom stack once volume justifies it.

Is Cash on Delivery still necessary in 2026?

Yes - for most D2C brands selling beyond the metros, COD still drives a meaningful share of orders and dropping it visibly reduces conversions. The smart approach is to keep COD but reduce its costs: add COD confirmation, offer small prepaid discounts, and use pincode-level RTO data to limit COD on risky orders. UPI and prepaid are growing fast, but removing COD entirely is premature for a national audience.

How do I handle GST on my e-commerce store?

Assign the correct HSN code and GST rate to every product, apply CGST+SGST for intra-state and IGST for inter-state orders based on delivery address, and generate a compliant tax invoice with your GSTIN and an HSN-wise breakup for each order. Build it so GST can be enabled cleanly even if you are not registered yet, and confirm e-invoicing support if you cross the turnover threshold. If you want this audited or built correctly, talk to our team and we will map it to your catalogue.