Online catalog, quote request, or direct purchase: which path to choose

"Should we add a cart or not?" is the question almost every online sales project starts with, and it's almost always asked the wrong way. You don't decide for the company: you decide for each product. The same business can have a spare part that's bought in thirty seconds, a custom job that requires a drawing, and a supply deal that goes through sales. This guide helps you figure out which path fits each product family, before you choose the platform.

The cost of getting it wrong is real in both directions. A cart on a product with no definable price produces orders that have to be canceled and irritated customers. A quote form on a standard product loses the sale from someone who already had their card in hand.

Three questions that decide the path

Before talking about buttons, answer three questions for each product family. If all the answers are yes, the cart is the natural choice; if even one doesn't hold up, the path changes.

1. Is the price definable in advance? Not "we know it", but: is there a rule that, given the parameters chosen by the customer, produces an exact amount including shipping and packaging?
2. Is availability known at the moment the customer orders? If the warehouse is updated once a day and items turn over quickly, you're selling quantities you might not have.
3. Does choosing correctly require advice? If a customer's wrong choice leads to a return, an impossible installation, or a machine stoppage, the sale isn't self-service.

The third question is the one companies underestimate the most. It's not about the technical complexity of the product, but the expertise of the buyer: the same bearing is a trivial purchase for a maintenance technician and a gamble for a private individual.

A matrix across three product families

A realistic example, with illustrative values: a company that sells spare parts from a catalog, performs custom work to drawing, and serves a few industrial customers with negotiated supply deals. Three products, three different paths, one website.

The third row is the most interesting: the same product changes path depending on who's looking at it. An anonymous visitor sees the product page and a button to request contact; a recognized customer sees their own price and reorders in two clicks. These aren't two websites: it's the same catalog with two states.

The mixed path, and when it becomes a mess

The mixed path is the one where the customer builds the request themselves, the system calculates whatever is deterministic, and the rest goes to sales. It works when the calculable part is the majority and the human part is the exception. It breaks down when it's the other way around: if every request still has to be reviewed by hand, you've built a complicated form, not a sales path.

Ask only for what the evaluation needs

Every field in a quote request needs to be justified with a sentence: "without this piece of information we can't respond." If the sentence doesn't hold up, the field goes. The test is simple, and almost no one does it.

• Quantity and desired delivery time almost always change the answer: they stay.
• Material, dimensions, finish, tolerances: they stay if they determine the price, they go if they're details you'll check on the drawing anyway.
• VAT number, billing address, full company name: needed to issue a document, not to produce a quote. Ask for them after acceptance.
• Industry, number of employees, "how did you hear about us": these matter to you, not to the evaluation. If you keep them, mark them optional and know that they lengthen the form.

An attachment is often worth more than ten fields. If your work starts from a drawing, a photo of the broken part, or a bill of materials, ask for that and leave the rest open.

What happens after sending the request or making the purchase

This is the part that gets designed last and that the customer judges first. Whoever has just sent a request or paid for an order is in a moment of uncertainty: they've given something and don't yet know what they'll get in return.

• For direct purchase: what arrives immediately, what arrives when the goods ship, and where to check the status without having to write in.
• For the quote request: who takes charge of it, in what form the answer will arrive, and what happens if a piece of information is missing. Also say what you do when you can't respond: answering "this isn't work we do" is a service.
• For an accepted quote: if it turns into an order without re-entering the data, say so. That's the difference between a quote and a piece of paper.

What this guide doesn't cover

Here you choose the sales model: which action to put in front of which product. How to build the rules of a configurator — which combinations are allowed, how variants are calculated, what to do when the result can't be determined — is a separate topic, covered in a dedicated guide. Managing resellers, price lists, and reordering also has its own guide.