To put it lightly, running a business is challenging. You know this. You have more to-dos than you have notepads, there’s an overload of information to take in, and it takes all your energy and focus when you’re getting started or looking to grow.
You’re the accountant, content manager, product developer, marketer, and CEO, in one. And with every aspect of the business, you can either hire someone to help you or do it yourself to save money.
This post covers the process, costs, and benefits of hiring a Shopify Partner to develop your e-commerce store.
Freelancer vs. Expert: Which Should You Choose
Freelancers are perfect if you’re on a budget and you have a referral or know someone personally who can support your e-commerce build. Freelancers tend to charge less than agencies, but they can be harder to manage and might not produce the same quality of work that an agency would provide.
A Shopify partner will work alongside you, get to know your business, and usually have a lot of knowledge about your industry. They offer strategic, data-informed solutions in areas like user experience, user design, and conversion rate optimization.
Moreover, an agency that provides Shopify development typically also offers digital marketing. Why do you care about that? Because they have the experience of sending tons of traffic to websites, testing everything from button placement, headline copy, colours, images, checkout pages, and more. They understand what converts and what doesn’t in any number of industries.
By investing in a partner with a proven track record, an agency that has years of experience under their belt building and marketing high-converting websites, you’re almost guaranteed an excellent ROI (assuming you have product-market fit).
How an Expert Makes You Money
An agency partner has years of experience working with brands in a range of industries. They’ve seen entrepreneur’s growth challenges, the changes in social media and digital marketing best practices, they’ve been through design trends, and most have worked with clients of all sizes. The right agency partner will have a successful track record, proven processes, and strategies that help their clients succeed.
It’s in their benefit to help you succeed – if they build you an e-commerce store that converts well, you’ll likely come to them for digital marketing, or you’ll refer people their way. So your success is their success.
That said, success looks different for every company, and the same strategies don’t always apply. So while there are best practices and industry trends to be mindful of, every business has a different definition of success.
Generally, a Shopify Partner can improve your search engine ranking and online visibility, the store’s conversion rate, customer retention and lifetime value, and help decrease wasted advertising spend. By helping you convert more visitors, reduce bounce rates, and increase the lifetime value of your customers, a Shopify partner makes you money in the long run.
At Caffeinated Media Solutions, we’ve helped several businesses start and grow their e-commerce stores online over the last three years.
When to Hire a Shopify Partner
When you’re first building your business, you might save money by making your own Shopify Store. So you watch a few videos and read a few articles on the topic, and before you know it, you’re up and running.
However, you might not be converting as much as you expected. The average conversion rate, which changes by industry, on a Shopify website is 1.4% on desktops and just under 1% on mobile.
When you’re facing barriers to growth, and you’ve tried everything you can, it’s time to hire a Shopify Partner. They can audit your site, review your analytics, see what’s working, and make strategic decisions about what to adjust.
And while they can review your success metrics, before you hire a developer, start by determining the problems you want them to help you solve. For example, are you looking to improve retention, increase search engine visibility, or implement a new shipping calculator? Whatever the challenges are that you’re facing, when it’s clear to you that you aren’t the expert to solve them, hiring a Shopify partner will save you time and energy – both in the short and long term.
The Actual Cost of a Shopify Partner
You’re an intelligent person. You know what opportunity cost is. When you choose to work with an expert who can not only increase the value of your website, through visibility and sales but save you time and effort in the long term, whatever their fees, you’ll see a return on your investment.
When you work with an agency, the cost typically starts at $3,000.
It bears repeating, hiring the right partner will save you money (on advertising or piecemeal freelance work that could’ve been avoided), save you time (letting you invest it in the aspects of your business that only you can do), and provide a return on your investment (through SEO, CRO, increased lifetime value, and decreased bounce-rates).
And, of course, hiring an expert is a tax-deductible business expense.
Investing in a Shopify partner can help you grow your business better and faster than doing it yourself. You might not feel like your business can afford to hire a developer, but remember that hiring the right team of experts is a worthwhile investment rather than a cost.
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