Although Shopify is easy to set up and run even by users without a technical background, you may still need to hire professional Shopify developers. In this post, we explain why and give some tips on choosing the right Shopify development company.
The present-day retail industry no longer resembles the one that existed before the pandemic struck. eCommerce is now gaining more ground, pushing the traditional brick-and-mortar model farther to the roadside.
Even prior to this global crisis, online sales had been demonstrating solid growth. According to Statista, worldwide online sales are expected to hit the $6.5 billion mark by 2023.
Selling products online, though, is a challenging occupation. Online merchants have a lot to take care of, including:
The list goes on.
One of the crucial items on any online merchant’s to-do list is also building a visually appealing and engaging storefront with all the right functionality. These days, there is no shortage of eCommerce platforms that entrepreneurs can use to base their stores on.
One of the top systems currently available on the market is Shopify. Aspiring online merchants choose it because it is cost-effective, secure, fast, flexible, simple to set up, suitable for any niche, has an unlimited bandwidth, and comes with many other attractive features.
That said, creating a truly powerful Shopify store or efficiently scaling an existing one is hardly a task for novices. While you can get an up-and-running Shopify site in almost no time, you are sure to encounter many obstacles down the road.
For instance, some of the apps the vendor provides through its official App Store may cause hard-to-fix errors or fail to work altogether. Shopify merchants have also reported some difficulties when dealing with more than one currency or language, particularly rare ones.
Those are just some of the issues that Shopify store owners themselves might not be able to handle and, thus, need assistance with. The good news is that help is just around the corner. All you need to do is hire a Shopify development company. Below, we’ve listed 3 benefits that you can reap by cooperating with these professionals.
When you see sites like Amazon or eBay, you immediately recognize the companies they belong to. You would do this even if there were actually no corporate names anywhere on the sites.
Why? Because they have the layout and color combinations that no other marketplace has. That’s exactly what Shopify store owners should strive for: making their site different from others. This contributes to better company recognition and increased traffic.
You can install one of the many available Shopify themes on your site yourself and even tweak them a bit. However, other merchants can do the same thing. The result? Hundreds of similar-looking, faceless stores. It’s a kind of lottery. Consumers see no difference between these sites and open any at random.
It’s much wiser, then, to find a Shopify developer who cannot only customize a ready-made theme, but also follows the latest trends in web development, design, and usability.
Is flat web design popular now? Minimalist design? Illustrative design? What’s the current trend in laying out navigational elements? Shopify theme development experts know the answers to these questions and can come up with the most engaging and convenient design to increase your Shopify store’s conversion rate.
As the saying goes, “A jack of all trades and master of none.” It can be applied to any form of human activity, including eCommerce. When you hire Shopify web developers, you can be absolutely confident that they know every tiny detail of the platform.
With their deep knowledge, professional Shopify developers can turn your online store into a true powerhouse to increase your online sales. A web developer specializing in Shopify can extend the basic Shopify features by adding appropriate HTML, CSS, or JS into Liquid. A few examples:
Apart from that, you can hire Shopify web developers to give you valuable advice regarding various apps available through the App Store, such as SEO apps we have overviewed in one of our posts.
Not all of these apps are of high quality or entirely compatible with your store. By hiring the best Shopify app developers, you will know exactly which of the apps are worth installing and which can harm your business instead.
Finally, hire Shopify app development experts to optimize your store in all possible ways. This means image optimization, speed boosting, improving search engine visibility, and other aspects. A fast-loading online store has a better chance to satisfy Google.
As we noted earlier, online merchants have to take care of a plethora of marketing and logistical tasks. Therefore, by partnering with a Shopify development company, entrepreneurs can take the heavy technical burden off their shoulders.
Process payments from customers, search for the best merchandise on the web, communicate with your consumers, promote your store, and do other important things to engage your target audience and improve your bottom line.
Meanwhile, our Shopify web developers will make sure your site looks unique, runs fast, and has all the features your business requires. We will also fix any errors you yourself might not be able to spot. A smooth-running site without bugs is definitely the largest benefit you can get.
Now that you know why you need to hire pros, let’s talk about how you can identify a worthy Shopify eCommerce development company or developer. We’ve prepared a list of the most stand-out signs to ensure you are talking to the right person for the job.
We will begin by saying the obvious: the company or individual you are thinking of hiring must have a professionally designed website. If it looks amateurish, you might expect the same low-quality result with your own store.
The site must look unique rather than resemble a collection of ready-made templates and random images. In addition, the site must include a portfolio of the previous projects.
Finally, the developer’s site must list all of the Shopify services provided, along with starting rates and explanations, if those are necessary.
Clearly, nobody wants to make corrections for free. However, when a Shopify developer doesn’t include bug fixes or minor updates in their offer, it likely means they are not skilled or experienced enough to complete a project the right way on the first go.
For you, the client, minor updates are important since they allow you to have some small changes made to your project without paying a cent. Updates may have nothing to do with the quality of work. Sometimes, you may simply decide to have a different call-to-action phrase on a button.
Of course, there must be a limit. A round or two of minor updates are normal. However, not offering any minor updates at all is a clear sign that the developer wants to make you pay for every cosmetic change as if it were a completely new order.
APIs or Application Programming Interfaces are what help Shopify developers turn an ordinary website into a feature-rich eCommerce store.
There are a ton of Shopify APIs to address all kinds of business issues. For example, the Storefront API enables developers to customize purchasing experiences, while the Marketing Events API makes it possible to create various marketing events, for example, events that are triggered during email campaigns.
Without a deep knowledge of these APIs and experience using them, a Shopify developer will not be able to give you the value you expect. You have to do your homework here.
Visit the official API guides page and make some notes related to different Shopify APIs. There’s no need to get overly technical. Make a list of some of the APIs on the page and click their links to find out about their purposes.
Then, when you get in touch with a Shopify developer, ask them to talk about the APIs you have chosen. If you feel that the developer’s knowledge of the APIs is too shallow, continue your search elsewhere.
On the other hand, confidence in answers and explanations means that the developer is versed in the subject and you can trust them.
This aspect of the Shopify development service clearly distinguishes “hit-and-run” freelancers from respectable companies. The latter don’t abandon their clients once their project has been built and gone live.
An e-commerce site is a complex product that may experience all kinds of issues “out in the wild.” The developers who have built or customized your Shopify store know what can go wrong with it and how to solve various problems on the user-facing or database-facing ends.
So, search for this information on the developer’s site. Some companies may provide free support and maintenance services for a limited period of time. Others may charge a fee from day 0 after deployment. In any case, there must be a post-go-live service.
As the Statista research company projects, the number of mobile users in the world will reach 7.33 billion by 2023. A sizable portion of these likes purchasing goods on mobile eCommerce websites.
While Shopify themes are responsive out of the box, there are a number of underwater currents to heed if you want your web store to be genuinely mobile-friendly. Read one of our previous posts on this topic, for example.
It’s crucial to find out what experience the developer has had with mobile devices. Ask them how they test the end product and what platforms and devices they use to guarantee the ideal mobile experience to their clients.
Keep in mind that virtual devices are not enough to give you the maximum value. You need your Shopify store to run on physical devices as well since you can see how certain features work only on real smartphones or tablets.
Most freelancers and small development agencies lack sufficient resources to provide comprehensive testing like that. Therefore, a larger company is a wiser choice since it has the required number of testing devices to guarantee the widest coverage. For example, GetDevDone performs testing on 12 physical devices. You will hardly find a freelancer who can match this.
Clear communication is extremely important in the development of a Shopify web store. A misunderstanding between a developer and you may lead to additional expenses.
A Shopify development company will assign a dedicated PM to your project. He/She will quickly and clearly answer all your questions related both to the business and technical sides of the project.
Write an email with your questions to the Shopify developer or get in touch with them through a sales chat. Watch how fast they can respond and whether their reply is detailed and to the point.
In a fast-paced, highly dynamic business environment, time is money, however hackneyed this expression may sound. You may have a rush project “you should have completed yesterday.” This is what only a large Shopify development company can offer you. Freelancers normally lack sufficient resources to handle tasks with extremely tough deadlines.
What’s even more important, a big Shopify development agency can deliver a finished project twice faster without a loss in quality. This is possible thanks to numerous previously implemented ASAP projects and perfectly adjusted, smooth workflow for these particular situations.
Therefore, ask the individual or firm if they have had any experience with ASAP projects to know where to seek help, should the need arise.
A large company with extensive experience in Shopify (eCommerce) development knows exactly what it takes to build a web store as they have done that hundreds or thousands of times. That means you can expect an ETA within one or two business days at most. This ETA will detail every single item you need to pay for with a precise fee.
This also means you can expect the team to begin implementing your project almost immediately after you give your approval. A large, worthy Shopify development company has a staff of professionals large enough to get the ball rolling just a few hours after the starting pistol shot.
By contrast, most small agencies or freelancers can’t give their clients ETAs so quickly due to a lack of experience or shortage of qualified staff. Besides, in many cases they can’t clearly explain why this or that feature takes a particular period of time to build. You would hardly want to play question-answer ping-pong with a developer for weeks, trying to understand when you can expect the work to begin and finish.
Coming across “all-or-nothing” Shopify developers is not rare. You can only pay them for the entire work at once. However, buying a pig in a poke is a bad practice when it comes to eCommerce, especially if you are a small business owner with every cent counting.
A larger Shopify development company offers you an opportunity to purchase the implementation of one small feature or fulfillment of a small request before striking a full-blown deal. This enables you to watch the team in action, get familiar with their workflow, see how quickly they respond to your queries and make sure that the quality is on par with what you expect.
That means the developer is not afraid of showcasing their skills and expertise, even on a small task, in an attempt to win a client’s trust.
Whatever your niche is, no matter how complex the user interface you want, or what features you’d like your online store to have, the GetDevDone Shopify development team will get it done for you fast and with the highest quality guaranteed.
We’ve successfully completed numerous Shopify development projects. For example, check out these case studies:
Not only do we develop high-quality online stores but we also provide their maintenance and support once we deliver them to clients. Our clients are always happy to have us as their trusted development partners as we care about their business success and growth.
The GetDevDone team closely follows the latest industry trends. We tirelessly work to keep improving our skills and knowledge and apply state-of-the-art methods in project development, both in code and design.
Get in touch with us with all kinds of frontend tasks, consultations, or optimizations for your Shopify store.
There are lots of reasons why hiring a professional Shopify developer or Shopify development company always pays off. Take these three, for example:
You will have a truly custom theme to stand out from the pack. That’s extremely important for any business with an online presence. For eCommerce, it is a matter of life or death. When your website looks like hundreds of others, your chances of attracting consumers and increasing sales are very slim.
You need to have a unique, engaging design that none of your competitors can boast of. A ready-made theme will hardly give you an advantage. Only experienced, professional Shopify developers well-versed in the niceties of the system can make your store visually appealing and truly different from others.
Your Shopify store will have all the right functionality to contribute to better sales. An expert Shopify developer will fine-tune your website to make it more convenient both for you, the administrator, and for your target audience by leveraging the great power of Liquid, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Shopify APIs, and apps.
You will have lots of free time to attend to your business matters. Instead of spending hours trying to tweak your theme or adjust an app to fit your businees needs, you can hire professional Shopify developers to get them to deal with all those tedious technical apsects.
You, in turn, will be able to direct your energy to promoting your store, communicating with potential and existing customers, searching for new merchandise, and doing other things that are essential for your business.
That’s exactly what we have discussed in the section 9 Things to Indicate That You Are Dealing with a Worthy Shopify Developer above.
Shopify developers can do much more than just customize themes or build them from scratch. By leveraging the power of the Shopify APIs, they can also create custom functionality and integrate third-party services into online stores, optimize performance, create custom apps to meet unique business needs, and much more.
A professional Shopify development company like GetDevDone is a much better choice than freelancers. You get a dedicated PM to manage your project from start to finish. You sign a legally binding contract with the company as well as an NDA. Therefore, you can be sure that your sensitive data is protected by law.
In addition, GetDevDone has a QA team to perform thorough testing of all Shopify projects on a wide array of physical devices. This is something that few, if any, freelancers can afford. As a result, you get back a unique product of unbeatable quality.
A company values its reputation and will not vanish overnight unlike many freelancers.
Shopify is a superb platform as far as smooth mobile user experience goes. Every theme on the Shopify theme store is fully responsive out of the box. Still, if you want to make your theme truly mobile friendly, responsiveness alone is not enough. Read this post to learn what other steps you need to take to optimize your store for customers with handheld devices.
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