If you are looking to have your e-commerce site created by a Shopify expert, then you may be wondering how to select it and be sure to find a real Shopify expert.
There are indeed many freelancers or agencies who claim to be Shopify experts , but unfortunately, this is not always the case. Seeing sometimes is just marketing. Indeed, due to the popularity of Shopify, it is not uncommon to find e-commerce agencies taking advantage of the Shopify wave to recover projects without having any real skills.
So sometimes, if your project is very very simple, it won't necessarily be a problem. But if you want a well-built site, maintainable over time and respecting the fundamentals of e-commerce, UX, the web and the Shopify solution, sometimes this can represent a risk.
Let's see together how to avoid the risks of a bad service provider when looking for a Shopify expert and find someone with real skills.
Note that these tips can be used if you are looking for a Shopify freelancer or a Shopify agency.
Here are some questions to ask your contact to better understand what he is offering you and his level of expertise.
1) How many e-commerce solutions does he master?
This is a fundamental question to understand the scope of expertise of your interlocutor.
Each e-commerce solution has its advantages and disadvantages and knowing them all, including on Shopify, takes time and therefore training.
For your information, Shopify has launched more than 100 new products in less than 6 months on its platform, and even at Pikka, a 100% Shopify agency, it is sometimes difficult to keep pace when everyone is only trained in Shopify.
Imagine an expert who claims to be able to create an e-commerce site in five or six different platforms. How much time does he have left to keep up to date, to train and to code? None.
Today, for a single person, such as a freelancer, it is almost impossible to offer more than two e-commerce solutions. One being the ideal. For an agency, you need at least one group of people for each solution.
So if there are 3 or 4 people in the agency and as many e-commerce solutions, for example Prestashop and Magento , it's a risk. If, on the other hand, you have an agency of 30 people, then yes, mastering two or three solutions is totally possible.
Generally, agencies or freelancers with few skills on a subject tend to increase the number of so-called mastered solutions to “impress” or to reassure themselves.
From our point of view, this is a bad idea because you will run the risk of having a site that does not really exploit the possibilities of your e-commerce solution and that at the first technical difficulty, the agency or the freelancer can't find a solution.
Attention, even if at Pikka we have chosen to be a specialized agency on Shopify, it is not the only model. A multi-solution e-commerce digital agency is not necessarily a bad thing if the teams are numerous enough to offer a good knowledge of the e-commerce solutions sold.
2) How many sites have you created using Shopify?
This is also a fundamental question because the number of sites also makes it possible to realize the rate of sales or redesign of sites .
If, for example, the agency tells you that it has put 10 Shopify stores online in 3 months, that's a pretty good sign, if it's in 4 years, that's very few sites per year. Well if it's big projects like Shopify Plus, maybe it's still okay.
The idea is to know what is the percentage of sites being made with Shopify to know once again if it is an internally controlled or episodic solution.
Tell yourself that you need at least fifteen sites per year to keep pace with Shopify, to know how to produce and deliver e-commerce sites and to have organized schedules.
What if it's the agency's first site under Shopify?
If you call on an agency or a freelancer for whom this is the first site creation under Shopify then already twice congratulations. Kudos for thinking of asking the question and kudos to the freelancer/agency for having the honesty to admit it.
However, in this specific case it's up to you, you will give money so that the agency is trained on this new e-commerce software, this may require an adapted price or a more flexible project mode . In principle, it is not up to the client to pay for project delays and the cost of training developers.
Be careful though, you risk having a less qualitative site than usual. It may be necessary to negotiate with the agency to obtain a more interesting man-day rate as a "beta tester"? It's up to you to discuss with your service provider.
3) Have you ever created a theme or an application?
Again, the idea is to see what is behind the term “Shopify expert”. There may be marketing experts, project experts and technical experts.
Except for the construction of a site it is good at the base to have a technical expert to build its commercial site. This can greatly vary the price of the estimate!
A marketer may just be piling apps on top of each other, which is one of the most common Shopify mistakes.
A project expert will know how to configure Shopify properly but without being able to provide the UX or design layer necessary to make your site unique.
The advantage of being able to call on someone who has already put their hands in the code, whether by creating a theme or by creating an application and that this person will have a technical mastery of Shopify. For example, if an agency or a freelancer knows the Liquid well, it's true more!
She will therefore be able to see what the limits of the platform are and advise you on the right directions to take in your web project.
It's a bit like going to a mechanic who has never disassembled and reassembled an engine. It would be a bit strange and yet on the web, many people do it all the same without knowing it!
4) Are you Shopify Partner?
This question is a bit of a double-edged sword. Indeed, being a Shopify Partner does not really guarantee the quality of the project or the service you are going to have. You should know that an email address is enough to be a Shopify Partner, which is not very complicated.
But in the end, if you call on a Shopify expert, again freelancer or agency, who hasn't even taken the time to be a Shopify Partner, or even worse, who doesn't even know that the Shopify partner program exists , so run away!
A serious agency or a serious freelancer on Shopify is at least Shopify Partner.
If so, you can ask which part of the team has taken Shopify Academy courses and ask to see each employee's validations on technical and marketing skills.
Again, being a Shopify Partner is totally different from being a real Shopify Expert. But it is at least a guarantee of the person's real interest in Shopify.
5) Does your site run on Shopify?
This is my favorite little "trick" question. At PIkka, for example, the agency's site only runs on Shopify. All content is in the Shopify blog and the entire site is powered by Shopify.
This is fundamental for us because it shows that we believe in the solution and in its potential . Anyway, the Pikka site is our first sandbox and is used for all experiments. There are other Shopify agencies that have chosen the same voice, but not all of them!
How can you talk about increasing the conversion rate, site speed, UX and back office of Shopify when you don't use the same e-commerce solution as your customers? Personally, I don't know. This is why the Pikka site will always be under Shopify in order to meet the same challenges that our customers may encounter and always better understand them.
Shopify isn't perfect, that's for sure, but it's the best e-commerce solution in our opinion. We might as well prove it and bring our words and actions into line by using the solution on a daily basis.
Understanding the issues merchants are having on Shopify brings us closer to them and makes it easier to find solutions.
And you, what questions would you ask a Shopify expert or consultant to be sure of their skills?
