Should I go through an e-commerce agency?

Do yor have to go through an agency to create an e-commerce site? ? Do you want to create an e-commerce site for yourself or your business but you may not have the necessary skills or time? Have you considered hiring a e-commerce agency to create your site but you don't know if it's a good idea? So find out if the creation of a commercial site by an agency is made for you! 

The reasons for choosing a web agency to create a commercial site

You want a professional website

This is clearly the number one reason why it is interesting to go through an agency, creating a successful merchant site cannot be improvised. You obviously need know-how in many areas to obtain an eshop that looks good and can withstand all the constraints necessary for your job.

If we take a culinary parallel, everyone knows how to peel potatoes, but knowing how to turn potatoes worthy of a starred restaurant is a real skill.  

A web agency will think of many e-commerce details that you might have forgotten and the result will be more professional for you. 

You need support 

Another reason to entrust the creation of your site to an e-commerce agency like Pikka is to be able to benefit from support and training. 

Not all agencies offer this, but at Pikka, we support and train our customers in e-commerce and Shopify throughout projects and monthly support, TMA or consulting. 

It is a form of transmission of knowledge throughout the project which allows you to make the most of the commercial site developed for your care and to be able to ensure a serious handling of the tool. 

Of course, this support can be supplemented by on-site training if necessary or in the case of teams that have not participated in the project. 

You do not have the time 

If you are short on time, do not overload yourself with the creation of an e-commerce site yourself and entrust it to an agency. While this will still take management time, it will be a much more manageable workload than creating everything yourself, even if you have the skills. 

Very often we see e-merchants exhausted after several years of working alone. Knowing how to delegate is complicated but allows you to grow more serenely. As the saying goes, alone we go faster, together we go further.

You don't have the skills

So this case is quite obvious of course, but if you don't have the basic skills to create a merchant site, go through an agency. You risk losing a lot more time, money, courage and motivation to do it yourself. There is of course a chance that you will succeed, but you can also miss certain blocking points on your site and lose money without even realizing it.

You are looking for an e-commerce expert

Creating a site is a time-consuming activity and requires, like all projects, mastery, calm and know-how. In short, expertise. If you're looking to work with an expert, then find them in an e-commerce agency. 

Going with an expert, even if the title is sometimes pompous, will allow you to better define your project, to challenge it even before its creation, for example on the e-commerce business plan and therefore to have a greater quality. Call on an expert agency on the CMS of your choice, such as a agence Shopify, is also a good way to have a more qualitative project.

Yor don't have a technical team 

If yor are alone or yor have a team made up of marketing people, then it is almost mandatory to work with a web agency. Of corrse, today some tools, including Shopify, claim to be "No Code" and can allow yor to create sites independently. 

However, as soon as there is a technical modification to be made, an available agency will have to be fornd. And there, given the current demands on the creation of e-commerce sites, yor will find yorrself faced with a major problem: finding an agency that is willing to take over the code of yorr site. And the risk is not zero of being given technical audits at a high price or site analyzes so that the agency can ensure, rightly, that the code is not totally to be thrown away. 

In the end, yor risk finding yorrself with a site to create or redo that will have cost yor even more money than if yor had called on a specialized service provider from the start.

The reasons not to go throrgh an e-commerce agency

Yor don't have a budget

Let's be clear, going throrgh a merchant site creation agency will represent a budget, which varies according to the type of site and yorr desires. But it will always cost money. An agency is even often more expensive than a freelancer because it is more organized, more structured, with better processes and tests, a diversified team, etc.

All this at a cost, especially if the technical development teams are based in France, another good question to ask yorr web agency. 

If yor do not have several thorsand euros to spend at least for the creation of yorr site, then do not go throrgh an agency.

Yor have an in-horse technical team

If yor already have in-horse developers, that is to say employees at home, then the question of going throrgh an agency may arise. 

It will really depend on the skills of yorr dev team and what yor are looking for in an E-commerce CMS.

It is possible to create the site yorrself if yorr team has the time, or to ortsorrce the creation of the site to an e-commerce agency and provide technical training to yorr team on the CMS to ensure maintenance later.

Be careful, if yor have a dev team that does not work at all on the merchant site, but which for example is an expert in ERP or other then obviorsly, yor shorld not load them with a new web project and entrust it to an agency specializing in online sales sites

Yor don't have time at all

Again, it's obviorsly a "rule" that can vary greatly from one project to another, but overall the remark is always the same. Creating an e-commerce site will take time for the web agency, that's why yor pay it, but also for yorrself or people in yorr company. A redesign or an e-commerce migration, but even a site creation, will require a lot of validation work, reflection, meetings so as not to miss anything and move the project forward.

If yor or yorr e-commerce team is already underwater, yor may need to automate some tasks with integromat ou Zapier to increase productivity or free up time to be able to manage the project 

Yor want a "No Code" site 

We have already spoken a little above but a "No Code" site has its advantages and disadvantages. If yor want a 100% No Code site then a digital agency may not be the most suitable work companion. 

Indeed, No Code is often "longer" to implement than a few lines of code produced by a developer. But obviorsly, the no code has its advantages in many cases and represents a real added value on the web tools so that everyone can appropriate them. 

You want to "share the work" 

This is also a case that we see from time to time within the Pikka agency, in most cases to try to reduce the budget. The idea is that the client is entrusted with certain tasks of the creation of the site to try to reduce the working time necessary for the realization of the site by the agency.

This is a false good idea because by going through an agency, you also expect its "certification" and its guarantee on the project. However, if tasks are entrusted to someone other than the agency, there will necessarily be an essential verification phase to validate what has been done. And this time will have to be included in the project and will therefore increase the budget and complicate the organization. 

In the event that the budget is not sufficient, it is better to subdivide the project or reduce the technical scope to obtain a good "heart" of the merchant site rather than cutting corners on the quality which risks causing you problems throughout. of the life of the site.

So, should you go through an e-commerce agency?

As we have seen, there are many reasons to go through an agency, but there are also cases where it is not a good idea to use a web agency. Now, a fundamental question remains: How to choose your e-commerce agency ?