Choosing the right partner to meet your business needs can appear daunting. It not only involves expanding your store’s capabilities but also necessitates your active involvement and possibly extra know-how if your chosen development partner lacks it. For instance, collaborating with an independent contractor demands detailed task explanations on your part. You’ll likely find yourself directly managing requirements of your Shopify Store, verifying finished tasks, discussing rework, and verifying the quality of the work done.
The importance of selecting the right partner extends to the quality of delivered documentation, change management process, error tracking, monitoring deadlines and quality, providing constant feedback. Frequent switches between freelancers or agencies or settling for less skilled partners can lead to a costly and difficult-to-maintain codebase, with a plethora of undocumented modifications. A number of such decisions may lead to the fact that in the future starting anew might be more feasible than attempting to resolve the myriad of existing problems.
So, if you’re managing an ecommerce business, have a strategy for growth in place, and are in search of methods to facilitate changes with less hassle, let’s explore the details.
Assessing Your Needs Early On
The potential to modify your store ties directly to your chosen subscription. Take Shopify Plus, for instance; its key selling point for developers is the freedom to fully tailor the storefront, even opting for a headless approach if desired. This flexibility allows for a distinctive brand experience for your visitors. Hence, if Shopify Plus is in your sights, maintaining a well-functioning storefront is important to avoid extra costs and labor during the transition. Regardless of your platform’s current version, it’s vital to mention that varying levels of customization will require different technical proficiencies.
In essence, all Shopify plans demand a developer versed in Liquid, CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. Opting for a fully customized solution, particularly with Shopify Plus, you’ll likely need developers skilled also in Hydrogen or your preferred tech stack, along with quality assurance specialists to ensure everything runs smoothly across different browsers.
Contemplating Legacy Issues
Legacy issues stem from past decisions in process management, code quality, and backlog handling, which can lead to a store that’s challenging to maintain and introduce new functionality in the future. If you’re being advised to refactor code, it’s one of the indicators of legacy problems. Often, legacy arises from frequently changing development partners, their limited expertise, or shortcuts taken during development. Even if refactoring hasn’t been mentioned, it doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary. It should be anticipated, planned, and allocated in the budget.
Legacy problems are frequently underestimated by both businesses and engineers. If your store is riddled with issues, consider a stabilization phase as part of your backlog, which includes code refactoring and thorough testing, before implementing new features. This approach may be expensive, but the long-term advantages are worth the investment.
Preparing Your Backlog in Advance
When seeking additional development resources, it’s crucial to evaluate the complexity and volume of the work required. This could range from straightforward bug fixes and change requests to more intricate tasks like creating a custom storefront or integrating non-native features, especially if transitioning from Shopify or another platform like Magento.
When preparing your backlog, also factor in deadlines, such as those associated with peak sales periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Agencies and freelancers often face a surge in demand leading up to these events, making last-minute partnerships harder to secure, much like trying to book a hotel during peak season.
Regardless of the tasks at hand, effective backlog management is essential, whether done independently or through your chosen agency or freelancer. Notably, if you switch vendors frequently, the backlog should be included in the deliverables at the end of a partnership.
Identifying the right Shopify partner
At this step you know your needs and are ready to go to the market for needed support. And the first question which usually arises, whether to hire a freelancer or an agency. We already covered this a little bit above in this guide, but let’s get to the pros and cons of each vendor type.
Freelancers
UpWork and Fiverr platforms have a lot of freelancers to choose from within the Shopify domain, from VA (Virtual Assistants) and Theme Developers to App Developers and CRO experts, so there is a huge variety to choose from, but be ready that you are going to be bombed with a huge amount of relevant and irrelevant proposals from which you have to filter out. Important thing to consider in this process is portfolio, amount of recommendation and work done as well as time-zone and rate. In all cases, if you are only starting it is a good idea to use internal billing methods of freelance platforms, which will protect your budget.
Pros
Competitive Rates
Due to less overhead, freelancers usually propose rates lower than agencies do
Direct communication
Direct communication with a freelancer reduces the number of people in the communication chain.
Flexibility
In most cases, freelancers as self-employed people have more flexibility in their working schedule and can adapt to your needs
Specialized skills
It’s possible to find a candidate who will fully fulfill your needs in updating/fixing your store
Cons
Limited Capacity
Freelancers might work with several customers at once
Varied quality and quality of service
The quality of work can vary significantly from one freelancer to another as well as ability to meet deadlines
Less accountability/ghosting
Freelancer might ghost you or just be absent due to a personal reasons
Time expenses for finding good candidates
Freelance markets are huge and it takes time to find appropriate professionals, as well ideally technical expertise is required to conduct an interview with a candidate.
Scope of expertise
Due to specialized skills, freelancer expertise might not be enough in the long run or due to unexpected situations.
Needs to be managed
Due to previous points you might need to invest time in managing a freelancer or several (additional Designer or QA for example) to fulfill all your support needs.
Working with a Shopify Agency
Agencies as well have their own pros and cons to consider, however the main point is wider expertise and established processes, which ensure good quality of service. Except that, you can expect that cooperation models, agencies are proposing are enough to fulfill needs in extensive maintenance, re-platform or new feature development. Amount of agencies is also significant, therefore you can choose for example once that are closer to you to remove the language barrier, look for agencies with heavy experience or go far away offshore for a lower rate.
Pros
Broad expertise
Agencies have access to wider variety of expertise, which might be required if your needs are changed
Reliability
Due to established internal processes and quality standards agencies could be more reliable in general than individual contractors, as well as resource can be quickly backed up if unexpectedly becomes unavailable
Scalability
Access to broader resource pool, means you will have needed resource when scaling
Escalation point
Usually agencies provide Account manager as part of the deal, which serves as main contact point and solves any reasonable escalations you might have
Cons
Higher Costs
Due to overhead connected to internal processes and personnel hourly rates usually higher
Process-Driven
Since agencies are focused on quality, they have less tendency to cut corners
Wrapping up, finding a development partner who aligns with your e-commerce goals is crucial, whether for small tweaks or major overhauls, especially as you navigate the complexities of Shopify’s various offerings. Careful planning, understanding the importance of code quality, and choosing the right level of expertise—freelancer, maintenance team, or dedicated team—will ensure your store’s growth and long-term stability.
