what's up everybody it's Joe with IWD Agency
we're an agency that helps grow and scale
ecommerce brands online we're going to go over some tips on picking your
shopify partner to help you grow your store online
if you're serious about ecommerce you want to pick a partner that's going to
help you get to the goals you have set for yourself and for your
business so a few things that you'll want to
consider when picking a shopify partner to help you grow is first of all
what type of team do you need what are you looking for
make sure that you're clear with your intentions where you're missing what
gaps you have and what type of team will fill those
needs for you so there are teams that are more strategic
and they will sit down with you and look at where your gaps may be where your
conversion rate is low where your your marketing is low where users are
not understanding your messaging there's brands that will come in and
help you tighten all this up and continue to optimize your site for
you and there's also other partners that are
less strategic and they're more action-oriented and they'll wait for you
to come with ideas and come with what strategy that you may want to
implement so make sure that you're clear on what type
of agency or what type of partner you're looking for
are you looking for the full suite of a strategic partner
someone that has that's going to come to you on a regular basis with suggestions
and look at your analytics and see where you're missing
and see where your customers might be dropping off or do you just need a
development partner that you tell them exactly hey i want
this app installed i want these these new pages on my site so
make sure you're clear with what you need do you need a content writers do
you need someone that's going to be testing your
site do you need someone that's to be good
that's going to be doing graphic design do you need someone that's going to be
doing the analytics for you so there are partners that can do all of
that for you and then there's partners that are just going to be more
action-oriented and are going to wait for you to tell them
exactly what to do in their site so be clear with your intentions and your
goals and then that's going to help you pick a partner
that's going to fit the needs that you have not all partners are built the same
so you need to make sure that you're well defined and what you're looking for
before you start hunting second thing that you want to consider
when you're picking a shopify partner to help you grow
is do you already have a marketing team in-house
or do you want them to be your marketing team as well
or do you want another third-party agency to handle your marketing for you
all three options are good options but if you don't have a marketing team
in-house and you're considering a partner to do that for you
it's worthwhile to consider finding a shopify partner that can also handle
the marketing piece of it the reason that is is because the buck will stop
with them so if they're trying to help you grow to
your potential and grow your audience and grow your
sales online well the buck will stop with them as far as do the things that
they do help you grow or not it's not hey well
this partner over here didn't set up the ads correctly or this
partner over here there was a bug with a website and that cost
us not to be able to do our job if you do everything with one partner
and they said hey we can help you grow to a certain level
and they can't or did not well then there's no excuses they
are the ones that you can go and say hey what was the problem what can we fix and
what can we change rather than having a whole bunch of
different partners or agencies marketing agency over here
development agency over there design agency somewhere else and having
them all come together and try to figure out
who does what and when where how so something to consider if you do
need marketing to consider that as part of the agency that you pick
to help you grow your store the third thing that you want to consider when
finding a partner to help you scale your store online is
make sure to get a contract make sure to get everything your terms
written down and signed before you start any kind of work when working with a
partner things tend to start well but we've seen in the past where a lot
of times where where there have been things that go
wrong with the site um some discrepancies about how what
timelines to be hit discrepancies about who's responsible
for what what are the payment terms if if we part ways who owns the core
code uh who owns the design files i'm gonna
try to get all that stuff written down before you get
started so that when it comes time to part ways or if there is some issues
that you know exactly what the agreement was from the get-go so
make sure don't skip that step and get a contract so that everything is
professional and that you that everybody knows the
terms set for the relationship moving forward
fourth thing is set clear due dates and deliverables
this is something that a lot of people skip over especially if you're in a rush
on getting started and it's always good to go ahead
and get clear deliverables and clear due dates
and get deliverables that are that are
delivered in small chunks rather than waiting three or six
months down the road and wanting it all to be delivered at one time
but go ahead and set that before you start any kind of work
with a partner that you have clear deliverables that you have clear due
dates so that everybody's on the same page
before you get started if the partner that you picked if they have too much
work and they're not able to meet the timeline that you're
looking for maybe it is worthwhile to consider another partner
but go ahead and set that out before you get started with any work because you
don't want to be on two different pages before you even
get started with the work number five is find a team that you're really
excited to work with find a team that you
enjoy talking with communicating with that gets you that gets your brand
uh you you want to work with your partner ideally you know for a long term
and hopefully they get to know your business they help scale your business
grow your business but also that you enjoy getting on the
phone with and and talking about hey what's the
next steps how do we get it to the next phase how do we improve our site
where do we how can we amplify marketing how can we
get better conversion rate how do we you know drive more people to the store
but someone that you know find some a team that you enjoy
you know getting together with and that's excited about your brand
because you'll you'll want to build a relationship with them over the long
term number six is go ahead especially if
you're working with anyone overseas as set
meeting ties and working hours you can set some
time um down so that you can go over projects
issues that it can be very frustrating if you're the only way that you're
communicating is through email and you lose
days with questions back and forth so if you go ahead and set
some meeting times and working hours then you'll know what time the partner
that you're working with or online you can head up with up with slack and
different ways also go ahead and set what is the best
method of communication um a lot of teams like ours will set up
a slack channel for your project that way we can have the quick communication
back and forth and we try to make sure that we lower the
communication barrier so we get stuff done
quickly and on time if you have any delays with emails and back and forth
then that can that can really cause some major delays on your
timelines and your deliverables anyways that's all i have today thanks
for checking out our channel and we'll see you next time
you