Maintaining a web store that satisfies customer needs and ensures steady growth of your business is challenging.
To keep your store attractive in the extra-competitive world of e-commerce, you need to solve many technical questions: maintaining the inventory list, setting up the upsell, monitoring the site speed, and more.
To improve your store from a technical perspective you might want to hire a developer.
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But does it worth hiring one, and what extra steps you need to try before doing so?
1. Before hiring a developer
Before going to the hiring path, I strongly recommend trying first the advice in the next sections. There's a good chance you can find a solution to your problem without even hiring a developer.
1.1 Learn the fundamentals
I've been a software developer for 14 years. Currently, I'm on the journey of learning the ins and outs of ecommerce.
A lesson that I've learned from a decade-long career as a software developer — knowing fundamentals is vitally important.
Why?
Because many technical challenges that an ecommerce entrepreneur is facing can be solved by knowing the ecommerce platform.
You're going to reply: "Dmitri, I don't have time to read books. I have a business to manage!". Learning the ecommerce platform is business management, and knowing its fundamentals will save you money and headaches in the long run.
(In the post I discuss mostly about Shopify, but most of the ideas apply to any other ecommerce platform.)
Shopify For Dummies book by Paul Waddy is my favorite when it comes to learning how to set up a store, manage the inventory, learn analytics, and more from the store management. The book is accessible for people without technical knowledge and requires no prior Shopify experience. I made my first Shopify steps using this book.
If reading is not your thing, I recommend you checking the official and free courses on Shopify Learn. For example, you might want to explore the courses from Learn web design/building category.
Whatever advice you take, reading a book or watching courses, invest a good amount of time(at least 20 hours, but more is better) to get a basic minimum of knowledge.
1.2 Ask for advice
If after a good amount of time learning the fundaments you still have questions, a good way to continue is to team up with people who have similar problems.
By registering in the Shopify Community you can ask questions and, if you're lucky, someone will give you a good answer.
You can also connect with alike people in Facebook groups. Some popular groups are:
- Dropify (153K members)
- Shopify Entrepreneurs (111K members)
- Shopify Newbies (91K members)
Why asking for advice is effective? Because there's a big chance that your problem already has a solution, and someone with the right experience can give you a direction.
1.3 Install an app
Installing Shopify apps is a good and proven way to increase your store functionality.
Most of the good apps require a paid subscription. In the long run, paying for a subscription is usually cheaper than hiring a developer.
The following criteria are useful when selecting an app:
- The rating is above 4 stars
- Has at least 10 reviews
- The reviews have constructive and respectful replies
Most of the apps provide a free trial period or even a free plan. I encourage you to install apps and explore if any of them solve your problem.
1.4 Ask for app improvements
If no app provides the functionality you're looking for, there's still one thing you can do.
Shopify app developers are in constant search of ideas for their apps. This is understandable because the more useful the app is for merchants, the more users it will have.
If you've found an app that provides the functionality close to your needs, then you can contact the app developer to request some additional features. If you are lucky, the developer might take the decision and do implement what you need!
But there's a trick. App developers pay more attention to requests from users who have paid subscriptions, contrary to those on trial or free plans.
I recommend paying for the first month of the subscription. Then asking for a change of app will increase your chances of a positive response.
2. Hiring a developer
2.1 Pros
Hiring a full- or part-time developer can solve many of the technical problems and maintenance of an online store.
A software developer can:
- create the custom functionality needed for your web store
- solve many technical problems
- speed up the loading of your web store
- solve errors that appear in your store
- be your technical consultant
However, hiring a developer has also cons, which are worth considering.
2.2 Cons
The first con is that hiring a developer is expensive. Decent quality software development services cost 20-100$/hour: depending on the region from where are you hiring.
The smaller your web store is and the lower your revenue, the bigger impact the development costs will have on your bottom line.
Secondly, finding a good developer is a tedious and time-consuming process.
If you're not experienced in technical recruitment, it is challenging to determine if the candidate has the necessary skills, attitude, and quality standards.
2.3 Where and how
A good way to start hiring developers is to register in Upwork. Upwork is a freelance market where you can hire freelancers for many sorts of activities such as software development (including ecommerce), user interface design, and more.
There are 2 important things to keep in mind when hiring freelancers whose expertise you know little about.
First, do not rush to hire a developer, but take your time to see if this person is qualified and has the right attitude for the job.
Secondly, you should ask the candidate to implement a small trial project. Then you can carefully monitor the following results:
- What is the level of communication?
- Does the developer provide the trial project implementation on time?
- What is the quality of the implementation?
If you're satisfied with the implementation of the trial project, most likely you have a good candidate.
Alternatively, you can hire developers on the Shopify Experts platform created by Shopify itself.
3. Conclusion
Before hiring a developer consider first:
- learning the platform fundamentals
- ask questions in communities of ecommerce merchants
- install a Shopify app
- ask for changes in a Shopify app
If all the above hasn't provided you with a solution, then you can hire a developer.
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