Looking to start selling online soon?
Well you’re probably pondering over a few different ecommerce platforms and comparing the features to weigh up which ones best suits your business.
There are many articles out there comparing the different off-the-shelf products so I won’t go into much detail comparing the different platforms, instead I am going to be giving some arguments for why you would benefit from hiring a specialist web design agency to take care of all the nitty gritty work involved so you can focus on what really matters, running your business.
Is hiring a web design team worth it?
From personal experience having dealt with hundreds of clients and the majority of them being newly founded startups I can almost certainly guarantee that you will hit a wall at some point when trying to set up complex systems yourself and you’ll need some technical expertise to come and save your ass!
So in short, Yes it’s worth it however there cannot be any grey areas in the agreements made, you need to be clear in what you are hiring them to do. A common problem that arises in the web development industry is when people hire developers / freelancers for a certain project and then once that project has been delivered they never hear from them again and it becomes almost an impossible job to get them to do any more work on it.
The problem here may lie in the initial agreement between yourself and the developer, you (the client) were treating it like a project and they (the developer) were treating it like a product. There needs to be clear written terms as to what is being agreed and this has to be signed by both parties in a contract.
Nuts and Bolts of an eCommerce website?
When getting an eCommerce website made it is important that the website is future proof, so maybe having an agreement with the developer that they can work with you on a monthly basis to continuously help improve, maintain and update the site as well as fixing any bugs or issues that may rise as the website scales. This is not easy to do with freelancers as they typically jump from one project to another without wanting to maintain websites and they certainly don’t like being hassled about website bugs.
A web design team / agency would probably be the better option here as they would be much easier to work with going forward and much more reachable, they would have much more of an established online presence (website, social media, google ads) so finding them would not be a problem at all.
There are many variables to consider when setting up the structure of an ecommerce website such as product categories, attributes, tags, product types, product variations, shipping zones, invoices, products notes, stock management, payment gateways, delivery tracking and many more features which have to be implemented correctly from the beginning. On top of that there will be customisations to design and appearance that may need code updates and this is a design agencies specialty.
So all in all getting a web design team for designing, building and maintaining your ecommerce website would be a good return on your investment as you would be getting quality, future-proof work from quality developers and designers who value your projects and take pride in their work.
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