It sounds very easy to make an eCommerce shop using a well-known platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify and BigCommerce . However, a question arises – why should I hire an ecommerce development agency when I can do it myself?
Why would you hire a development agency when you can do-it-yourself or have an in-house team who can do it for you? Indeed, when you’re small and starting, you might not need external help. But as your business grows, it gets complicated and requires additional time and resources to help you with the constant changes.
No matter the size of your company, an eCommerce development agency has a variety of skills and experience that can be in help. They are experienced exactly in bringing digital projects to life. So, don’t think too much and read these 10 reasons why hiring an agency is a good idea.
1. Building custom experiences
Do you know which is the biggest problem of almost every eCommerce store ? There is almost no way to stand out from the competition. Many online stores use popular free or paid themes, made by WooCommerce or Shopify, and it is hard to distinguish them. Adobe source says “38% of people leave a website if they find the layout unattractive. “ That is where an eCommerce development agency can help you. A development agency can help you create the custom design and shopping experience that entices and engages your customers.
2. Optimized performance
Nowadays, everybody owns 2-3 mobile devices. People want to access and experience content in devices with different form factors . Desktop, Phone, Tablet, and Laptop with their own choice of a browser.
Enterprises found that for every 1-second improvement in page load time, conversions increased by 2%. Why is that important? Every eCommerce development agency can optimize your online store for all different devices and platforms. It can add all best practices with high performance and usability in mind. As you know, page loading time is one of the most critical factors to improve your CRO (Conversion-Rate-Optimization).
3. Wider Audience Reach
As Salesforce data shows “87% of consumers start searching for products online”. People search for everything online and if you don’t have an online store, you are missing your brand to be seen. Not only your competitors are online, but also new customers and potentially huge expansion opportunities. Start selling locally, but think globally. It allows you to be an international player and to reach wider markets and close more deals, to have more and more loyal customers. For instance, AliExpress is one of the most popular brands around the glob.They sells more than thousands items per minute.
The top eCommerce web developers will make a thorough research of your audience and create a store that meets their needs and boosts your sales. These are some of the best eCommerce agencies that can help your brand to have a major online presence – https://www.ecommercecompanies.com/ecommerce-development-companies/
4. Adding new features
As the eCommerce platforms evolve and as your business grows, adding new features can often bring in further problems. It can even break your site if the changes are not done right.
A good eCommerce development agency will study the implications of adding new features and test them in a safe environment before publishing the updates to your site. This will minimize the risk of breaking anything.
5. New integrations
Similar to adding a new feature, adding a new integration can break your site. Fixing this usually takes time and may result in losing revenue. Sometimes the damage caused by an incompatible integration is irreparable.
A development agency will have comprehensive knowledge of most of the integrations available. It can help you map the right integration for the right requirement of your site or business. They may even build a workaround to integrate a service you want with your website.
6. Quality Assurance (QA)
Imagine making an eCommerce shop by yourself and then something breaks and you don’t know what to do. This is a very common situation. An eCommerce platform can be sophisticated with different moving parts. Resulting in a higher number of things that can go wrong. Hence, quality assurance testing and eliminating issues found are essential. Every eCommerce development agency will add a QA testing in the list of services that they provide. Be sure that your online store is operating normally all the time and don’t lose even a single sale.
7. Expanding to other platforms
Apart from optimizing experience and performance on various platforms, you might want to expand beyond the web platform experience. By taking an omnichannel approach to sales to tap into a different segment of the audience.
According to a survey conducted by Accenture, 61% of global shoppers want to use AR and VR technology in visualizing how clothes might fit them. 54% of shoppers want to shop for household items and furniture.
An eCommerce development agency can build a shopping experience on AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual Reality), Mobile Apps (iOS/Android), Social Media Commerce, and Conversation Commerce. All this with a focus on driving more sales and distinguishing you from your competition.
8. Maintenance and support
Every website and online store needs constant maintenance and support. Sorry, the digital world is not an ideal and support is to be sure that your eCommerce business is smooth running and especially while you are not working.
Working with an eCommerce development agency ensures regular maintenance and support by performing comprehensive checks and keeping your security up-to-date so that your customer data is safe.
9. Migration
As your business grows, you might find that your current eCommerce platform doesn’t meet your growing needs or might be experiencing critical issues. If migration from WooCommerce to Shopify, or vice versa, is the solution to these problems, depending on the eCommerce setup you have with several products, data, and integrations, migration not done correctly, will result in data loss.
Working with an eCommerce development agency from the inception can help you find the right platforms to avoid the need to migrate altogether. However, if you’re in a place where migration to a better platform is the only solution for your business, an expert can help you with the migration without any data loss.
10. Retargeting
One of the biggest eCommerce problems is abandoned carts. The solution is retargeting.
Statistics show that users who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to make a purchase on the retailer’s website.
With highly targeted ads on external platforms, you can easily reach customers that have left your store and make them come back and convert.The eCommerce development agency that you use will track cart abandonments, demographics and shopping behavior to allow you to segment your customers appropriately.
Grow your business with a development partner
You might either have a running eCommerce business or are planning to set up a new business, hiring a professional development agency helps you with the challenges ahead and overcome any existing problems.
With the support of a development agency, while you focus on growing your business, they handle the technical challenges aiding that growth.
