Should I Hire a Shopify Developer?

Shopping for a Shopify Developer

Are you running your own online business? Chances are you’ve heard the word “Shopify” reverberating off the lips of diehard fans. The unending chorus of praise is no coincidence.

The titular conglomerate has simplified the purchase and sale of products and services for over 4.5 million establishments. More notably, Shopify’s all-in-one platform consolidates traditional business operations and tools like inventory management, shipping, currency conversions, and customer queries under one roof.

Why bob and weave between isolated systems of management? Shopify equips you with the pre-requisite mechanisms to establish your eCommerce empire with a user-friendly interface (UI).

But let’s get off the hype train for a minute. Shopify’s modernised USP is straightforward on paper, but its unseeable potential needs to be unearthed. In practice, it’s an amazing merchant ecosystem ONLY if you’re equipped to tweak it to service your merchant needs accordingly.

Hiring a Shopify Developer is the secret key towards unlocking the unseen benefits of the ubiquitous eCommerce platform.

Shopify Who?

A Shopify developer is an expert-level professional specialising in building online stores, themes, applications and the installation of plugins for the front-end and back-end. What your customers see and what you see fall under their occupational purview.

A skilful developer can adaptively manipulate HTML, CSS, and JSS, creating bespoke lines of code, applications and plugins on the back end to complement their client’s day-to-day operations. More notably, they assist merchants to deliver exceptional user experiences (UX) through a visually appealing storefront.

But every eCommerce business differs enormously! How they choose to do it depends on the solutions they prescribe to each merchant on a case-by-case basis. Essentially, Shopify developers are like a swiss-army-knife, replete with robust instruments to help you upgrade your platform.

Should I Hire One?

Generally, the answer to that question would be a resounding yes! Realistically, “it depends”.

To facilitate the decision-making process, consider the following set of criteria:

1. Financial Cost

The bottom line is the end-all-be-all of all businesses in existence. Determine the minimum and maximum amount you can allocate to Shopify development. You can either set a price ceiling (willingness to spend) or the minimum return on investment (ROI) you’re expecting to yield from contracting a Shopify developer. This will serve as the launch pad for further exploration. We don’t want to end up with bills we can’t pay!

2. Time Cost

Time, unlike money, can never be retrieved. There is a negative correlationship between the availability of free time and the measurable demand for a Shopify developer.

Multi-national corporations (MNCs) with massive staffing capabilities usually have unallocated staffing hours to study and maximise the innate potential of the Shopify ecosystem. Their unrestricted access to time and money affords them the discretion to perform these tasks internally.

For considerably smaller businesses, extraneous distractions can threaten to derail your internal workflow. If your hands are fully tied with managing the business, outsourcing the brain work to a Shopify developer would prove to be a time-efficient and cost-saving endeavour!

And remember! These costs are also incurred during the search process! Be sure to account for these self-imposed costs.

3. Scope of the Project

The viability of hiring a Shopify developer is contingent on the extent of the back-end and front-end amendments to be made. First identify and authenticate “what” needs to be achieved, then determine whether your organisation has the adequate capacity to deliver them to a high-enough standard.

And if possible, try to quantify the unrealised ROI of your Shopify platform in dollars minus the estimated cost of employing the talents of a Shopify developer. If the former far exceeds the latter, it’s time to shake hands on it.

Conversely, complex obstacles such as compatibility issues and operational hurdles when migrating data from other eCommerce platforms are roadblocks requiring specialist knowledge to overcome. If the tangible ($) and intangible (brand damage) losses accrued from these issues far surpass the cost of hiring a Shopify developer, I suggest you make that call pronto!

How Much Does A Shopify Developer Cost?

According to Website Builder, Shopify developers in Australia charge the following for their services

• Beginner: $50/hr
• Expert: $150/hr

Again, these statistics are derived from historically aggregated data. These industry estimates are dollar cost averages to be taken with a grain of salt.

Moreover, calculating the entire cost of a project is dependent on the number of man-hours and the overall complexity of the undertaking. The developer’s pre-requisite knowledge and grasp of the Shopify dev environment also influence the project’s end-to-end cost. The higher the expertise, the higher the asking price.

Plus, there’s an infinite array of possible scenarios. Do you need to customise every inch of your Shopify storefront? Do you need assistance in integrating third-party applications such as Klaviyo? It all depends on your detailed responses to the checklist above.

As a Brisbane Shopify Developer, we suggest you try and evaluate the potential cost of the Shopify project to circumvent possible overruns. Exercise caution and acquire a rough estimate prior to proceeding. A cost breakdown provides you with an unobstructed view of the project’s deliverables and its individual costings.

Coming To A Close

Despite being a Brisbane brand agency, we want our avid readers to spend their hard-earned dollars where it matters. Your ROI should be commensurate with the amount you paid for it. The same philosophy applies to Shopify development.

Account for the tangible and intangible costs, weighing in on the scale of the project. Ascertain the estimated net benefit or net loss of engaging with an external Shopify developer. Establish if the trade-offs justify the cost and effort. All in all, make an informed decision to the best of your abilities.

As a seasoned Shopify developer in Brisbane, we place significant emphasis on being transparent throughout the life of each project. In short, we aim to deliver the highest return on your investment for lagging areas in your online storefront that need investing.

Amidst the discovery stages, our team of talented Shopify developers will first identify inadequacies and weaknesses in your current Shopify environment, identifying the progressive changes that demand immediate attention. Throughout the life of the partnership, we will reinvigorate your Shopify storefront to better serve and grow your target audience.

But we’re not one trick ponies! We are a full-service Brisbane brand agency specialising in web design and digital marketing. If there’s ever a need for services that fall outside the “Shopify” classification, we’re more than ecstatic to revitalise all aspects of your entire brand!

Thus, we’d like to extend our hands and invite you to build a better brand that best serves Australians. Let’s book a slot for a conversation over some coffee. We’d like to get to know the brains behind the business.

Let’s talk, don’t be a stranger.