So you’ve decided to start your own Magento-powered eCommerce website. Congratulations on your choice – Magento is a top platform for eCommerce and a great aide in your quest towards success. From storefront to checkout, Magento offers all the tools a merchant could possibly need to successfully create and grow an online store. However, not many merchants are able to do it all by themselves. That’s precisely why there are so many Magento development agencies.
If you’re only just starting, you naturally want to make sure everything is set up perfectly. Your first big dilemma in this process is how to go about choosing the right Magento agency. In this article, we’ll share some issues every merchant should consider when deciding which Magento agency to use.
Experience and Portfolio
Obviously, you will want to hire an agency that already has quite a few projects under its belt. When communicating with the potential agency, ask them how long they have been in business, how many websites have they built and have them show you some examples of their work. Obviously, you can look up all this information up online, but a good agency should have their portfolio ready for prospective clients.
You may also want to make sure they have experience building responsive websites. If an agency is still not “fluent” with responsiveness, your website may not look so great on mobile, and in this day and age, that sets you up for instant failure. Finally, ask the agency if they have already worked with businesses of your type. The more experience they have in your niche, the better.
We have had the pleasure of working on some amazing projects and helped our clients extend their reach online. Click on the button to see some of the projects we worked on.
Quality
After prices and experience, you will definitely want to check if the agency you’re considering meets all the necessary quality requirements. This can be tough to establish, especially if you’re not an expert in the field of development.
It’s hard to know what to look for exactly, but we recommend checking if the agency has positive reviews or has been enlisted to some of the independent platforms which collect feedback from clients. These platforms such as Clutch.co connect small and mid-market businesses with the best-fit companies and agencies.
Team Expertise
IT professionals are usually a younger workforce compared to other professions. You can’t expect all of your Magento developers to be seasoned, 45-year olds. But young doesn’t have to mean inexperienced, especially in this day and age. Ask the agency about their employees and their level of expertise in their own respective fields. You want to make sure you’re working with people who know what they’re doing. Also, look into the resources the agency has at its disposal. Does it have enough people (designers and developers) to jump in if the process hits a wall? In short, a good Magento agency has strong human and technical resources to guarantee a smooth and uninterrupted process.
Location
Due to the nature of this line of business, Magento agencies are scattered all over the world, with clients halfway across the globe. If communication can take place online, and so can payment, you might be asking yourself why would location even matter? Well, sometimes things simply run more smoothly when we can talk them out in person. It helps to see and hear the person you’re working with directly, to visit their offices and meet the team members. This is particularly true for big businesses who want to make sure everything is absolutely perfect. Of course, that’s not to say you should give up if there aren’t any (good) Magento agencies in your country or region. It’s just a welcome plus to have an agency you can physically interact with when necessary.
Methodology
Even if you’re not a developer or a Magento expert yourself, it wouldn’t hurt to ask about the methods, techniques, and tools the agency is using when developing eCommerce websites. For a brand new store, you should always go with the agency that uses proven and trusted methods that are guaranteed to lead to solid, stable results. On the other hand, if you want to redesign and revamp an existing store, you should make sure the agency can guarantee a smooth and streamlined transition and that it employs the best tools for monitoring. Strong support is also a must. In general, an agency that follows industry best practices religiously is always a good choice.
Communication
There’s nothing worse than hiring someone for the job and then not hearing from them for weeks. Unanswered emails and phone calls are not just frustrating, they’re detrimental to the development of your business and you definitely don’t want to have any of that when building an eCommerce website.
The project manager or team lead should be available for your questions and suggestions using all modern communication channels and platforms. In addition to availability, you should also look for good communication skills. Some people are simply not good communicators and can cause hiccups and slow down the process due to their inability to communicate clearly and efficiently.
SEO
In this day and age, if a website is not optimized for search engines, it will sink and disappear in a couple of months. Search engine visibility is essential and you should, therefore, make sure your Magento agency is aware of all the SEO techniques that need to be implemented to build a proper foundation upon which you will continue to optimize the site. As a platform, Magento is already optimized to some extent, but additional efforts and techniques are needed to make sure your online store reaches the first page of Google search results when people search for the keywords that are most important to your business.
2buy1click has offered its client Continual SEO Content and Brand Enhancement service which helps Increase Traffic and Preserve Brand Quality. We know about SEO and the impact it can have on your site’s reputation.
Support
The work of the Magento agency of your choice should not (and cannot) stop at deployment. Designing and developing the website is just one part of the job. The agency needs to make sure the site is regularly maintained and updated, kept safe and functional. That’s why proper pre- and post-deployment support is essential.
The support staff should be available for you at all times and should be knowledgeable and highly competent. Whatever bug hits your site, the support team should be able to fix it and do so fairly quickly. They should also keep an eye out for all new features and make recommendations to add new features and improvements to your store on a regular basis.
