How to choose an e-commerce agency
Choosing a supplier to work with is something to think carefully about. But if things are not working for you and your e-commerce website, itâs time to make a decision. How do you select an agency to work with when considering replatforming your e-commerce website, management and maintenance of your e-commerce website, or selecting a digital marketing partner?
You are in the business of selling and providing services in your sector, which is hard enough. An e-commerce website is a channel for consumers to research, compare, consider and, hopefully, purchase through. Is spending time on the design, implementation and ongoing upkeep of this where you want to spend your time and expertise? Using an experienced agency who partners with you provides a well of knowledge and experience that ultimately saves you time, money and yes, even more time.
There are many factors that might influence your choice, being a decision maker is sometimes difficult and can come with risk both personally and for your company or team. Is it a case of better the devil you know, or could matching with a great new partner to help you succeed? Being focused only on price could see your website fail when the agency or freelancer runs out of talent. It's a difficult decision and one that needs to factor in some careful questions. Let's examine what you should think about and use that as a framework to select a great partnership supplier.
What questions should you ask yourself before choosing an agency partner?
Here we list some areas to think about and ask questions of yourself, your brand and stakeholders as well as the qualities of a partnership agency you are considering working with, to make a positive and well informed decision.
What do you want out of your partner agency?
Think about what service levels are important to you from the outset. Most agency's will say they are 'the best' at e-commerce websites and many can do so very well, however there are some other factors to consider.
Is being available face to face and having an account manager important or at least on video calls - Its easy for a service provider to hide behind 'digital walls'. being able to discuss an issue or a business problem can be easier to understand and be informed about - there are a lot of solutions marketed that are trying to get you attention so partner experts that know the technology landscape can really help save time and costly mistakes.
What about an agency with staff, many people, resilience, with a variety of skills versus a freelancer. A freelancer will almost certainly be cheaper, but they will not have the resilience as they will get sick, have holidays, have other priorities and may not be there later when you need them.
Is choosing an experienced e-commerce agency important?
Lots of people can build websites using different platforms and Content Management Systems (CMS), and most will have lovely templates that can make a website look beautiful. However, an e-commerce website is not just a website, there is MUCH more to it. Youâll want high-quality User Experience (UX), helpful integrations with relevant digital platforms, data management, CRM, customer records, payment gateways, product management, tax and fee management, technical SEO, sales reporting and VAT reporting, the list goes on, and that's before getting into SEO optimisation or PPC to improve search engine ranking and conversion. There really is a lot to think about.
What are the experience levels of the agency or freelancer youâre considering? How many e-commerce websites have they built? Consider asking to speak with some of the agency's clients or to see testimonials or awards. Donât be afraid to test their credentials.
Why are you doing this?
Before you make any decisions, prepare a business case. It doesnât have to be huge, but what is driving the decision, and what are the benefits, overhead costs, support levels, costs, flexibility, responsiveness, advice, trust, reputation, relationship… the list goes on, but think about your top 3-4 benefits and write them down. If this isn't clear in your mind or in the mind of the approvers you will lose track of why you are doing this and what your end goal is. Thatâs when you risk becoming overwhelmed with options and you're a sales person's dream..
Once youâve crystallised your business case, be clear up front on who makes the decision for the company. Does it require board or shareholder approval? If so, is everyone lined up on why youâre making this change?
How much should it cost to build an e-commerce website?
Do your homework before committing to a spend. Services and technology cost money, so be realistic on what you are trying to achieve and what the potential costs might be to reach your ambitions, you will only be wasting your own time if not. If you don't know, ask and then qualify it. The phrase buy cheap / buy twice is as true for digital services and e-commerce as it is for anything else. Some questions to get you started::
- What's the cost of not changing anything - Are you spending time with work-arounds, employing people you don't need to, limited in your growth and delaying changes because you don't have control?
- Ask questions around migration costs, design costs, integration costs and operating costs of the chosen platform or service. Will you have control of things, and what are the support options?
- What would happen if your website grew and you had more customers and made more sales? Would this end up costing you more, and would that satisfy a cost/benefit analysis?
- Are the costs transparent? What are the fees and costs that are not being discussed. An e-commerce site is not just a website, it required ongoing support, management, hosting and probably integration management as it is a key part of your revenue.
Experience in your sector
This is a really interesting question. Is it important that an agency is a specialist or has a proven track record in your particular sector?
The answer here depends on your business type more than anything.
If you are selling frying pans online, then building an e-commerce website does not necessarily need a frying pan-specific agency. E-commerce websites are about data, structure and integrations, experience in e-commerce websites is the important factor, experience in the frying pan sector is secondary.
However, there are some business areas where you might want to look for specialists, such as; if you are selling cheese online and you are looking for digital marketing then a food and drink digital marketing specialist is likely to be a better option than a generic digital marketing agency.
Questions to ask a new e-commerce partner
Does the platform support multiple languages and currencies?
This is something you will want to understand from the outset even if you are not currently trading internationally. Many platforms provide this, however the cost structure can be wildly different, with additional fees and commission. There are platforms out there with this built-in as standard, such as SelectCommerce.
Is training and onboarding support available?
Consider the impact of change in a CMS or an e-commerce platform has on the users and administrators of the website (i.e. you and your team). It can be huge and is not to be considered lightly. Most platforms and CMS have help and user guides, Youtube videos and other digital support but how much time and energy do you or your staff have to go and learn this? Even if you do the âtrainingâ this way thereâs always the chance of a scenario that you can't solve, which slows everything down. Having real people onboard you to a platform, provide screen-shared training and be available for user support can be the edge in getting up to speed quickly and getting a smooth ride out of your investment..
Are there any hidden costs or additional fees?
Really take time to understand the fee structure of various services and platforms offered. Headline fees are usually the start of a list of fees that mount up.
For instance, the headline fee for Shopify Basic fee is ÂŁ19 per month. But the small print says this is billed annually in advance. And also that their cart commission is 2% of the value of the transaction and theyâll take a 25p commission for each transaction. That's before you start to integrate apps to get the features you want. If you want a fairly feature rich website then the app costs can reach thousands a month! Shopify is a great product but look carefully at the fee structure and refer to your business case before you commit to anything.
Not all e-commerce platforms structure fees in this way - some are much clearer to understand and model over time to understand the true cost of ownership. A good agency will help you understand this to make informed decisions.
Will the platform be able to adapt to your business's evolving needs?
Businesses change all the time with new services and technology come to market, service provides change at renewal time, range of products and offers change, new market territories and many other factors mean that an e-commerce website is never static.
Understanding how the platform and the agency can support that change and hopefully grow is an important question. The investment in a new e-commerce site and its integrations is significant and you want it to be future proof.
Ask about how changes are priced. Consider potentially negotiating a retainer at a reduced rate if you think there will be a lot of change or maintenance. If going to apps for instance used in the Shopify ecosystem, pay attention to the volume pricing breaks for some of these apps. For instance some apps have a price up to a certain number of users or requests and then there is a higher price if that's exceeded - being clear on that up front gives you some understanding of the flexibility and what that cost of change might be.
Does it allow for integration with existing systems (e.g., CRM, ERP, marketing automation)?
Many businesses have existing business applications and services that the e-commerce website should fit around. These could be existing Customer Records Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) systems, finance systems e.g. Sage or other marketing integrations for Email marketing or Customer Experience Platforms (CEP). There will be existing data management and workflow that is well understood by the company and the people in it.
Having a flexible e-commerce platform that can provide direct integrations with these systems is the best solution, to efficiently pass the right data around the systems and have a âsingle source of the truthâ is absolutely key to success. Ask questions around the capability of the platform and the people who support it, are they data and software engineers who are competent. Open APIâs are available on many systems but integrating is a very specialist job to get right and to protect your valuable data.
How can I off-board from a e-commerce platform if I need to?
Things change and sometimes changing platform or supplier is the right thing to do so before putting your entire e-commerce channel on a platform and the associated revenue stream, understand what the off boarding process is.
Take the time to understand that you can straightforwardly take your data, customer data, orders, history, images etc. from one platform to another and that the formats are compatible.
Most good platforms or agencies will provide a mechanism for you to either get this yourself or request it in a format you need.
Also consider understanding what off-boarding support the agency will provide. Any new agency or platform will likely require some additional information or data structure that makes their life easier. A good agency will support this to help you move away.
Conclusion
This has been a very high-level look at how to choose a digital agency for e-commerce. It can be a bit daunting knowing who are the right people to work with, a mate of a mate, your cousin or a big flashy agency. without the right thinking, questions and planning could be a painful mistake, which is why weâre always ready to help if you need us. Weâve helped companies from a wide variety of industries to design, build and support e-commerce websites and would love to help you do the same.
