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About Shopify Experts
We refer to Shopify as “The Swiss army knife of online stores” in our ecommerce site builder guide, thanks to their impressive functionalities and versatility for building all kinds of ecommerces. But like a real Swiss army knife, it can take a while to learn exactly how to make use of all its functions!
Luckily for you, a number of companies and individuals have mastered the art of Shopify. These Shopify Experts are vetted by the platform themselves, and you can hire them for any kind of purpose, such as migrating your store from another platform or creating a new site from scratch. Interested? Read on below.
How to hire a Shopify Expert?
The first thing to do is check the Shopify Experts page. You will find them listed by location, but of course you don’t have to be near them, unless you want to meet face to face. They are divided into five categories: store design, store setup, development, marketing and photography. You can also find a section dedicated to small tasks, such as setting up Facebook Pixel for tracking conversion ($40) or adding products to your store via CSV file ($24).
When you browse the list of experts, you should click on their profile to find more information. This usually includes:
- Links to their portfolio of Shopify stores: this is useful to decide if you like what they create.
- Services offered: different companies offer different services, so make sure what you need is available.
- Minimum project budget: some experts will not take on a project unless it meets a certain threshold. Make sure yours is in the right price range. If it is slightly lower, it might be worth emailing them with requests anyway.
- Testimonials: very interesting to read feedback from clients who hired these experts before you.
And if you can’t find what you’re looking for? Shopify also lets you post a job through a simple webform.
Is there a better alternative to hiring a Shopify Expert?
Contacting your favorite Shopify Experts one by one can be a bit time-consuming. Especially considering that the best ones they might be very busy. Storetasker provides an alternative: you simply go to their platform, post your project and receive your quote from an expert with the right skill set for the job.
Storetasker turns that process around as Shopify specialists will apply for YOUR job. They are somewhat similar to platforms like Upwork and Freelancer.com but the big advantage is that they are fully focused on Shopify. Also, Storetasker only allows vetted Shopify Experts on their platform with at least 3-5 years of experience. Expect the top 5% of Shopify Experts.
>Get a free quote from Storetasker here.
Interviews with Shopify Experts
We reached out to several experts to ask them a few questions. This should give you a great insight into what they can do for you, and how powerful the Shopify platform is. We were also interested to hear where they think the platform could improve, and hope to see some of these wishes become reality in the future.
Cesar A. Beltran – Blackbelt Commerce – US and Australia
Cesar runs Blackbelt Commerce to help entrepreneurs and business owners build wonderful, high-converting eCommerce websites on Shopify. His company is one the highest-rated Shopify Expert teams and has worked on over 400 Shopify stores. They specialize in store setup and theme customization, with a particular focus on multi-regional and multi-lingual stores.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Setting up multi-regional stores to attract local traffic and transact in local currency.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “It’s super flexible, while also providing an unbelievably good framework for all things eCommerce. It takes the headache out worrying about security certificates, server uptime, and other things that make you want to hit your head on the desk. Overall, Shopify makes ecommerce a lot easier than it was even 5 years ago.”
Where Shopify could improve: “I’m really keen to see what they do in the next 1-2 years with multi-regional, multi-lingual and multi-currency. Right now there are some great ways to do it, but it’s not as streamlined as it could be. For example, there is no ‘central’ login for a business with multiple locations. We need to manage individual shops and link them in a clever way. So the improvements they are currently working on will be fantastic.”
Get in touch with Blackbelt Commerce
Hasan Khan – Eastside Co – UK
With over 400 Shopify website designs under their belt, Hasan Khan and his company Eastside Co know their stuff when it comes to designing beautiful and user-friendly e-commerce stores. They start by taking the time to understand your industry, brand and audience, before designing and developing a website that captures your brand values, and converts visitors into customers. They pride themselves on building around your unique vision and always strive to attain the best conversion rates, highest traffic and the most sales that you and your brand can possibly achieve.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Facebook Pixel, the ability to input a number into Shopify that allows you to track all activity from Facebook effectively and quickly.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “The fact that Shopify has a dashboard that is personal and assists the user in how to operate around the backend, advising on how to improve your website’s performance.”
Where Shopify could improve: “The blogging platform. The current setup has been extremely difficult to use for the simplest of tasks. Blogging has now become a time consuming task that can easily be cut short with simple improvements such as image optimisation.”
Dan McIvor – SwankyApple – UK
SwankyApple is a leading UK Shopify Plus Expert specialising in consultation, design and migration for unusual and complex stores. Dan Mclvor and his team have been building stores on Shopify for 7 years, they know that launching a new store is just the start of a journey to success for their clients. This is why they also provide a range of marketing and optimisation services, handling over £1m of adwords spend per year. They have generated millions in additional revenue for their clients through conversion rate optimisation and personalisation campaigns.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Using the chrome browser with the ShopifyFD plugin. When you activate this plugin within the store admin, all kinds of extra info and features become available! The app was created and is maintained by Jason Bowman who is now employed by Shopify. Fun fact – the FD stands for Freak Design, Jason’s Agency.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “The speed at which they release new features. It means stores can go faster to find the product, market and offering which works for them.”
Where Shopify could improve: “We’d love to see better support for version control within Shopify. Particularly for web developers who are working on very large and high-value stores in larger teams.”
Miia Klingstedt – Restful Design – Sweden
RestfulDesign is a web development firm with focus on e-commerce. They love to work with Shopify projects and help businesses with everything from setting up a store to creating apps.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “You can always try on some new clothes, meaning you can try out a Shopify theme from the theme store before you pay for it.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “The user friendliness of the admin is what really makes it a joy for us and our customers to work with Shopify. Also the constant improvements are always a nice surprise.”
Where Shopify could improve: One of the largest obstacles when working with European shops on Shopify is the issues of multiple languages and currencies. It is possible to make it work, but at the same it isn’t as smooth as it could be. It’s a real shame it doesn’t work better.”
Get in touch with RestfulDesign
Paul Hill – Insider Media – Australia
Insider Media Group are a full service online digital agency that specialises in offering website and marketing solutions to small and new businesses. Based in Melbourne, but with clients worldwide, their Shopify experts and marketing consultants can help any business grow and expand.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Shopify has a great range of hacks and tweaks to add a new unique flair to a site. One of the best is the ability to easily import Google web-safe fonts to set your site apart from the standard available look and feel.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “One of the stand-out features is the hosting with unlimited bandwidth. This means your site will never have to worry about traffic numbers.”
Where Shopify could improve: “Shopify have a great range of features but they should fully audit all third party applications. Although most work brilliantly and can vastly improve the UI/UX of a store, there are some that just simply don’t work or that are so full of bugs it can be very time consuming to fix.”
Get in touch with Insider Media Group
Mark Kelso – Glaze Digital – Ireland
Glaze Digital is a leading agency in Belfast, specialising in Shopify, web design and all major disciplines of digital marketing. This holistic approach allows them to support clients through every step and deploy sophisticated, multi-channel marketing campaigns. Their clients have included NI Social Care Council, Douglas Menswear, Uni Baggage, Tourism Northern Ireland, Herbert Gould, SoulBia, Digital DNA and Wedding Journal Online.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “The ability to use snippets to create custom sections of content. For example, a bit of JavaScript or code, which can be turned on or off for certain pages by editing the snippet.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “The main thing we love with Shopify is the super simple setup process. At Glaze we will sit with a client and actually create their store in front of them, show them how to add products, setup POS system and then let them get on with the backend administration while we build out their unique design.”
Where Shopify could improve: “I think it would be great to have custom fields on a product page, similar to how “Advanced Custom Fields” works for WordPress. This would give you more control to create a field for “Awards”, “Ingredients” and give your client more control without having to edit any code.”
Get in touch with Glaze Digital
Keith Matthews – Milk Bottle Labs – Ireland
As Ireland’s top-rated and accredited Shopify experts, Milk Bottle Labs works with businesses of all sizes to move them online via Shopify. They are a boutique eCommerce agency, passionate about creating highly effective and visually appealing online stores on the Shopify and Shopify Plus platforms.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “The ability to easily duplicate your store theme and update in the background.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “Shopify enables entry to e-commerce for business owners in rapid time. Support is the best in the industry and the rising quality of themes and apps is making a wonderful platform even better every day.”
Where Shopify could improve: “Multi Currency Conversion is required for basic Shopify plans along with the ability to make edits to the checkout page.”
Get in touch with Milk Bottle Labs
Hazel Francis – Creative Web Co – UK
Creative Web Co produce exceptional quality websites at very affordable prices, specialising in impressive, high end websites ideal for luxury, fashion, beauty & creative type businesses. They have innovative ideas, great imagination and the experience to deliver fantastic results. Their customer service always goes above and beyond, delivering excellent websites and helping clients every step of the way.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Hiding the Paypal checkout button by pasting some code in checkout box.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “Shopify makes it easy to get an impressive professional quality website at a very low cost. The vast amount of apps available means the core functionality can be extended to do some really advanced and spectacular things. The unlimited 24/7 telephone, chat & email support is something no website owner should live without!”
Where Shopify could improve: “Multi currency checkout, core system VAT functionality, support for partners.”
Get in touch with Creative Web Co
Oliver Pham – Zago – Sweden
Oliver Pham is a business developer at Zago, Sweden. He is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs make their dream online stores come true. His agency creates beautiful e-commerce online stores and they are the #1 Shopify Setup, Design and Development Experts in Sweden.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Using javascript code for making customer agree on term and condition to view checkout button on the cart page.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “Shopify is fast, simple to use, powerful and no IT maintenance is needed. Users do not need to worry much about much about their website’s security.”.
Where Shopify could improve: “The apps and more API. They could also lower the pricing.”
Bob Rockland – Code – Netherlands
Code’s team of programmers works closely to unravel the most difficult technical issues and deliver the most awesome projects. From website to complicated business software and from webshop to B2B-solution – anything is possible.
Favorite Shopify Hack: We like that you can use Google API to check addresses in the checkout and even fill those automagically.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “As a merchant, you never have to worry if your shop is running. Taking orders is always possible. We’ve seen Shopify down in the last 4 years only once for like 3 minutes.”
Where Shopify could improve: “Not much. The checkout page (except for Shopify Plus) always used to go to checkout.shopify.com, which could cost you conversion rate (by moving to a different domain). But now checkout is always on your own domain, which gives more trust and conversions. A change like this fits nicely in the constantly improving software.”
Adam Tregear – FLUX – Australia
FLUX focuses on why you should be doing something and back it up with experience, knowledge and strategy. They build marketing driven, design focused websites on Shopify and Shopify Plus.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “Our 14 day challenge. We sign clients up for a 14 day trial, add products and see how many sales they can get before the trial expires?”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “How they empower users to build a business online.
Their focus is first and foremost on their merchants (not us as experts), which means they are always developing new ways to lower the bar for creating a business online.”
Where Shopify could improve: “Multi-currency checkout on a single domain. I know they are working on it, so looking forward to being able to roll it out for out clients.”
Melissa Domínguez – NinjaNutz – Mexico
NinjaNutz helps you build your business and your online presence. Their expertise lies in ecommerce and bringing ideas to a reality while creating stores that are functional for merchants and their clients. They have worked with international clients and created the new CEMEX Supply online store; one of the biggest brands in Mexico.
Favorite Shopify Hack: “The Shopify tools for businesses: shopify.com/tools. Great tools for many things such as creating your own logo.”
Favorite thing about Shopify: “The ease of use and the ability and flexibility to expand your business with thousands of apps that give your store special features.”
Where Shopify could improve: “Being able to specify shipping for individual products and to define shipping differently, not only the way it’s done now.”
Alexandre Saiz – microapps – Spain
microapps specializes in 3 primary things – ecommerce, ecommerce and ecommerce. They devote themselves to developing the best ecommerce pipeline, starting from Shopify stores, powering them with MoonMail (their open sourced email marketing platform) and MONEI (their global payment gateway). These three projects are the culmination of Alex’s idea, to one day, build a bank (almost there).
Favorite Shopify Hack: Try out the Shopify Kit. It’s like a super CRM in one package. It’s an Amazing way to help you sell fast, scale up and hit the ground running, no matter if you opened your store yesterday or years ago.
Favorite thing about Shopify: Versatility. You can extend it to do pretty much anything. There’s an app for everything. Even for a totally customized checkout.
Where Shopify could improve: Having multiple stores in one. Like other platforms, many merchants sell their products to different countries. It would be amazing to have this functionality out of the box to help us adapt to every single customer that we meet.
Phil Nguyen – RoarTheme – Vietnam
RoarTheme provides consulting services for Shopify template development as well as high quality templates that integrate smoothly with online stores of various business types.
They have more than 5 years of experience working in web development and creating successful designs. Their products are not only built under all modern technology standards, but also are easy to use.
Favorite Shopify Hack: There are so many things out there. But, one of the best is the flexibility to integrate apps, which is a powerful expansion for a Shopify store. By using apps, you will no longer worry about your store’s performance, when the apps are running independently from your store.
Favorite thing about Shopify: I have never seen one platform that provides the best ease of usage for both store owner and the developer.
Where Shopify could improve: I think it would be great to have import/export capabilities for overall contents in a store. For now, only products can be exported. I am looking forward to a day when users can do this with other type of content, including Navigation, Pages, Blogs… This would give you more control to move your store. Moreover, I would like to see the version controlling (source control) function for developers.
Sam Wilcoxon – Storetasker – US
Sam runs Storetasker, which is the #1 (external) marketplace for hiring Shopify Experts to design, build, and grow your store. They’ve helped over 20,000 merchants to date, doing projects anywhere from a $50 quick fix up to a $5k full Shopify design & build. They have a network of hundreds of vetted Shopify experts located in every timezone, ready to help you 24/7.
Favorite Shopify Hack: The “multi-store” gift cards using the Rise.ai Shopify app are super cool. Great if you own multiple stores and want to give customers more choices.
Favorite thing about Shopify: The community. We’ve partnered with many of the top apps, themes, and agencies in the Shopify ecosystem. There are a TON of great people helping bring this platform to the next level.
Where Shopify could improve: We’d love to have more customization access on the checkout page (like Shopify Plus).
Abhishek Jaiswal – CedCommerce:
CedCommerce is an ecommerce company that is passionate about the consistent growth of its online sellers. Abhishek Jaiswal runs the company with the purpose of serving its clients, so that they achieve stability in their business. The company’s experts work on the Shopify services and solutions that aid the process of independent and multi-channel selling.
Favorite Shopify hack: Shopify’s flexibility allows us to create product search boxes with autocomplete and collection page filters using tags. We can also integrate the client’s store with different marketplaces using admin APIs.
Favorite thing about Shopify: Shopify Partner Community and App Store. Shopify partners make all functionalities available to clients through any app and custom development.
What Shopify could improve: Shopify should provide more control over the ACL resources on the basis of apps, since companies often have multiple apps to handle. Each app has its own team of developers, designers, testers and marketers and no one would want their team to view or edit the app that doesn’t belong to them. They should only view or edit the app that has been assigned to them. The same differentiation should be there between Apps and Services. Also, there should be a functionality to increase the product price on the cart page.
Conclusion
To wrap this article up, we’d like to thank all our Shopify Experts, of course, but also say how much we’ve learned by reading their interviews.
Like us, the vast majority of these experts agree that multi-currency is Shopify’s Achilles heel at the moment. But if the company manages to implement this feature in future versions, it could really be an unbeatable platform for creating your ecommerce.
> Find more information in our Shopify review
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