Reasons why you should hire a Shopify expert for your growing business

Shopify has revolutionized the way e-commerce businesses bring their products to customers. Shopify is one of the top e-commerce platforms around, with more than one in four online brands using it, and the platform caters for all sellers, from small startups to  huge organizations. 

It’s great for growing your brand, but unless you have the time and skills to use Shopify effectively, it can become a bit of a minefield. How do you build a Shopify test site? Can you use SEO for Shopify? What’s the process to set up app integration for your store? All these questions and more can come to haunt you in the middle of a sleepless night. 

Also, while Shopify’s existing themes will get you up and running, your business will hopefully outgrow them, and you’ll then need a more sophisticated, state-of-the-art shopping experience for your customers.

You may be wondering at this point how you’re going to do that while growing your business and taking care of the hundred and one other things that are clamoring for your attention. 

There’s a smart answer to take the stress out of the process: hire a Shopify expert.

We’re going to look at the many reasons to hire a Shopify expert, and how you can use TestGorilla’s Shopify test to remove the guesswork of CVs and find your ideal Shopify star.

What is a Shopify expert?

As the name suggests, a Shopify expert is a professional who is skilled in every aspect of the Shopify platform. They use their knowledge to help brands meet their e-commerce goals by providing the best solutions for specific problems.

A Shopify expert can help you build a Shopify test site/Shopify test account, and then customize and manage a Shopify store when you’re up and running, while you focus your attention on growing your business.

What services do Shopify experts offer?

As Shopify grows ever larger, so does the demand for Shopify experts. Their knowledge of Shopify’s tech stack means they can use the platform’s basic features to create an online store that gives your customers the best shopping experience.

The list of services a Shopify expert can provide is huge. Here are just a few examples:

• Store setup and configuration

• Developing custom themes

• Integrating third-party APIs

• Store performance optimization

• Developing custom plugins

• Development and troubleshooting 

• Shopify SEO and content marketing

• Migration to Shopify

• Shopify Plus support and services

• Shopify Audits and consultancy

• Ads and promotion management

• Support and maintenance

Shopify experts are also experienced in web development tech such as Liquid, React, JQuery, HTML5, CSS3, and Ajax API. 

Why hiring a Shopify professional benefits your business

As you can see from the services Shopify experts offer above, there’s a lot of specialized know-how involved. Let’s take a look at the key reasons why you should hire a Shopify expert.

Extend Shopify’s basic functionality

Shopify’s basic themes and plugins are great for small e-commerce businesses just starting out, but as your brand grows you’ll probably find yourself becoming frustrated with their limitations. 

Your customers are the most important part of your business, and if you want to deliver a seamless shopping experience, you’ll need a Shopify professional to extend and customize the core functionality of your store.

Give your shoppers a great user experience

User experience is one of the key factors in determining the success of your online store, and you don’t get many second chances in the world of e-commerce: 88% of online shoppers are less likely to return to a store after a bad experience.

A Shopify expert will use their knowledge to analyze your target audience and their shopping requirements. They will then apply the results to customize your store’s user interface to give customers the best shopping experience.

Ensure a fast store loading speed

Did you know that page loading speed is a ranking factor in Google search results? That means your ranking in the SERPs may be damaged by slow page-loading times, however good your Shopify store SEO is. 

Customers hate waiting for slow-loading pages in their favorite online stores, but how do you stop it from happening to your store, especially at peak shopping times? A Shopify developer will ensure your store’s pages will load quickly, even when it’s sale time.

Provide ongoing help and support

Setting up and running your Shopify store isn’t a one-and-done task. There are ongoing maintenance and troubleshooting tasks to do, as well as keeping abreast of the latest online-store developments and trends.

Hiring a Shopify professional means you can rely on their support and expertise to guide your store through any issues or changes that need to be made.

Improve SEO

We mentioned search engine optimization (SEO) briefly above. Your Shopify store needs top-class SEO to make it rank higher in the search results; this will attract more customers to your website instead of your competitors’ stores.

Without SEO, your store won’t make it to the coveted first page of the search results, and research shows that 75% of search engine users never go beyond the first page. That means few potential customers will ever see your store, no matter how beautiful your custom Shopify theme is or how eye-catching your product photography is.

If you build a Shopify store on your own and don’t know much about SEO, you risk ending up in the e-commerce wilderness. The good news is that a Shopify expert is well-versed in the dark arts of SEO and will make your store search-engine friendly.

Focus on growing your business

Although it’s great to know about Shopify’s features and tools, it’s hard to learn everything and keep up to date with the technical stuff while you’re trying to scale your business.

Your focus should be on growing and nurturing your brand, and when you hire a Shopify developer, you can do just that. They know the platform inside and out, and good ones are always updating their skills to keep up with Shopify updates. When you find a Shopify professional you can trust, they will work their magic while you are free to concentrate on your business strategy.

How to find the right Shopify expert with TestGorilla

You may have noted that we mentioned finding a Shopify professional you can trust in the last section. But how do you find one? 

A quick search of “hire a Shopify expert” online will show you that there are thousands of them looking for your custom. Many of them are from agencies or freelance websites like Upwork or Fiverr. 

How do you know they are the real deal when it comes to Shopify experts? Sadly, you don’t. CVs are often littered with untruths and are no indicators of future job success. Recent data backs that up, too – 75% of employers caught candidates in a lie on their resumes. Job seekers will often hire a CV-writing service to show them in the best possible light, and references are one of the least reliable forms of candidate assessment. 

Uh-oh, so what’s a Shopify store owner to do? A bad hire can cause untold damage to your brand, and you may find it useful to calculate the real cost of a bad hire in one of our other blog posts. 

One of the quickest and most accurate ways to find a real Shopify expert who knows their Shopify test account from their API integration is to follow the skills-based hiring route. Start by writing a Shopify developer job description clearly describing the candidate you want to hire.

Then, use TestGorilla’s Shopify test to evaluate candidates’ skills and knowledge of the Shopify platform. Those who rank highly in the Shopify test are capable of helping you set up and run your store successfully.

The four key areas covered by the Shopify test include:

• Store development

• Store management

• Advanced customization using code

• Using applications to extend Shopify’s functionality

The sample questions below give you an idea of how thorough the Shopify test is:

The Shopify test preview question above tests a candidate’s knowledge of coding, and the one below asks them to choose the right answers for setting up taxes on Shopify:

Like all of TestGorilla’s tests, the Shopify test is created by subject-matter experts and is kept up to date with any relevant changes in the industry. You also have the option to add custom questions to the Shopify test, which is useful if you have role-specific or more specialized tasks you want your employees to undertake.

It’s no good hiring a great Shopify expert if their communication skills are dismal or they lack attention to detail, so you should consider creating a TestGorilla skills assessment by  adding some other skills tests to the Shopify test. Our test library has a wide range of science-backed tests, including cognitive ability and personality tests. If you’re unsure of how to use personality tests in the hiring process, our blog post on the subject should give you some helpful pointers.

Although assessments alone shouldn’t be used to make hiring decisions, they are a fast and accurate way to narrow down the best candidates for an interview, and all without having to look through a single CV.

TestGorilla makes it easy to build a complete candidate assessment out of five relevant tests. Assessments are recommended as they enable you to see the bigger picture about your applicants and where their strengths and weaknesses lie. 

You can choose from any of the tests in TestGorilla’s test library, but we’ll also recommend a few relevant skills tests below to add to a Shopify test and help you create a well-rounded assessment.

Other TestGorilla tests you may want to consider to create a Shopify expert assessment

As we mentioned above, there are several relevant tests you may want to add to your Shopify test assessment:

Critical Thinking test: This tests the candidate’s ability to use critical thinking to evaluate information and make sound judgments. It’s an ideal test for any role that requires critical thinking to solve complex problems.

Clean Code test: Your Shopify professional will need to have coding experience, and this test evaluates their ability to create clean code that is easy to maintain. It’s a good test for anyone who needs to work with code.

Attention to Detail (Visual) test: This test is a great choice for any job role that requires a high level of attention to visual detail. A Shopify expert is responsible for many design elements within a store, and this test will show how they handle visual material and pay attention to visual cues.

Communication test: How does your candidate handle communication in the workplace? This test is designed to evaluate how well the applicant communicates on a professional level, and also tests for non-verbal cues, as well as active listening. 

There are many tests that you could choose to add to an assessment, so why not have a browse through our extensive test library?

Take the next steps with TestGorilla

Hopefully, we’ve managed to convince you why hiring a Shopify professional is good for your growing business, and that having them take a Shopify test is a smart idea. If you’re ready to feel the freedom of ditching unreliable, time-wasting CVs and try science-backed skills-based testing instead, then why not take a look at TestGorilla’s pricing page or sign up for a free account?