It has been a good number of years since e-commerce has been around. In fact, consumers love it. The convenience of shopping from the comfort of the home with the same level of service as an in-store executive would provide makes e-commerce highly popular. This is the reason that has helped Shopify garner the preference of so many online businesses today.

Shopify, a dedicated online platform for e-commerce, provides businesses with the digital infrastructure needed to start an online store. Popular brands you already know and love, like Hasbro, Penguin Books, BBC, and Red Bull, use Shopify for their online branded shopping experience. If your business isn’t on Shopify yet, here are a few reasons to consider it.

Why use Shopify?

First impressions matter most. The reason Shopify has risen to the skies is that it provides visually alluring and intuitive designs you can apply to your online store. The experience is like interior-designing your online business. The customers, when presented with a shopping experience that is both beautiful and breezy, tend to return to your website.

In the light of the COVID-19 pandemic that has drastically shaken up product-based businesses at a global scale, online shopping is set on its path towards an innovative revolution. During March-April of 2020, Shopify witnessed a 62% increase in new online shop fronts on its platform – more and more businesses are taking their affairs online.

Shopify not only provides a robust environment to carry out your retail business online, but also provides tools that help you keep your store neat and managed at the backend. Conducting business through the Shopify network and platform is bound to help your business grow.

Skills to look for in Shopify developers

Developing a website on Shopify isn’t difficult at all; you could do it yourself, if need be. However, with a professional Shopify developer, the quality of your final product would be unmatched, customized, and every bit worth the investment. Here are a few essential skills to look for when you set out to hire Shopify developers.

Coding Speed

While it is impressive to see a coder at work, speeding away at the keyboard, a good developer actually takes his time with programming, fitting every bit of his code to match the picture in your head. The coder you hire should know the concept of strategizing and planning the outcome first. This ensures that he knows the ultimate objective that your brand wishes your online store to imbue, and uses this information to build his code around. Not only does this help to get things (mostly) right in the first go, but it also helps avoid time wastage in reworks. Ask the developer what his strategy would be when he reads your brief.

Migration Capabilities

Moving stations is never an easy job. With all the systems, protocol, and framework already in place in your old online shop front, it takes a little more skill to pick your business up and migrate it to Shopify. There is a lot to consider and work with here:

• Ensuring customer accounts stay unaffected
• Ensuring URL redirects remain intact
• Migrating SEO aspects and content to Shopify

Make sure you ask your developer if he/she can accomplish this task without compromising on the customer experience.

Clear Visualization

The capability to visualize a code before typing it results in fewer errors and reworks when a developer actually gets hands-on with it. A big factor that determines how well a coder has understood your idea of the website is to see how sorted his code looks – which can be easily noticed through his use of whitespaces. Whitespaces not only allow the coder to make sense of his entire program, but also allows the viewer to understand which code attributes to which function or feature on his website. Not only does this allow for clearer communication between two professionals, but it also helps to get the code down pat sooner.

Version Control Capability

Ask your developer if he uses version control. Coding is a complex exercise, and many times, there are changes done to the same element over and over again. Version control helps earmark each change made to the source code, making it simpler to keep track of all modifications made from time to time. In case there is a need to revert certain changes made to the source code of your website, knowing how to use version control helps a developer achieve the goal faster and more efficiently. It also keeps a tab of the work done on any code so far.

Soft-Skills and Comprehension

Gone are the days when coders were the stereotyped, bespectacled desk-jockeys who worked alone. Ensure that the developer you hire has hospitable interpersonal skills because, in certain cases, he may be required to work or collaborate with other staff or teams as well. It helps to hire someone who is open to suggestions and actually puts in the work required to understand client requirements, his vision, and ideas for a website that will represent his brand online.

Additionally…

A developer mirrors your vision of your e-commerce website. Therefore, first, you yourself must have a clear idea of it before hiring a professional. The better you are able to explain your expectation to the developer, the better the outcome. On the contrary, setting too many boundations on the coder kills his creativity. If there is a possibility of benefiting from outside creativity, being open to ideas goes a long way in creating a great product.

The Highlight

Using the Shopify platform for your online business translates into a lot of benefits – and when this is done right, it reaps advantages phenomenally from the functionality that Shopify offers. Hiring a professional, clear-minded Shopify developer gets the job done right from the first foot.