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What types of Shopify Experts are there? Most times Shopify storeowners categorize Shopify Experts as web developers without categorizing what a Shopify Expert can really mean. In this article, we will cover the various skill-sets and types of areas one can have, where some experts are skilled in adjacent areas than just development.
Summary of expertise
Shopify Store setup
Digital Marketing
Social Media
Digital Channels
Visual Content and Branding
Content Writing
Marketing and Sales
Shopify Apps Development
Shopify Theme Development
Debugging and Troubleshooting
Shopify Store Setup
Most Shopify Experts know how to take a store from a new account to launching it, however, the specialist in this department will have deeper experience in achieving the task with speed and precision. If you are looking to pick up a Shopify Theme with a good responsive design, you have your products and digital marketing strategy all ready to go - then this may be the Shopify Expert for you. If you are looking to know more about what's involved in pre-launching an online store and then launching it - see the below links that describe the steps involved.
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/pre-launching-a-shopify-store-in-13-steps
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/launching-your-shopify-store
Digital Marketing
You might have a digital marketing strategy ready to execute but might not know what may be the best tools or methods in achieving the results for your plan. The plan will most likely involve social media platforms, email marketing, content for search engines for your organic traffic. Your marketing team could easily be a Shopify Expert that manages the various activities in partnership with your business for online marketing and digital advertising. For more depth on the subject of this expertise, see the link below.
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/digital-marketing-for-your-shopify-store
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/shopify-email-marketing
Social Media
There is a various aspect of Social Media and their tools, such as communication (Facebook Messenger) which aids in closing sales, assists in support questions and help your audience to be in touch with you on their purchase. Website designs consider the lifestyle of the product placement, therefore social media marketing has to be aligned with the tools, products, and services. This area covers anything like integrating Instagram imagery on your home page, propagating your blogs or Vlogs out to your pages, and giving you the tools to bring back reviews and testimonials to product pages. The Social Media Shopify expert can help you identify which Apps are going to deliver the experience you are looking for, and go as far as defining the Shopify App that may require building for a custom experience.
Digital Channels
Integrating your Shopify Store with either an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, or bring your offerings to eBay, Amazon, Etsy or other marketplaces requires experience in data flows, tools that sanitize order data for character and fields to go back and forth seamlessly, as well as keeping inventory accurately. This is more than just a web application to be installed, there is testing, reconciliation and at times require designers and developers to work together on ensuring that your brand is represented accurately with different platform requirements. Some shops have thousands of products, ensuring that the system is audited for accuracy will yield a smooth operation in dispatching all the way to financial reporting.
Visual Content and Branding
While this is the most straightforward skill, there are areas when you might feel overwhelmed and the Shopify Expert would resolve the issue reasonably quickly. Resizing your product images for example - doing that one at a time could be tedious, whereas the Shopify Expert would have a tool to batch process the images. The same goes for Photoshop skills, Web design adjustments to deliver the look and feel you want out of your Shopify Theme. Sleek and impactful home pages take more than a good front-end developer, but a strong visual artistic translator of your vision to executing the experience for your audience.
Content Writing
There are a few areas where content writing is crucial in the execution of your marketing, your brand, and your products selling. From the basics of your marketing plan in the value proposition, differentiation to your competition, and website content for your vision and mission as a company. The content has to capture the vision of your business and deliver it clearly to your audience and drive an emotional bond and excitement for them to engage with your business and feel trust, a good fit for their lifestyle, and enjoyment of your product and service. There are your product descriptions and how they are searchable through appropriate keywords and their relevance to various search engines - where there is overlap with your Digital Marketing when it comes to SEO. Let's not forget that News, Blogs, and Vlogs are all part of this department where the narrative is drafted, keywords checked, and strategically placed so that your passionate message is not only shared to your audience but also found through search.
Marketing and Sales
It is one of those things that are a "must" when it comes to eCommerce and there are thousands of tools professing that it will fulfill the function of this department. Firstly, marketing is deemed a different activity given that reaching out to your audience is relying on Shopify Expert skill-sets mentioned above when it comes to digital marketing, content writing, visual content, and branding. Adding social media to that list as well would cover what marketing involves. However, sales are captured when interest is driven and requires efficient ways to drive trust and help the client to select the product of interest and transact. This is usually called a marketing funnel, and it comes in various forms such as Shopify Themes, Shopify Apps, and custom UI/UX if the products are complex. The Shopify Expert in this area would have the affinity to review your marketing funnel and bring them to conversion. That experience can be different for different stores and has to follow your brand experience and ethos.
Shopify Apps Development
When your online store requires a custom experience outside of the best practices of what the Shopify App store offers, then defining the experience, the requirements, and assessing the various loads/parameters all the way down to the programming language is the first step that a Shopify developer can help you achieve. With Shopify, there is no "server-side" given it is in the cloud, therefore there are 3 different methods that can achieve the custom experience - Shopify Custom App, Shopify Private App, and Shopify Scripts. For more on these methods, see the links below.
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/approaching-shopify-development-in-2021
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/why-do-shopify-stores-need-custom-web-app-development
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/shopify-experts-have-scripts-for-shopify-plus
Shopify Theme Development
Given there are thousands of Shopify Themes to chose from, most will find and list out their top picks for their online store but more often than not, require modifications to achieve the vision on how they want to deliver the experience. This now falls into the Shopify Experts department on how to make the changes all the while adhering to the HTML5 and front end development guidelines to ensure loading speed is maintained and is error-free. Considerations in selecting your theme are described below.
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/top-5-considerations-in-selecting-your-shopify-theme
Debugging and Troubleshooting
At times, the gremlins come out and there are issues to resolve. Issues can be visual such as mobile responsive problems for certain types of devices or they can be programming issues when it comes to a Shopify custom app and the Shopify API. Whatever the issue might be, a good Shopify Expert can hunt down the issues and resolve them, especially if they are well versed in the area you identify the issues in.
Summary
A Shopify Expert complements your business and your team, helps you execute your vision and experience to your audience. If you have a need to bring to light your needs, require help to articulate a plan or vision or help execute one we hope this article will assist in understanding further the roles that Shopify Experts have strengths in. If you need further questions feel free to reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com where we might be able to assist further.
https://www.thegenielab.com/shopify-developers-experts
https://www.thegenielab.com/post/shopify-experts-resource-center
