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Wondering if it's time to partner with a Shopify agency? Let's look at the key signs that indicate your ecommerce business could benefit from expert help.
The global ecommerce industry posted record figures in 2025, spearheaded by the 24.7% year-on-year growth of industry-leading platform Shopify. However, as an individual ecommerce business, you’ll know that navigating the daily waters can be a challenging and complex journey - one that requires you to have the right business partners, such as a team of Shopify Experts, around you.
For growing brands, the day-to-day management of designing products, sourcing manufacturers, optimising the supply chain, and more all requires a serious amount of focus, which can mean you lack the internal time or resources to manage your website or marketing efforts effectively. For brands in this position, working with a Shopify Agency may be the best path forward.
Shopify has done a great job in recent years in marketing itself as the ecommerce platform for entrepreneurs and smaller brands, but experienced Shopify Development Agencies can push the platform further - helping businesses grow beyond what they even thought possible.
If your business has reached a plateau or you’re just curious about what a Shopify Marketing Agency can do for you, read on. Let’s explore whether your business needs a Shopify Agency, and what they can do for you.
A Shopify Agency is a team of ecommerce experts, specifically focused on building ecommerce websites on the Shopify and Shopify Plus platforms, as well as maintaining and optimising existing Shopify stores. Moreover, Shopify Agencies exist to serve the needs of their clients, which is why some Shopify Agencies double as Ecommerce Marketing Agencies, which lets them holistically scale ecommerce businesses through the combined efforts of website development, CRO, and the various ecommerce marketing services they offer - usually some combination of performance marketing, SEO, ecommerce consultancy and more.
Shopify Agencies come in all shapes and sizes, from 3-person teams to 300-person teams, and they will each have their own ICP, ways of working, and unique strategies to bring your website dreams to life. Additionally, Shopify Agencies will have to be on the pulse of ecommerce trends, so they’ll be continuously adapting their strategies to leverage new Shopify features, app integrations, and the industry best practices that keep their clients ahead of the competition.
There are many benefits to working with a Shopify Agency. Let’s look at some that are of particular interest to businesses looking to work with one for the first time.
Shopify Agencies work with the Shopify platform daily and have been doing so for many years. They’ll have a wealth of knowledge of the inner workings of the platform and its features. From account managers to developers and web designers, the knowledge will be disseminated throughout the team so that all parties can work in harmony. This means that no decision will be made, or technical practice implemented, without 100% certainty that the end product will be as efficient as possible and be making the most of the Shopify platform.
This expertise prevents costly trial-and-error approaches and ensures a Shopify store is built on a solid technical foundation that can be easily built upon further.
Shopify Agencies will have experience working across a range of different ecommerce businesses, and will have almost certainly encountered businesses experiencing similar problems to you.
With this experience under their belt, Shopify Agencies can not only fulfil the specific request you have of their services, but will be able to integrate with your team, guide you through the issues you’re encountering, and create a roadmap to help you overcome these issues.
This collaborative approach means they can provide strategic recommendations that align with your brand’s vision while bringing fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions.
Lastly, we all know that managing Shopify strategies can be a highly time-consuming endeavour. From researching and learning how to implement new features to actioning the optimisations you know will bring you growth - it’s not a one-and-done act; it requires a consistent time commitment.
By choosing a Shopify Agency, you'll benefit from a team that has explored it all already, so they’ll have established workflows and project management systems that let them implement the strategies that grow your business quickly, and they’ll be much less likely to make costly mistakes.
One often overlooked benefit of working with a Shopify Agency is access to a diverse team of specialists. Rather than hiring individual experts in UX design, development, SEO, and ecommerce marketing, you’ll gain access to an entire team with complementary skill sets. Additionally, agencies invest in premium tools and software to help their clients grow, from analytics, A/B testing, and performance monitoring that would be prohibitively expensive for individual businesses to purchase separately.
Some agencies even take this a step further, developing their own bespoke tools and resources to enable their team and clients. From onboarding documents to custom documentation tools - you’ll get insights you can’t get elsewhere.
So, now that you know what a Shopify Agency is, let’s look at some of the challenges and opportunities that cause businesses to work with a Shopify Agency.
This is one of the most common reasons that ecommerce businesses - particularly, well-established ecommerce businesses - turn to a Shopify Development Agency for help.
Whether you use a different ecommerce platform and are encountering issues or you find that your current Shopify site feels outdated, it’s common for businesses to turn to a Shopify Agency in hopes they can right the ship.
Warning signs include declining conversion rates, increasing cart abandonment, slow page load times, or frustrated customer feedback about the website experience. These technical issues affect more than individual transactions; they compound over time, damaging your brand reputation and SEO rankings
You Need Custom Ecommerce Functionalities That You Can’t Build Out of the Box
Shopify offers a litany of out-of-the-box features, and there’s an entire ecosystem of third-party apps for you to bring your vision for your ecommerce store to life. But sometimes they just don’t work how you’d like. Shopify Agencies are well-versed in building the custom functionalities that can bring your vision to life through a one-off project.
Custom functionality might include unique product configurators, advanced subscription models, and specialised B2B functionalities. While apps provide quick solutions for common needs, they can't always accommodate the specific workflows or customer experiences that differentiate your brand.
You're Planning a Major Redesign or Migration
Ecommerce may feel like a young, blossoming industry, but many brands have been selling online for 5, 10, 20+ years - indeed, Shopify itself entered its 20th year in 2026. Whilst some of these early adopters have blossomed into ecommerce giants, it’s not uncommon for them to have stagnated due to issues with the ecommerce platform they chose all those years ago. In fact, most ecommerce platforms pale in comparison to Shopify.
One example is Magento, which was the most popular ecommerce platform for established ecommerce brands throughout the 2010s. However, upon being purchased by Adobe and rebranding to Adobe Commerce, many of the changes made to the platform weren’t in the best interests of the businesses that used it, causing many to jump ship.
Equally, maybe you’re already on Shopify or Shopify Plus, but feel like your store is outdated or not servicing your team or your customers at its full capacity.
Both are signs that you should at least explore working with a Shopify Agency, as two of the main services offered by established Shopify Agencies are migrations to Shopify from other ecommerce platforms and Shopify store redesigns.
Lack of Skills and Resources
From product design to order fulfilment, there are many pieces in the daily operations of an ecommerce business. Unfortunately, the skills of optimising and managing an ecommerce storefront have little crossover with these responsibilities. Additionally, the skills gap often becomes more apparent as your business scales. What worked when you were processing 500 orders per week may not suffice at 5000 orders per week. Technical debt accumulates, workarounds become bottlenecks, and amateur implementations start showing their limitations.
This is where a Shopify Agency can be of extreme help. In this situation, a Shopify Agency’s skills and experiences perfectly fill the gaps in your knowledge, and they can take over optimising your ecommerce store. This allows you to focus your time on other aspects of the business, empowering you to grow further.
Website Maintenance is Restricting Your Ability to Grow
Another common scenario is when the team behind an ecommerce business may possess the skills to manage an ecommerce store, but the amount of time required to do so effectively is eating into time spent elsewhere on the business.
In this situation, working with a Shopify Agency becomes more of a 1-2-punch, where both teams can bounce off each other’s shared skillsets to build and maintain the best ecommerce store possible.
If your business is about to scale significantly - perhaps through a major marketing campaign, a seasonal event like Black Friday, or expansion into new markets - your current setup may not be equipped to handle the surge. Shopify Agencies can stress-test your store, optimise the infrastructure, and implement strategies to ensure your site remains stable and fast under increased traffic.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the main signs that you should work with a Shopify Agency, let’s look at some of the more specific reasons that affect different industries
Fashion and beauty ecommerce are two of the most competitive industries within the ecommerce space as a whole. In fact, as some of the more competitive verticals, a lot of the innovations in web design and Shopify development come out of servicing fashion and beauty brands who are looking to compete with their competitors.
Fashion and beauty place an extreme importance on stunning visuals and require ecommerce stores that allow them to showcase their content - photos, videos, and more - in such a fashion.
From building custom shop the look functionalities to seamless integrations with other tech platforms, it’s unlikely that the website can be built without external help.
Want to see specific examples? Check out our list of fashion brands that scaled with a Shopify Agency.
Business-to-business commerce is plagued by slow adopters and an unwillingness to adapt to self serve b2b ecommerce.
Shopify provides specific tools and features to enable B2B businesses, but can seem overwhelming to businesses without the technical knowledge to implement them. Considering that b2b sales can be several orders of magnitude above DTC sales, one lost sale due to a poorly designed website could have major financial implications.
Shopify’s B2B functionalities are one of the platform’s newer offerings, but an experienced Shopify Sgency will still be well versed in their ins and outs. If you’re a B2B business looking to set up a Shopify Store, a Shopify Agency should be a major consideration.
This should be the most important part of your research and discovery process when looking into working with a Shopify agency.
Yes, a Shopify Agency may have a well-designed website of their own, they may have a ton of badges and recognitions dotted around as trust markers, but if they don’t have relevant examples of work, you might want to consider someone else. Look for specific business outcomes: Did they increase conversion rates? Reduce cart abandonment? Improve average order value?
Case studies should outline the challenges, solutions implemented, and measurable results achieved. The best agencies will be transparent about their successes and the lessons learned from challenges.
An agency may have delivered 500% sales increase for a small, local business, but that doesn’t mean they can do the same for an enterprise-level brand with 300+ employees. Look out for agencies who have worked with brands that are at a similar point in the life cycle of their business to you.
It doesn’t have to be 100% of the Shopify Agency’s portfolio, but if an agency can’t demonstrate experience working in a particular industry, you can’t trust with 100% certainty that they’ll understand the challenges you’re facing - something to be aware of, rather than a red flag.
Consider your long-term needs beyond website development. If you'll need ongoing SEO, paid advertising, email marketing, or conversion rate optimisation, an agency offering integrated services can provide a cohesive strategy and execute it too.
As a Shopify Agency that also offers ecommerce marketing and design services, we know the importance and power of all three disciplines working together in tandem.
Any Shopify Agency hoping to work with you long term will invest serious time and resources upfront to understand your requirements, constraints, and objectives before proposing any solutions.
It’s worth being cautious of agencies that provide estimates without asking detailed questions about your business. The discovery phase should result in a clear scope document that outlines the deliverables, timelines, responsibilities, and success metrics for your new site, Shopify migration, etc. This clarity minimises scope creep, manages expectations, and ensures that both parties are aligned on what success looks like. Thorough planning prevents costly misunderstandings later.
In our digital-first world, the location of your business partners is less restrictive than it once was - especially in a digital industry like ecommerce - but it's still worth considering, as timezone differences can slow communication and project momentum if not managed well.
Some ecommerce brands will want their agency to operate in the same country as them, some even prefer local agencies to allow for easy face-to-face meetings and better cultural understanding, while others prioritise expertise over location. Equally, it’s not uncommon for American ecommerce businesses to have a preference for working with British or Australian Shopify Agencies, due to the price point typically being lower for a similar scope of work.
The key is ensuring that the location enhances the process, not hinders it.
If you’ve reached this point, you might be wondering why you would hire a Shopify Agency over just establishing an internal development team or even working with a freelancer. Let’s compare all three options.
A Shopify Agency offers the most comprehensive solution with diverse expertise, established processes, and scalability. You gain immediate access to senior talent across multiple disciplines without the overhead of full-time employees. Agencies bring insights from working with various brands and stay current with platform developments. However, they're typically the most expensive option from a “work-delivered-per-amount-spent perspective,” and they may juggle multiple clients, which means your site shares attention with others.
Building an in-house team provides maximum control and dedicated focus on your business. Team members develop deep institutional knowledge and are available whenever needed. This approach makes sense for large enterprises with ongoing technical needs that justify full-time salaries.
However, it requires significant investment in recruitment, salaries, benefits, training, and retention. You may struggle to find candidates with the specific skill combinations you need - especially if your business lacks the prestige of working elsewhere.
Freelancers offer flexibility and can be cost-effective for specific projects or skill gaps. You pay only for what you need without long-term commitments. For small businesses or one-off projects, freelancers can deliver cost-effective results. However, they typically specialize in narrow areas, requiring you to coordinate multiple freelancers for comprehensive projects.
Many successful businesses adopt a hybrid approach: maintaining a small in-house team for day-to-day operations such as uploading products and pushing metadata live, but leaving the major innovations and ecommerce strategies in the hands of a Shopify Agency. This balances control with capabilities while managing costs effectively.
Signs You Need to Work With a Shopify Agency
Recognising the signs that you need a Shopify Agency is the first step toward unlocking your store's full potential. Whether you're struggling with technical limitations, facing resource constraints, or simply looking to scale your business, working with a Shopify Agency can be the boost you need.
If you’d like to learn what we, as a Shopify Agency, can do for your business, contact us - we’d love to hear from you.
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