Hiring an ecommerce agency is a huge step for any store owner—but it doesn’t have to be a scary one. A number of partners can help you build your app, launch your store, or reach more customers.
You might know you’ve reached the point where it’s time to hire an expert, but you’re still left with lingering questions. Is it worth the investment? Should you hire a full-time employee or outsource the work to an agency? What kind of agency do you even need?
Here’s everything you need to know to make your ecommerce agency hire a huge success.
What is an ecommerce agency?
An ecommerce agency is a business-to-business (B2B) entity that offers the expertise ecommerce companies need to meet their business goals. Ecommerce agencies often specialize in helping businesses with digital marketing, content creation, SEO strategy, social media management, and more.
Types of ecommerce agencies
- Marketing and sales
- Store setup and management
- Development and troubleshooting
- Visual content and branding
- Content writing
- Expert guidance
Some ecommerce agencies offer full-service digital marketing services, while others specialize in specific aspects of running an ecommerce store. Here are the main types of ecommerce agencies worth exploring:
Marketing and sales
Marketing and sales agencies help online businesses grab shoppers’ attention and convert clicks into purchases. They help in the following areas:
- Email marketing: Reaching customers through strategic email campaigns.
- SEO: Making websites rank higher in search results naturally.
- Search engine advertising: Paying to show ads in search results.
- Social media marketing: Promoting brands and products through social platforms.
- Content marketing: Creating valuable content to attract and keep customers.
- CRO: Improving websites to turn more visitors into customers.
For example, when the luxury women’s apparel brand Mac Duggal had to rethink its digital marketing strategy, it turned to the ecommerce marketing agency Prospect Knight. They ultimately doubled Mac Duggal’s return on advertising spend (ROAS).
Store setup and management
Store setup and management agencies help with the technical side of running an ecommerce store.
If you lack technical expertise or simply lack the time to develop your website on your own, you can find agencies that work on specific tasks like:
- Store build or redesign
- Product and collection setup
- Headless commerce
- Website audit and optimization strategy
- Checkout upgrade
- Website migration (Website migration involves transferring a URL and all its contents from one hosting environment or platform to another.)
For example, the Shopify Plus Partner agency Able Sense helped Stanfield’s, an apparel company, migrate its website. After moving its website onto the Shopify platform, Stanfield’s saw a 168% increase in conversions, a 20% growth in average order value (AOV), and a 59% increase in total transactions.
Development and troubleshooting
Development and troubleshooting agencies specialize in creating custom apps and integrations that can make your store stand out. And when something goes wrong on your website, like a checkout error or inventory glitch, they know how to fix it. More specifically, here’s what they can help with:
- Custom apps and integrations: Building unique software solutions tailored to specific business needs.
- Custom domain setup: Configuring personalized web addresses (URLs) for websites and services.
- Troubleshooting: Finding and fixing technical problems in systems or software.
- Systems integration: Connecting different software systems to work together seamlessly.
For example, Belstaff, a century-old luxury brand, moved to Shopify to unify their online and physical retail systems, eliminating the complexity of managing separate data models and reducing technical integration challenges.
By implementing a unified commerce approach, they were able to centralize their data, create a single view of customer interactions across all channels, and connect their point-of-sale and ecommerce systems seamlessly with their NetSuite ERP.
Visual content and branding
Visual content and branding agencies help define your brand’s visual identity so your business can stand out.
Specifically, these creative agencies can:
- Create your logo and visual branding.
- Design catchy banner ads.
- Create videos and illustrations for your website.
- Take showstopping product photos.
- Create 3D models of your products.
Content writing
When you browse an online store, the text you read on every page—from product descriptions to blog posts—is content writing at work. Content writing agencies specialize in crafting:
- Blog posts: Strategic, SEO-optimized long-form content with professional editing and consistent publishing schedules.
- Email campaigns: Sophisticated automated campaigns with audience segmentation, A/B testing, and detailed performance tracking.
- Social media posts: Comprehensive content calendars with strategic paid campaigns and cross-platform engagement strategies.
- Web copy: Conversion-optimized, SEO-driven content with consistent brand voice and user experience focus.
In the end, they are responsible for bridging the gap between digital and physical, and helping customers imagine your products in their lives.
Expert guidance
All business owners need a little guidance from time to time. You can seek guidance from experts specializing in:
- Business strategy: Experts provide data-driven direction on market positioning, revenue models, and growth opportunities to help companies make informed strategic decisions.
- Product sourcing: Consultants help identify reliable suppliers, negotiate terms, and optimize supply chain logistics to ensure quality and cost-effectiveness.
- Site performance: Technical specialists analyze and optimize website speed, reliability, and user experience while implementing best practices for hosting and maintenance.
- Sales taxes: Tax experts navigate complex multi-state and international tax regulations to ensure compliance and proper collection and reporting of sales taxes.
- B2B and wholesale strategies: Specialists help businesses develop and implement wholesale pricing structures, ordering systems, and relationship management processes for business clients.
- International expansion: Consultants guide companies through the complexities of entering new markets, including localization, compliance, shipping, and payment methods.
- Product development: Product strategists help identify market opportunities, develop specifications, manage production processes, and optimize product lines for target markets.
Brooklinen transformed its manual B2B operations into a streamlined digital experience under expert guidance, creating a dedicated B2B store that mirrored the success of its direct-to-consumer platform.
The results were impressive. Their team could spend 80% of their time on customer relationships rather than manual tasks. They enabled self-service functionality for B2B customers to manage accounts and orders, and they successfully delivered the same intuitive buying experience to wholesale buyers that their retail customers enjoyed.
Why hire an ecommerce agency?
Here are a few key reasons to book your first agency consultation meeting:
Fast results
Hiring an agency is often faster and more efficient than hiring new employees—particularly if your needs are short term or too limited to justify a full-time role. Training new employees takes time, while agencies are skilled at hitting the ground running.
For example, footwear brand Jack Rogers hired an ecommerce agency to help it ramp up direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales. The popular sandal brand had long seen success placing its products in department stores, but was hoping to improve its online sales as well.
Its initial ecommerce platform was clunky and time consuming, so it brought on Shopify Plus Service Partner P3 Media, an agency with experience migrating ecommerce stores over to Shopify Plus websites.
With this hire, Jack Rogers’ new and improved online store became one of the company’s top distribution channels; traffic increased by 60%, and conversions improved by 30%. Had they not contracted P3 Media and developed their website themselves, it would’ve taken much longer.
Specialized expertise
By hiring an agency, you get a team of experts well-versed in the exact task at hand. While it may seem beneficial to make a single hire who can manage everything, specialists provide better results in their area of expertise.
For example, say your online store faces a complex technical issue with your website. Your in-house marketer who has created and implemented your entire marketing strategy and can handle minor website updates likely won’t have the know-how to deal with an in-depth technical problem.
Instead, you can hire an ecommerce agency with web developers who can pinpoint the issue and solve the problem in less than a day’s work—whereas your in-house marketer may need to spend weeks to find a solution, which interferes with their primary work.
Outside perspective
If you’re running out of ideas, hiring an agency can bring a fresh perspective to your ecommerce website. Agencies work with a wide variety of clients and bring those best practices to your business. For example, a digital marketing agency could give never-been-done-before campaign ideas and execute them on your behalf.
When you’re running your own business, it can be difficult to see other opportunities available to you. Hiring an agency gives you that essential outside perspective that can open you up to new ideas and tactics.
Cost savings
Agencies aren’t inexpensive, but they’re often much cheaper than bringing on a full-time employee or team. With an agency, you can bring on the knowledge and experience you need, without the cost and commitment of a full-time employee.
Plus, to have a fully specialized marketing team, you’d need to hire more than just one single person. And that can add up quickly.
The going rates for mid-level marketers are:
- Digital marketer: $60,000–$80,000
- Social media manager: $55,000–$75,000
- Content marketing manager: $65,000–$85,000
- Email marketing manager: $65,000–$85,000
- Paid search manager: $70,000–$90,000
- SEO manager: $65,000–$85,000
And that doesn’t even include benefits, vacation pay, and company perks, as well as monthly fees for marketing software your team will need access to.
With an agency—depending on the deliverables you want—you can get access to a full team of experts for anywhere from $2,000 to $15,000 each month, which is far less than you’d pay for the aforementioned in-house team.
When is the right time to hire an ecommerce agency?
- You’re seeing a decline in sales
- You’re launching a new product
- You’re lacking the necessary skills in-house
- You’re breaking into a new market
- You’re regularly running out of time
- You don’t enjoy marketing
If you’re considering hiring an ecommerce agency, there are some tell-tale signs that you’re ready to set up a meeting:
You’re seeing a decline in sales
If you’ve been doing a great job of growing your business by yourself and watching more and more sales come in, but all of a sudden you’re starting to see a decline or stagnation, you might want to enlist outside help.
For an issue like this, you can hire a full-service ecommerce agency that can assist in auditing your website to see if there are any user experience issues, as well as ramping up new marketing campaigns to reach even more customers.
You’re launching a new product
If you’re launching a new product, hiring an agency can be a better way of generating buzz. While your own marketing efforts can likely create a small buzz, enlisting the help of a team of professionals can help make your launch even more successful.
For example, Shopify Plus Partner Slicedbread helped the air purifier company Molekule validate its product concept and sell out two pre-launches, results Molekule likely wouldn’t have seen on its own.
You’re lacking the necessary skills in-house
When you’re first starting, you’re likely one of the only employees—if not the only—which means you might not have the skills to create your own website design, set up your online store, create social media content, and more.
This is where an agency comes in. Once you’ve built up your business enough to have consistent revenue, investing in an ecommerce agency can ramp up your sales, putting even more in your pockets in the long run.
You’re breaking into a new market
Breaking into a new market—whether with a new product launch or as a part of a localization strategy—can be a tough venture. This is why many brands enlist the help of agencies with experience in this type of business growth strategy.
You’re regularly running out of time
Running an online business takes up a lot of time—even more so if you’re hand-making the products you sell. As the business owner, you have a lot of other tasks on your plate, from order fulfillment and updating product listings to accounting and customer service.
If you’re finding yourself struggling to remember to post on social media or write blog content, you might want to outsource these tasks to an agency. This way, you’re able to focus on running your business while the agency handles your marketing strategy.
You don’t enjoy marketing
If you don’t like marketing, don’t force it. Market just enough to get your business off the ground, then outsource it. Finding an ecommerce marketing agency can be a long-lasting working relationship that helps exponentially grow your business—and you don't have to lift a finger.
How to select the best ecommerce agency for your store
- Determine what you need
- Do research
- Consider your budget
- Browse through options
- Interview your chosen agency
- Review (and accept) their proposal
- Make the hire
Now that you know why and when you’d consider hiring an ecommerce agency for your store, focus on the next big question. How do you find the right fit? Here’s how to figure it out:
1. Determine what you need
What are your primary goals? This year, you might be focused on:
- Increasing monthly sales
- Increasing traffic to your ecommerce store
- Improving the user experience on your website
- Launching a new product
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating more online followers
Zeroing in on your goals can help you hone in on the type of agency to recruit.
2. Do research
The next step is to do some preliminary research about the work. For example, you can find instances of other businesses doing something similar to what you want. This can help your agency to better assist you, because it gives it a clear example of what you’re looking to achieve.
3. Consider your budget
Identify how much you’re able to spend and how quickly you want to see results. Different factors will affect your budget, like timelines, the scope of work, and the overall complexity of the project, but keep in mind that many agencies can adjust their engagement to meet your budget.
4. Browse through options
Start by browsing through Shopify’s partner list, which features agencies hand-picked for their deep knowledge and successful track record.
Once you find a few options by filtering results based on the services you’re looking for, it’s time to start scouting their websites. Look through past work and reviews to see if any agencies have shared case studies and proven results with ecommerce companies similar to yours. Or you can create a job and connect with qualified and award-winning agencies based on your specifications.
Once you’ve pinpointed a small handful of agencies you’re most interested in, it’s time to get in touch.
5. Interview your chosen agency
Reach out to your chosen agency or agencies via their website’s contact form. Most ecommerce agencies offer a free consultation or initial meeting so the two of you can learn more about each other and how a partnership might look.
During this meeting, you have the chance to interview your agency. Their goal is to make the sale, but you want to be sure it’s going to be a good fit.
Bring along some of these questions to help gauge whether the agency you’re chatting with is the best one for the job:
- Who (if anyone) are you working with/have you worked with in my industry? What did you do for them and what were the results?
- Who will be working on my account? How does communication with that team member work? How often do we meet or have planning discussions?
- Is the work all done in-house or do you outsource to freelancers or contractors? How do you decide which freelancers to work with and what is their experience level?
- What does the onboarding process look like?
- What will be expected of me and my team as a client?
- What does your workflow look like? How will we be informed of the results?
- When was the last time you lost a client? What happened?
Add anything else that you’re curious about to your list and go to any meetings prepared so you can get the most out of your agency-client relationship.
6. Review (and accept) their proposal
Once you’ve had your initial consultation, the agency will put together a proposal based on the services you’re interested in.
The reason why your first meeting with an agency is so important is to ensure the proposal they provide you with accurately represents the type of work you’re looking to have them do, minimizing miscommunication and the need to go back and forth before putting together the right information.
Review the proposal they send over to make sure it matches your goals and your budget.
7. Make the hire
Should you accept their proposal, the agency will send a contract to sign and kick off the project. Once that part is done, the agency will get you started with its onboarding process, ensuring it has all the information it needs.
Your next step is to sit back and let the agency begin its work. Stay on top of communication so it’s able to get anything it needs from you, and make sure to keep an eye on results so you know the agency’s strategies are working. Set weekly or biweekly meetings on the calendar to check in on progress.
Hire the right ecommerce agency for your brand
Partnering with the right ecommerce agency can push your business forward. Carefully evaluate your needs, budget, and goals to find the perfect partner.
Remember to thoroughly vet candidates, ask tough questions, and review proposals critically. And use marketplaces like Shopify Partners to find the best agencies for your brand.
With the right agency by your side, you can overcome challenges and achieve sustainable growth for your ecommerce business.
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Ecommerce agency FAQ
What does an ecommerce agency do?
Ecommerce agencies help businesses sell products online by creating and managing their digital presence. They offer a range of services, from website design to marketing, all focused on increasing online visibility and sales for their clients.
How much does an ecommerce agency charge?
Ecommerce agencies charge anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 or more monthly, with fees varying based on project scope, client size, and agency expertise. Their pricing reflects the complexity of services offered, from basic setup to ongoing support.
What is a full-service ecommerce agency?
A full-service ecommerce agency is a one-stop shop for online retailers, managing all aspects of digital commerce, from website creation to marketing and maintenance. These agencies provide end-to-end solutions, including strategy, implementation, and optimization of all aspects of an ecommerce operation.
What is a Shopify agency?
A Shopify agency is a business that specializes in helping companies set up and manage their online stores using the Shopify platform. Shopify agencies provide services such as website design, marketing, content creation, SEO, and more. They also provide support and guidance throughout the entire process of setting up and running an ecommerce store.
