Jennifer Torosian
Shopify e-Commerce site for Canadian fashion designer
Read MoreWhy you should choose BAO to design and develop your Shopify store.
We're Shopify Experts, and that means that Shopify have assessed both our design and development abilities and accredited us with Expert status.
We've been building websites on the Shopify platform for over 4 years now and have a wealth of experience helping clients to realise their online potential. Here's why we think you should work with us:
Design
We're known for our clean, elegant design sensibilities and we've won numerous design awards to support this over the years. We appreciate that with an e-Commerce website, it has to achieve two very clear objectives. Inspire brand advocacy and convert users into transactional customers. Not only must a website look great across all devices, it must provide an easy route for purchase. We strive to create a customer experience that ends after the checkout.
Performance
With Shopify being a hosted solution, you know that your server response time will always be fast, but there is still a huge difference between a well considered, semantically structured website, and one that has been put together using archaic practises. Once a build is finalised we also optimise imagery with advanced compression techniques and minify the code base as every second of page load counts not only for your visitors but your ranking in SERP's (Search Engine Result Pages).
Development
Our high standard of web development sets us apart from other agencies. We pay close attention to clean, semantic markup standards and the latest technologies, applying them creatively to our work. This means that our websites work perfectly and look great on launch and they'll stand the test of time. It's not uncommon for our clients to far surpass industry statistics for average site life expectancy which we think also offers value for money to our clients.
SEO
As with all of our websites, SEO is factored throughout the entirety of the process. Optimising for search engines should never be an afterthought. It's about good, original content that is specific to your business, market sector and aligned with your objectives. Couple great content with a well-structured codebase and this baseline will prove successful with an effective marketing strategy.
Hosted solution
Because it's a hosted solution, Shopify handle most of the complex aspects of selling online. For one fixed monthly cost, you get hosting, an SSL certificate, are exempt from PCI compliance and are gaurenteed 99.9% uptime. This is all supported by a team of developers across the globe that you can even call for help if necessary 24/7.
Friendly Admin Panel
The workload of managing an e-Commerce store is often underestimated by many and the last thing that you need is an administration panel that complicates matters. Shopify's admin panel is clean, simple and extremely easy to navigate. Shopify have taken a user-centric approach to their framework unlike most other platforms.
Completely Bespoke
We can design and build almost anything on Shopify, we use their liquid engine as a means to manage the inventory, handle customer accounts and make the site transactional. In terms of front-end design there are very few limitations. Every pixel is precisely pushed and every line of code is written by our in-house developers.
Room For Growth
With Shopify there are no lengthy contracts. You're not tied into a year on a particular price plan. You can move up or down as freely as you wish and we can help guide you every step of the way. There are three Shopify price plans to choose from and with the top two, you can benefit from 0% transaction fees.
POS Functionality
Shopify isn't just online anymore, they've got a host of hardware purpose built to integrate with your e-Commerce offering, such as card readers, thermal printers and POS utilities. This means that Shopify is the perfect platform for businesses with bricks and mortar to venture into trading online.
App store
Unlike many enterprise solutions, Magento included, Shopify apps go through a rigorous testing process before they can be installed. This means that when you install an app, you know that there won't be any integration issues or conflicts with other codebases. It will simply work.
Can't recommend them enough! Our conversation rate and sales went through the roof after we launched our new bespoke Shopify site! Every dollar we invested was worth it, and we enjoyed working together with such skilled, creative and passionated people!
Paul Valentine - Founder
After talking with over a dozen agencies about our project, BAO stood out amongst the crowd. They really sought to understand our business objectives to make the most informed decision on platform choice with us. We are all thrilled with the website that BAO designed and built for us and hope to work with them on future projects. We'd thoroughly recommend them to any business that wants to work with a talented, professional and forward thinking agency.
Colin Morrison - Head of Customer Development
A fantastically talented team of creative and technical minds who go above and beyond. They made the whole process of my move from Magento to Shopify as seamless as possible. I would always recommend By Association Only to anyone looking for a team to design and develop their Shopify website as I've always had a professional and friendly experience with them.
Beth Fullager - Founder
Is Shopify the right solution for me or should I look into other e-Commerce platforms?
Shopify is widely acknowledged to be the best hosted e-Commerce platform around. But is that the best route forward for your business?
The important thing to note is that whether you choose Shopify or Magento, the size or age of your business isn't a factor. A lot of larger companies first venturing into e-Commerce, believe that because of their size, they need an enterprise-level solution like Magento, and that simply isn't the case. It all boils down to the following things:
Your predicted turnover
You need to factor in the applicable cost of each platform and carefully calculate which is more cost-effective for you. With Magento you only pay a transaction fee to the payment gateway provider. If that cost saves you more than the additional cost to build on Magento, it may be more cost-effective.
Project Complexities
Being a hosted solution means that with Shopify you simply can't control the administration panel and some top-level functionality. We've become adept at manipulating it, but anything is possible in terms of configuring the admin panel with Magento. Complexities only ever arise when integrating with a 3rd party supplier without the means to connect to Shopify.
Management time
With Magento you'll need to spend more time considering your websites server, security and any integrations. If there isn't a capable in-house team within your business, most clients benefit from starting a retainer with us to manage it for them. With Shopify, this is handled by them within your monthly price plan.
Budget
Out of the box, Magento really needs a lot of customisation. It doesn't even have any real reporting functionality (this can be configured to be incredibly powerful). However, that means that we have to spend time building a lot of functionality that comes as standard with Shopify. Generally, we'll allow 2 to 3 times longer for a Magento website build and as you'd expect, the costs reflect this.
We Build Custom Shopify Apps
Shopify Apps are extensions to the Shopify system to add additional functionality to a store that is not provided by Shopify out of the box. We develop custom apps to allow clients do more with Shopify.