When you are choosing a Shopify agency to work with you might want to prioritise selecting a local one. There are many advantages of working with a team that are in the same city including:
- Face to face meetings - you can't beat em
- Get to know the whole team working on the project - not just the sales person
- Greater level of flexibility
- Much better/faster communication
- Same timezone
But finding a good local Shopify agency is becoming increasingly difficult. More and more interstate and overseas businesses are masquerading as local businesses by keyword stuffing their websites with misleading claims or by renting virtual offices designed to make you think they have a local physical presence.
So, what do you do if you want a high quality agency with a team of experts that are truly local? Our recommendation is to not take things at face value - dig deeper. For example ask if the agency actually has a Brisbane office. A good way of doing this is to request a face to face meeting.
Equally important is establishing whether the whole team is local or whether the work is outsourced to sub-contractors around the world.
Once you have worked out if you are talking to a truly local business the next thing to do is to find out about the quality of the work and the reputation of the agency. Google Reviews is a good place to start, you'll want to see a lot of 5 stars there. Then check out the portfolio of work that the agency undertakes. This should be shown on their website, but don't be afraid to ask specific question if you need more detail.
We aimed to make this post useful for people on the hunt for a Shopify agency, but, in the spirit of full disclosure, we also wanted to put the record straight. BA Creative is proudly a genuinely Brisbane based Shopify agency. There aren't many of us, so it's frustrating to see other agencies pretend to be local.
If working with a Brisbane based team with a fantastic reputation is important to you, get in touch, we'd love to meet up - face to face!