How do you find the best Magento support agency for you? A strong relationship with your agency is crucial, whether you’ve just launched your site and need a support agency to manage your online store’s growth, or if you have an established site and need to take it to the next level.
What questions should you be asking when looking for the right Magento support agency?
#1 – Are they a Magento solution partner?
There are many agencies out there who have Magento experience and knowledge, but it is important to identify whether they are an official solution partner.
This means the agency has had to meet very high quality standards, demonstrated through exams and training in order to become certified. All developers, project managers, and account managers will have extensive Magento knowledge from having such a close relationship with Magento.
All Magento partners must have shown demonstrable success in using Magento applications and resources. When you work with an official Magento partner, you can be certain that you are working with a fully-committed, Magento-vetted and approved partner who has been trained in all aspects of Magento design and development.
#2 – How does the agency respond to bug fixes?
It is important that the agency is able to jump onto urgent issues and fix bugs in a sufficient amount of time. In order to meet expectations, there should be an understanding, from the beginning, of what an agency classes as ‘urgent’ and what the expected time frames are for different types of bug fixes so that both parties are happy.
#3 – What is the process for new work?
When you approach the agency with new work, changes and feature requests for your website, it is important to know what the process will be.
Do they have a brief template? Will they provide a quotation? What happens if they go over the estimated hours in a quotation? Are jobs charged ad hoc?
These are all questions that need to be asked to check to see if how the agency works fits in with your company processes and expectations.
#4 – How do they communicate to clients?
A good client to agency relationship is key to success, so it is imperative to establish what communication an agency can offer. Regular contact between agency and client is important, whether it be emails, calls or face to face meetings.
Ensure that the agency is willing to give you the time you need to build your relationship with them in order to grow your business successfully.
#5 – How proactive is the agency?
An agency should be reactive to issues and new work from the client, but they should also be advisory on proactive recommendations in order to grow your ecommerce business. A successful Magento agency will be an additional member of your ecommerce in-house team, to advise and support.
#6 – Can they advise me on recommended technology partners?
Magento is a great ecommerce platform, but can become much more powerful with the appropriate technology partners. A Magento agency should have good relationships with technology partners and be able to advise on the most appropriate technical tools to fuel your ecommerce growth.
Examples of services that technical partners offer would be email marketing, personalisation, payment solutions, search, reviews, order management, and shipping. Different solutions are suitable for different companies and platforms, so it is important your agency has a good understanding of technical partners to advise on the most appropriate services for your product, brand and platform.
#7 – What other services does the agency offer?
Every agency specialises in a variety of areas, so it is good to know what is on offer and whether it would compliment your ecommerce needs. Services such as PPC, SEO, and UX/UI design are all very important to ecommerce success. You may have resource in-house to cover these or you may find it useful to check out what the Magento agency is offering alongside design and development.
#8 – Are they specialists in your retail vertical?
Take a look at the previous work of the agency and their currently managed clients, to see whether they have experience in your industry. It is good to know if they are familiar with your sector and whether you like the work they have done previously within your vertical.
Hit your ambitious growth targets
We understand retailers don’t just need an ecommerce agency when there are problems. Retailers need an ecommerce partner who can provide recommendations for how to make the most of their online store and hit those ambitious growth targets.
If you’re interested in finding out how we could best support your ecommerce store, take a look at our Magento support services.
