Posted in:

Important Questions You Should Ask When Hiring a Shopify Developer

Shopify is, without a doubt, one of the most popular eCommerce platforms in the world. It has 20% of the market share and over 1 million users. Its benefits are numerous and include no tech worries, easy to set up, secure and reliable, 24/7 customer support, mobile-responsive, highly customizable, etc. So, if it is your first choice for building your client’s eCommerce store – you won’t make a wrong decision. 

Your first step should be getting the right Shopify team by your side, a team of experts that will know how to handle the challenges with the web project. To make a difference between the good, better, and the best Shopify developers out there, you need to make a list of several important questions to ask the Shopify developer candidates. To help you out in your pursuit to hire Shopify developer here is a list of the questions.

1. What kind of experience do you have with eCommerce development projects?

This question is the stepping stone for any Shopify developer interview. Of course, you’d ask this question even if it wasn’t featured on the list, and surely, the Shopify developer expects you to ask them this. However, here’s a twist: ask them about the last eCommerce project they’ve worked on and what their specific role was. 

When a Shopify developer answers about their most recent project, you’ll be able to understand how aware they are of the modern designs, human-friendly navigation, and developing a bug-free environment.

2. Do you understand SEO?

Nowadays, a very important skill of every developer is to know basic SEO. This is no exception for the Shopify developers as well. By being SEO-familiar, the Shopify developer will build an SEO-friendly eCommerce store that the target audience will easily find. By including several SEO tactics, both tech and content, the Shopify store will be able to attract organic traffic, which will provide satisfaction to your client and superior user experience to the target audience of your client. 

3. What project management/task/communication tools have you used?

Get them talking about the tools they used to organize their projects, tasks and communicate within the team. You probably have your preferred tools, but this question will help you realize how fond they are of organization. Delegation of tasks is not a simple job, and you need to know whether they have or are open to using the tools as part of their everyday activities. 

4. What would you say is your strongest tech skill regarding Shopify?

Tech talk is more than necessary even on the first interview with the Shopify developer candidate. You can ask this open question and let them tell you about their strongest tech skill, or if they don’t narrow to anything special, you can ask a couple of more directed questions:

  • Can you perform data migration and integration?
  • Can you optimize the store for mobile users?
  • How do you handle accepted international eCommerce standards?
  • How can you decrypt a password in case of the client having an encrypted one?
  • How does the content-based filtering recommendation algorithm work?
  • Etc…

Uniqueness is a characteristic that you probably offer to your client. So, you must ask for it from your developer as well. The Shopify developer must be thinking out of the box and coming up with their own ideas to make a store different from the client’s competition. 

6. What is the eCommerce project that you are most proud of?

Finally, ask them to show off. Let them talk about a project they have worked on and are very proud of being part of it. Let them explain their role in the project. You can draw conclusions about what kind of a Shopify developer the candidate is – whether they have worked on something really special, complex, and large, or they haven’t had the chance to do so far. 

To Sum Up

Looking to hire a Shopify developer is not an easy thing to do. Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce stores on the market, and the demand for Shopify developers is always high. However, if you ask the right set of questions to your candidates, you will be able to separate the suitable from the unsuitable developers for your project. Hopefully, this list will help you make the right choice.