Like most modern, integrated ecommerce platforms, SHOPLINE works closely with a network of development and full-service agencies to empower brands to build, deploy and optimize their ecommerce stack. This partnership between us and the agencies is crucial as the personality, service level and quality of work that ultimately drives the experience and success brands will have building and scaling their businesses on the SHOPLINE platform.
Each platform approaches this slightly differently but somewhat similarly in its core philosophy. Find or create a group of exceptional service partners to empower brands. However, how do you create the optimal balance of relationships, quality and scale? When you have a small number of agencies, it’s easy to manage those relationships and support them to ensure standards are met. However, as you scale your network into hundreds and thousands agencies and service providers, it becomes a more complex problem to solve.
As the Head of Partnerships at SHOPLINE, this is something that I take into heavy consideration with how I approach building and growing our Agency partner ecosystem. My objective is never to replicate what other platforms are doing in building their agency partnerships, because there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach that benefits all brands and merchants. At SHOPLINE we are intentionally tailoring our Agency program in a variety of facets to make sure it’s beneficial and optimizing growth for our partners and brands. We want to be the platform built for all agencies AND brands that we serve.
Being a veteran of the agency world, I have witnessed the detrimental effects of a flawed relationship between agencies and brands. Not all agencies are right for all brands, but the right pairing offers the brand the ability to deploy ecommerce solutions at higher velocity and efficiency. Agencies can offer a wide array of solutions to subject matter gaps brands may have on the technical or business side of things. Whether it is marketing services, SEO, design or development, or custom integrations, the right agency will be able to effectively provide and implement solutions that work best for the brand.
Another aspect in which the right agency is critical, is with platform migration. How a project goes and if the outcome is a success or failure, boils down to setting the right expectations from the start. As the platform provider, it is our responsibility to ensure that our agency and service partners are not just familiar, but truly understands how to provide real value to brands using our products and tech. The Agency has the responsibility to not only provide optimal solutions to the brands’ migration needs, but to also be transparent on what is possible and what is not. And finally, it is the brand’s responsibility to be clear and concise on the business objectives, and what aspects of the migration are mission critical. Each party is operating on good faith that the others are as well.
I didn’t truly grasp this cycle until I left one agency and joined another. A client from my previous agency was looking to switch agencies because the first agency did a poor job building their site. There was an issue with how this platform handled variants and colorways that caused major pain points. The second agency (where I had worked) was trying to save a bad build with limited success. The brand felt that looking for a third agency was the direction they wanted to go in, and they chose the new agency I joined. Ultimately, we did fix more of the issues they had but this was all increased time, money and resources spent on just deploying a basic ecommerce stack.
The biggest challenge is ensuring that all of these components align with the client’s expectations as well. We all know that each brand is unique in some ways that require creative, unique solutions and different degrees of engineering support. Whether or not those expectations are aligned from the beginning is the key to a positive or negative experience.
So how can we manage or control this experience? Honestly, we cannot fully control it. We don’t want to change what each agency brings that is unique to them. But what we do want to enforce is a culture of doing what’s best for the brands. This is non-negotiable for us and we continue to uphold this standard. We have walked away from projects that were not what is best for the brand because ultimately, they are what drives this industry.
We also want to be honest about what our platform can actually achieve versus what it could achieve. Being more pragmatic about what brands are a good fit for us helps us keep the experience positive. When a platform tries to extend beyond its capabilities, oftentimes the merchant becomes the guinea pig of an experimentation, rather than benefiting from proven solutions. SHOPLINE is constantly working to build more products and features our merchants want as we evolve. Subscriptions is a great example, we have heard too many times that subscription platforms are expensive. That’s why we are building our own and natively integrating it into our platform, and providing it at no additional cost. This is putting our brands first.
Without the innovators and entrepreneurs creating exciting and new products, many of us wouldn’t have careers. This is why we lead with supporting the small and medium businesses providing a platform and integrated solutions that offer more features out of the box, at a lower total cost of ownership.
I have had the honor of working with and building friendships with some of the best and brightest partnership pioneers and leaders in the ecommerce industry. Drawing inspiration from their various programs and concepts, I aim to develop an enhanced experience for our agency partners and brands here at SHOPLINE.
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