Premium Shopify Store Launch with Limited Budget (it’s possible).
This is the answer I sent to one of my clients. They had a very specific vision (very well elaborated) about how their new online store should look like. It’s a subscription business with possibility for one time purchases as well. They knew who they wanted to target and had analysed their competitors.
The problem: 💸
The budget was not super low. I just know that I needed to be honest and tell them upfront that their vision was so high standard, that we’d need the double of it to make them really happy with the final results. For sure, someone could design and develop a store with the given budget. But our client wouldn’t be happy with it.
This is how I showed the truth to my client before the harsh reality did it for me.
Hello Mary (fake name),
Thank you very much for the extensive description of your goals. It’s really helpful for us.
After reading it, I have the feeling you are really looking for a custom solution specifically designed to perfectly fit your vision.
However, for the high level you’re aiming, the budget you have might be insufficient. Of course it’s possible to find someone who will have something designed and implemented for that price, but I don’t think it will meet your expectations. Based on the document you sent, I would say that we could use that budget solely for the design part, so you would be 100% satisfied, but obviously that’s not financially achievable when you’re launching your business in this early stage.
You mentioned the possibility of using a theme and extensively customise it to meet your brand and vision. That can be a great solution, but you need to know from the beginning that there may also be some limitations. It’s a classical, almost universal truth — you can’t get Cheap, High Quality and Fast at the same time (ever). It’s very important to find a middle ground and compromise a little.
Since the budget is your main limitation and quality is the most important thing to you, this is what I’d recommend:
- we’ll analyse the info you sent us and search for themes which could fit your vision
- based on the theme possibilities we will set up the structure, aesthetics and functionality of the store
- this will result in a functional store with all the main elements you need but it won’t look exactly as in your dreams. That’s why then we’ll evaluate the biggest pain points and decide where to focus our energy and time. In this third step we’ll design and develop for the most important sections of the website.
These are the things I estimate we’ll work on:
- Brand materials — logo, favicon, brand colors, etc.
- Graphics and animations (how many must be evaluated later on)
- Homepage design and unity — we will design within the limits of the theme we choose, but at the same time “break” those limits a little when needed to achieve the visual effect we want
- Subscription Flow — this is very important for many reasons, but these are the main ones:
1. It’s the heart of the business — it will guarantee you a healthy cashflow
2. It’s a bigger commitment for the customer compared with a one time purchase, so we need to do it as seamless as possible
The classic e-commerce experience (one time purchase) shouldn’t need so much tweaking, because Shopify Themes are prepared to handle it very well. We also don’t need to make those pages too complex, because the most important info will be displayed already in the homepage as you explained. This means, that we will sell on the homepage and simply convert in the product page. A minimalistic approach for this second step will work very well.
If we take this approach I believe we can achieve great results within your budget. Still, it may not be the perfect match to your initial vision, but let me be honest and say — it almost never is on the first launch. You see how the bigger players have in house designers and developers continuously improving their websites, because it’s never 100% perfect and there is always space for improvement.
The best approach to achieve a perfect match between your vision and the actual website is to first launch a viable and great solution within your possibilities. Once the business grows bigger and you’re able to comfortably invest more on it, you’ll be able to have 1.5x or 2x the current budget to have all the website designed according with your detailed expectations and pixel perfect developed.
Tell me what you think about all this and I look forward to discuss it with you more deeply. If you’d like, please book a call on my calendar so we can go through the details — http://calendly.com/davidjs
Wish you a nice day,
D.
I’m David. Shopify Expert. If you would like one hour free consultation to figure out together how I can help you, feel free to contact me:
- Book a call
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