eCommerce Team Building: When to consider team augmentation for your Shopify store

Timing and alignment to strategy is always essential for the introduction of a new business process and this is no different for Shopify team augmentation. There are scenarios when team augmentation will make sense and feels right, and others where you can see challenges internally and potential disruption, so this is what we explore below.

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Let’s look at an example where team augmentation for Shopify is questionable and timing is essential. You run a Shopify store to sell your handmade jewellery. You are the sole employee and currently have a range of 20 products you sell. You’re quite happy running this as a side hustle and managing the store yourself is working because the order volume is very manageable.

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In this instance, hiring an external Shopify team member isn’t viable or warranted, especially if you have no real strategy for growth in place. However, if you had a strategy which had plans to expand your product range and concentrate on growing categories? 

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Timing now becomes important and because your goals have changed, working with a flexibly hired Shopify team could become a possibility and make a lot of sense. This is why timing and strategy is vital and it’s important to understand when team augmentation is suitable.

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Four situations where team augmentation for Shopify works

As discussed above, team augmentation for Shopify isn’t always appropriate. The timing has to be right and we’ve listed some examples below.

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If your business is in a growth stage

It’s especially difficult to concentrate on growing your business while also managing every aspect of its day-to-day running of your Shopify store(s). There simply isn’t enough time and trying to spread yourself too thin is where you get stuck not being able to implement what you know has to be done.

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If you want to push your business to the next level and enter a growth stage, team augmentation for Shopify could be perfect if you do not need a full time hire.

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For example, perhaps you have a team of staff (including yourself) who all chip in and help maintain your eCommerce store. However, this is not their primary role and they ultimately end up splitting their time and efficiency.

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In this scenario, trying to grow your business with team members who already have their workload split would be difficult. However, if you hired Shopify experience as required to give back time, they could concentrate fully on their original roles.

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Your ecommerce manager could concentrate fully on optimising the store and experience for better conversion, while your marketing team can focus on content generation to support brand and product. Shopify team augmentation makes growth a reality and allows your staff to concentrate on what they were hired to do and ultimately would want to be doing.

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During peak demand periods

As we all know with eCommerce trade, you experience peaks and troughs in demand for your internal resources to execute the marketing strategy. This is of course assuming you are a large enough retailer to have teams but regardless of size the ability to operate lean and ramp up only when needed is a significant advantage to trading profitably.

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Often stores will be set up for promotions and scheduled to be live and once live will potentially stay like that for days where they will not be as much daily work required. This is when you can have external resource support that are handling the content loading, product creation or promotional set up when you need it and in lower demand times they are not required.

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While our experienced eCommerce team take care of your day to day store, you could now have the time to monitor performance, pivot if required and create new marketing strategies or seasonal product variants to fully capitalise on the situation.

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Specific projects or product launches

Often times in business, your attention has to be diverted to specific projects, examples include:

• New product launches.
• Brand launches.
• Entering new international markets.
• Physical retail requirements.

During these projects, you often need staff to again move away from their traditional roles and help out in other areas. As a result, simple management processes can fall by the wayside including online store management.

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These are again prime times when team augmentation for Shopify could be perfect. The benefit here is in using an experienced team ensures your Shopify store continues to run efficiently during these times of upheaval and change. Not only that, but you will find that the dedicated team can improve your store in alignment with such things as new product launches or entering new business markets under your strategy and instruction.

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During times of staff hiring challenges

Staffing difficulties can be the plague of businesses. A high staff turnover or unexpected employment vacancies can cause your business to stagnate and daily operations such as online store management to suffer. This can also put additional pressure on the current team and negatively impact culture and lead to mistakes being made or worse losing good team members and further impacting trading performance.

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If you are struggling to find staff, or want to expand your office, hiring individuals or a small experienced team in eCommerce and all things Shopify is a great option to at least gain or maintain momentum. They can manage your day to day store tasks or only specific projects which gives you time to solve your staffing issues. In time, you may also find that missing staff don’t need to be replaced due to the efficiency and flexibility of the  team and you can hire in other more valuable areas.

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Timing is key to team augmentation but the benefits are there.

As with any business decision, you shouldn’t jump into  team augmentation blindly. This process has numerous benefits, but there are still ideal times for its implementation. The advantage is having a relationship with a business like Bolster Commerce and knowing that should the time arrive you need the help, you have it.

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