Cost-Effective Agency Fees
An increased cost of living, pushed up by 2023’s runaway inflation, combined with higher wages and costs of running an agency all contribute to higher prices when it comes to working with an agency in the USA. This means that in general, American brands will find that UK agencies charge less money for the same work.
So if cost is not really a factor, what are the other elements to consider for an American business hiring a UK-based agency?
Time Difference
We’ve found that working in different time zones doesn’t have to be a disadvantage at all - it fact, it can work to Well, there’s the time difference, but we’ve found that with a bit of planning you can make this work to both parties’ advantage.
A UK-based ecommerce agency is a full working day ahead of an ecommerce business based on the west coast of America. Partnering with an agency that can communicate with you towards the end of their UK working day but at the beginning of yours, means you’ll have an ecommerce team effectively working for you overnight. This lets you feed back on their output the next morning, creating an efficient delivery and feedback cycle.
If something is needed out of normal operating hours, most agencies will have processes to manage out of hours emergencies. However, critical issues crop up far less frequently than you might expect. This is especially true of Shopify as it’s such a reliable and robust platform. In general, if your Shopify site is down, the issue has to be dealt with by Shopify directly. (This is also extremely rare.)
When it comes to launching sites or making any changes, we don’t do this towards the end of the day or prior to the weekend. This is another benefit of having a business working for you in another time zone - we can deliver improvements outside of your peak trading hours, and monitor and test those changes while most of your customers are asleep.
International Trade Benefits
Cross-border trade online is the norm these days, with customers able to discover and buy products from around the world with ease.
The UK can be a superb jumping off point for US-based ecommerce businesses. Not only will support across time zones support your efforts to expand into Europe, the collective experience of a UK-based agency team means you have the expertise on hand to help launch you into new territories.
Our team of Shopify experts use their expertise in international ecommerce to help businesses in the USA begin exporting to new markets, including Europe and APAC.
So if you’re a US-based brand looking for a Shopify agency to support your ecommerce efforts, get in touch for a chat with one of our UK team to see how we could help.
