We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ronen Hirsch a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ronen, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Setting up a custom shop with Shopify is meant to be so easy and quick. Just create a Shopify account, choose a theme to install, and start adding your products and other content. Voila, your storefront is ready for customers!

But more often than not, you run into a problem. Even though Shopify is a fantastic e-commerce platform, the themes available to choose from have a variety of content blocks to add to your site, but each theme is different. And if there’s no option to add a certain layout or a particular functionality that your store needs, you might be forced into finding a workaround via a third-party app or custom code developed just for you. And both solutions come at a high cost.

qwiqode was born from this problem we discovered. Let’s give web designers and merchants an easier way to upgrade their site, saving them time and money.

We offer a variety of different types of “code snippets” in the form of sections that can be added to your existing theme to provide additional and more flexible ways than what your theme provides. They are easy to install, without needing to hire a developer.

There are different types of sliders/carousels to display products, collections and/ or testimonials. Different types of text banners and more. Some of these may already be part of existing Shopify themes, but most probably, are limited to certain features or styling options. We try to solve that by including a ton of settings giving our customers the freedom to achieve exactly what they want.

We’re setting out to create more and more of these sections so that there are a ton of options to improving Shopify stores while saving time and money for our customers.

Ronen, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I actually started my journey in high school where I was into computers and, since it was the 90’s I experienced the beginnings of the internet – back when there were dial-up modems to connect to online “bulletin boards” where people could connect.

Jumping ahead a few years, I studied Industrial Design in The Netherlands, learning how to design products and how to expand my creativity. During that time, I creating digital presentations that went alongside my work and found my passion for the 2d design and animation. After completing my studies, I created myself a website to showcase my portfolio, then for a couple of my friends and realized that I could actually make money doing that!

So I started Studio Umbrella. Since 2005, I’ve been running this web development and design business, creating websites for multiple industries and using various technologies to achieve the goals. With time, Shopify came along and I got into this e-commerce platform as well and continuously learned and improved my abilities.

Currently, Studio Umbrella is still very small.- it’s mainly just me and a developer that works for me. But I also collaborate with web designers and other developers when needed. We primarily focus on the development side of of the website but do definitely take on complete projects. We create mainly work with WordPress and Shopify platforms.

I have also started an online store selling flexible and highly customizable pre-built “section” templates. These “sections” are the building blocks of any page of a website. These sections are specifically built to work on Shopify e-commerce stores and help expand their capabilities. They’re easily installed with no need for a developer – saving both time, money and eliminating frustration for web designers and merchants who don’t know how to code.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Well, for Studio Umbrella, it’s a mix of SEO and word-of-mouth. SEO, plays a strong role where people are searching for web developers on Google. I’ve spent quite a bit of time writing blog posts so that people can find valueable information about how to improve their site, link building and updating the website so important pages can be quickly found in a search.

Word-of-mouth is the best source though because one happy client tells their friends and colleagues about the positive experience they had working with us and recommends us. This already brings the new potential client closer to closing a deal since they already have first-hand knowledge and confidence that we are serious, professional and easy to work with.

With qwiqode, it’s mainly advertising and SEO, as I mentioned.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

That people (my customers) value the final outcome and find that it (the website) is indeed unique. I love the fact that I can create something out of scratch which is both thought-out, user friendly and aesthetically pleasing. I hate just doing the same thing over and over again.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://studioumbrella.com and https://qwiqode.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/studio.umbrella/ and https://www.instagram.com/qwiqodeforshopify/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/web.umbrella and https://facebook.com/qwiqode
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/studioumbrella and https://www.linkedin.com/company/qwiqode-shopify-sections
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@qwiqodeshopifysections
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/qwiqodeforshopify/