Announcing the Shopify Partners Build A Business Competition

Shopify’s 5th Annual Build A Business Competition just launched – and this year, Shopify Partners have a larger role to play than ever before. We’re officially launching the Shopify Partners Build A Business Competition. If you win, you’ll take home $10,000 USD for your work customizing or creating a theme for a winning Build A Business merchant. Learn more about how to get in the running, and hear from one of last year's winners.

Shopify’s 5th Annual Build A Business Competition just launched – and this year, Shopify Partners have a larger role to play than ever before.

We’re officially launching the Shopify Partners Build A Business Competition, and the rules are simple: If you work with one of the five winning Shopify merchants, you’re a winner too.

You’ll take home $10,000 USD for your work customizing or creating a theme for that winning Build A Business merchant. Our hope is that you’ll use the money to continue to grow your stellar business – whether you purchase new laptops, or reinvest it into a new team member.

We all know that while an ecommerce company may have a stellar product and team, an equally important piece of the puzzle is having a beautiful and functional online store that allows customers to purchase products easily. Sometimes those shops also need help marketing their business, and our partners help with that too.

The work that Shopify Partners do significantly impacts the merchant’s ability to bring in sales. We thought it was only fair to honour our partners working behind the scenes.

Take a look at our Shopify Partner BAB Competition website for more details as well as our Terms & Conditions. In short, the competition launches on Oct. 1 2014 and you can sign up until March 31 2015. You can enter as many client shops as you like to increase your odds. If you help a client sell the most during a two-month period during the competition, you’ll both take home the prize.

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There are two easy ways to enter your clients into the Build A Business Competition:

1. For existing eligible stores (signed up after June 1 2014), enter their myshopify URL here.
2. For new stores, click the opt-in checkbox on the “Create Dev Shop” form.

Want to get your clients excited about this year’s Build A Business Competition? Share this video to inspire them:

Last year’s winners

When we first launched this blog, we interviewed one of last year’s winners – Jason Bowman at Freak Design – about the winning shop he worked with, and how he planned to spend his prize.

We also touched base with Jose Davila at Pixel Supply, for his work on last year’s winning shop MVMT Watches. Here’s what he shared with us.

How did you initially get in touch with the winning shop?

Jake from MVMT Watches got in touch with us through our website. By filling out our contact form we got his information and jumped at the opportunity immediately! Right from our first conversation, we knew we were in for a fun ride.

What sort of unique features did they include on their site?

The folks over at MVMT wanted us here at Pixel Supply to refresh their website to really match the formal and casual looks of their watches. Using MVMT’s already stellar photography, we created a UX design that complemented much of the minimalistic look and feel of their watches. Some features that they wanted included unique FAQ and "Our Story" pages, branded HTML order confirmation and account notification emails, and a very customer-first minded product page. All of this while keeping in tune with Out of the Sandbox's already stellar template design of Mobilia.

What was your favourite part about working with them?

Our favorite part was the challenge that MVMT Watches brought to Pixel Supply. Right from the start they let us know that they were gunning for the winning place so it was always great motivation and helped us stay just as driven as they were to help them reach their goal. Also, even though we were based in Miami, and they were based in California, there was never a time when this huge distance was an issue.

What was the most difficult obstacle you overcame while working on the shop?

The biggest challenge for us was time. Since MVMT joined Shopify with only a few months left in the competition, we were in crunch time to deliver MVMT’s new store design. We tackled this by making specific time slots in our project rotation for MVMT that helped us stay on track.

Are there any lessons you learned that you can share with other Shopify Partners?

Always stay in constant communication with your clients and make use of other Shopify Experts in any tasks you can’t handle.

If you could do one thing differently, what would it be?

Absolutely nothing. We set a goal between ourselves and MVMT to have a website that helped them win the competition – and we achieved that goal.

What is your favourite feature on their shop?

The “Help” tab that we designed for their product pages. It has all the essentials for a customer to get the customer service they may need to finish a purchase.

Were you aware they were a frontrunner in the competition?

Not really. The folks at MVMT let us know a couple of times that they were moving up in the rankings, but we had no idea it was as high as it was.

Any interesting anecdotes or fun facts about the shop you can share?

To be able to stay on track, we sought the help of another programmer specifically for this project. We ended up hiring him full time at our lovely offices in Miami. Besides MVMT, we were handling a lot of other projects and couldn’t risk having any delays!

What do you plan to do with your prize from the competition?

Get some shiny new iMacs for the team!