By: Anastasia Filipoulos
Introduction
As a Shopify Expert partner, there is no doubt that there are many challenging aspects to working and growing in the web design and development industry. However, one aspect of overall growth that is often overlooked is building relationships within the Shopify Ecosystem network.
Leveraging the Shopify Partner Community
Effective engagement with the Shopify Partner community can also help improve your business’s visibility and attract more clients. In fact, the nature of the Shopify Partner program serves you better when you approach it with a spirit of exchange.
For this reason, today we will unveil how to successfully partner with Shopify for experts and how this can assist in your business growth.
Practical Tips for Starting a Two-Way Relationship with Shopify and How It Can Help Your Business Grow
In this article, we will talk with Shopify experts and partners and ask them how they approach successful two-way relationships with Shopify. They will reveal to us why it is important to bring the same professionalism and value to your role as a Shopify expert as you do to any client project.
In this article, you will learn:
– Practical tips for starting a two-way relationship with Shopify and how it can help you grow your business.
– What makes a strong Shopify Expert profile and how you can attract more clients.
– Best practices for marketing yourself as a Shopify Expert.
The Shopify Partner Community
Reis Forner, Partnership Officer at Shopify, says that the foundation of building a strong relationship with Shopify and the broader partner network has less to do with money and more to do with engaging with the partner and merchant community, finding meaningful ways to connect and provide value.
There are four different ways you can easily engage with the Shopify community:
1. Create Content
Creating and contributing valuable content is at the heart of many vibrant online communities, and the Shopify Partner network is no exception. Creating educational content that benefits other experts, partners, or merchants not only helps you distinguish yourself as an expert in your field, but also serves as a great way to promote your services authentically.
Johnny Dalgleish, a Shopify Expert from the 30acres digital agency, says it’s all about being productive.
Contributing to the community in this way not only allows you to share the valuable lessons you’ve learned but also gives you the opportunity to meet and work with others in the partner network (including Shopify team members who manage marketing efforts and blogs). These relationships and business connections are what make the Shopify community vibrant and strong.
You can write content for your own site or contribute to a third-party blog that you admire. As a Shopify partner, you can pitch to contribute to our web design and development blog. Please check out the guidelines here.
Important tip: If you are serious about pitching a third-party blog, make sure to carefully read their guidelines and provide exactly what they request. Check their audience and the types of content they are looking for and how they want proposals to be organized. If they don’t have guidelines, read some of the content on their site (which you should do regardless) – it will give you plenty of ideas about the editor’s expectations.
2. Engage Online
Shopify has an active community of merchants and partners. There are many forums where merchants ask questions and partners respond to showcase their expertise and skills.
Johnny, a Shopify Expert, says that participating in online communities like forums will help you stay informed about customer needs, allowing you to serve them better.
Engaging in forum discussions means you provide valuable and accurate information to the community, helping merchants and partners succeed.
Participation
Online also means contributing to a community that can give back when you need help or an answer to an important question.
How to get started: All Shopify partners can join the Shopify Community forums to collaborate, ask questions, and develop partnerships.
Some other places you can start include:
– The Shopify Merchant Slack channel by TJ Mapes, eCommTalk.
– The Shopify Entrepreneurs group by Shopify expert Jonathan Kennedy.
– The Shopify Community forums.
Whichever forum you decide to join, engage and respond to a variety of merchant (or even partner) questions.
Important tip: Engaging online often means crafting educational answers and compiling them into various formats, such as blog articles, forum posts, books, etc. This type of content is great for improving your own skills, but it can also be an internal resource for employee training.
3. Get Real Time
It’s simple – the more face-to-face time you can spend with customers, competitors, partners, and Shopify team members, the better. Many partners host Shopify Meetups in major cities, which is a great way to meet potential customers, partners, and other collaborators.
How it helps your business: Collaborative relationships often form from meetups, which can also help you build reciprocal partnerships with other partners who complement your services and vice versa.
Gavin Ballard, a Shopify Plus partner at Disco, says that actively participating in real events has opened up opportunities for him with clients.
Gavin adds: “I think the thing that many people don’t appreciate is that ‘real networking’ – not the bad kind where you throw your business card at anyone who’ll take it and sell it, but the long-term kind that comes from delivering value over a long period of time.”
Gavin noted that he recently landed a major project with a client he first met over a year ago when he was looking for speakers for the first Shopify Meetup in Melbourne.
How the community benefits: Events that bring the environment together in real life add value and energy to the community. This means more Shopify partners benefit from sharing skills and common business insights at events, often creating networking opportunities that can lead to amazing things, like the six partnerships that resulted from Shopify Unite.
How to get started: Attending meetups in your area is a good place to start, but hosting meetups (either alone or with the help of another partner) is a great way to connect more deeply with the internal and external Shopify community. Meetups not only let you practice your presentation skills but also make your face recognizable in your local community and help you establish yourself as a leading business partner regionally.
Shopify offers various in-person events throughout the year that can help you contribute more to the community. Recently, the annual Shopify Partner and Developer Conferences concluded, but you can watch the keynotes if you missed them. “A Day With Shopify” is a series of international events aimed at connecting Shopify partners. It is scheduled to kick off later this year in five cities around the world and is looking for speakers. “Shop Class” is a series of workshops and events currently traveling across Canada. While it focuses on merchants, this series of events is a great opportunity to meet potential clients and provide assistance, advice, and knowledge in person. Sometimes there are opportunities to speak as well.
Gavin adds that speaking at a Shopify event, whether big or small, keeps you informed about what’s happening on the platform, but it also gives you a bigger strategic advantage. Speaking at Shopify events can help you stay informed about what’s going on with the platform.
He says
Gavin: “For example, we were invited to speak at a Shopify meeting in Stockholm, which allowed us to learn that the Klarna integration for Shopify will officially launch in Sweden, making promotion and working with Shopify in Scandinavia much more attractive,” explains Gavin.
You can also check out this article on applying best practices for expert profiles to gain more business through your profile.
4. Collaborating with Other Shopify Partners and Experts
Whether it’s at a live event or through an online forum, building relationships with trusted agencies or fellow business individuals often leads to mutually beneficial collaborative business relationships.
How it helps your business: It’s useful to know talented web designers and developers whose services complement your own, as it leaves you someone to refer clients to when the work required is outside your services.
Establishing strong relationships with industry professionals who offer similar services to your own can also benefit you, as you can refer clients to a reliable agency or freelancer when it’s not possible to take on a new client due to workload or timing.
Regardless, having other partners or experts to consult with, share pain points, or even just to vent can make your career and business richer and healthier.
How the community benefits: Galen King from Lucid, based in New York and New Zealand, points out that collaborating with other partners has helped him discover new and exciting opportunities.
Galen explains: “We find that our expertise and experience are becoming increasingly sought after – especially by newer partners. As the environment grows, there are more agencies selling Shopify to their clients, but they may lack the expertise and capability within their teams to deliver customizations and build more advanced applications.”
This means that Lucid gets more work from other partners who need support, but it also helps ensure that smaller partners who have not yet built the capability or skills within their own teams are able to handle larger and more complex projects.
Galen adds: “With increased collaboration on bigger and more advanced projects, this also evolves the connections we make in the wider environment, opening doors to fun and interesting collaborations.”
How to get started: Follow any of the tips mentioned above: attend a meeting, write some content that catches the attention of potential partners, or answer tough questions in the partners’ forum. Galen even suggests approaching those you admire in the community, as partners are usually open to communication. At its core, collaboration is about knowing and developing a community relationship, so gather your experiences and apply them! What you can do outside the community
5. Creating an Outstanding Expert Profile
The expert profile is the page that exists within the Shopify Experts marketplace. It’s the façade of your company and brand within Shopify. When merchants look for a recommended service provider from Shopify, this is the page they will find.
How it helps your business: Your expert profile indicates to those who have already purchased the platform that you as a company have experience using the Shopify platform and can help them get the most out of it.
Lance O’Grady from the Pocket Square digital agency explains: “We’ve worked on the Shopify platform for several years now, and we’ve managed to become Shopify Plus partners. In our market (New Zealand and Australia), that has made a significant difference for us.”
How the community benefits: An outstanding expert profile primarily benefits merchants since it means they can understand who you are and what kind of value you provide. The long-term benefit is that happy clients provide referrals, meaning if a merchant finds the experts marketplace easy to navigate and finds the right partner, they are more likely to recommend the marketplace to others, leading to more business for everyone.
Galen adds
According to Shopify’s advice, distinguishing yourself from others is vital for attracting customers, but it also helps ensure that the right types of customers (i.e., high-value customers) come to you.
How to get started: You should consider your expert profile as an extension of your website. You should put the same professional touch into your expert profile that you put into your business’s online presence. This means including the basics such as:
– Recent customer testimonials.
– High-resolution/quality images.
– Detailed examples of previous work.
It’s also important to note that the expert marketplace evaluates experts based on three key factors:
– The number of testimonials added, and how recent they are.
– The number of development stores launched through your partner dashboard, and how recent they are.
– How quickly you respond to inquiries through your dashboard.
Lance ensures that Pocket Square’s company profile is strong by including an overview of the services offered, along with detailed examples of their quality work and past client projects. The goal is to provide an introduction to potential clients about what Pocket Square does.
Lance adds, “We like to ensure we include key information that makes our agency different, including our specialties and key clients”.
It is also important to respond to all inquiries, even if they are not suitable for you. This not only helps elevate the professionalism of the entire marketplace, but it will also help you rank higher within it, which naturally assists in attracting better-quality clients. Additionally, you never know what might happen when you respond professionally and politely – it may not be suitable now, but it could be in the future.
Would you like to learn more about best practices for the expert marketplace? Check out this article on how to get more business through your expert profile.
6. Marketing Yourself Using the Shopify Expert Badge
Marketing yourself as a Shopify expert is essential for maintaining a two-way relationship with Shopify.
Whether it’s by declaring your status as a Shopify expert in the text of your personal site, using Shopify badges on your social media, or creating valuable blog content that sets you apart as an expert, being a Shopify expert should be no secret to potential clients.
How it helps your business: One of the most effective ways to market yourself as a Shopify expert is to include a landing page on your personal site to promote any Shopify development services you offer. Many Shopify partners use this method, and while it helps market your services to potential clients, it can also benefit your business in several other ways. It can help you:
– Educate and upgrade your current clients.
– Add content to your portfolio.
– Establish your thought leadership within the Shopify community.
– Showcase your expertise to the world.
– Increase traffic and acquire new clients.
Check out Simon Heaton’s article, Content Marketing Lead at Shopify, about the benefits of a Shopify landing page and how to create one for complete details.
Distinction is very important for attracting customers, but it also helps ensure that the right types of customers (i.e., high-value customers) come to you.
How to get started: If you are working on marketing yourself as a Shopify expert using a custom landing page, be sure to include high-level details about Shopify in relation to your services offering, along with examples of current Shopify work and past client models. The goal is to give potential clients an introduction to what Pocket Square offers.
Bo adds that it is also important to take advantage of the strong SEO benefits of a custom Shopify services page. When this page is linked to your expert profile in the Shopify expert marketplace, the connection between the content on both pages will be cohesive and help SEO flow.
In addition…
To that end, Bo says that incorporating specific case studies for Shopify in response to common customer requests is very valuable.
Bo explains: “It gives clients reassurance that you will be able to handle their more specialized requests; it’s also an easy-to-use tool, as it can showcase the data and achievements you want to promote to clients.”
Do you also want to know more about best practices for writing case studies in web design? Check out this article on how to write a web design case study that attracts new clients.
Don’t think about what Shopify can do for you…
It may seem counterintuitive, but the benefits of contributing to the Shopify Partner ecosystem will pay off for you, helping you build a healthy business that can stand the test of time.
Did we forget something? Let us know how you like to engage with the Shopify Partner community in the comments section below!
Source: https://www.shopify.com/partners/blog/becoming-a-shopify-expert-and-accessing-the-partner-ecosystem
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