Announcing The Shopify Commerce Awards — Celebrating 2017’s Best in Commerce Innovation

You’ve pulled it off. The project.

After many late nights and extra large coffees, you’ve launched the website, completed the app, or closed the doors on the greatest event of your life 🙌 — a true professional pride and joy.

So now what?

Don’t let the embers of a 🔥 project die without their proper due.

Today, we’re pleased to announce The Shopify Commerce Awards — our newest competition celebrating Shopify Partners, Developers, and Affiliates everywhere.

If you’ve recently wrapped up a commerce project that was unique, innovative, and pushed the boundaries of excellence, we want to hear from you! This is your opportunity to build recognition for your great work, and cement yourself as an industry leader.

This is your opportunity to build recognition for your great work, and cement yourself as an industry leader.

Read on to learn about our 16 new categories, expert judges, prizes (including VIP tickets to Shopify’s Unite), and how you can submit your project today.

Why the Commerce Awards?

An iteration on what was once called the Shopify Design Awards, we’ve broadened skillsets and widened our search in order to recognize the visionaries who are taking commerce to new heights, and redefining the way people sell online.

Why should you participate? Winning a Shopify Commerce Award will help you:

• Build brand value by more closely associating yourself with Shopify.
• Establish your business as a leader in your industry, among peers and clients alike.
• Get the recognition you and your team deserve for the excellent work you produce.
• Strengthen your portfolio, ultimately helping you win new contracts and clients.

This year, we’ll be reviewing submissions of work completed and/or launched between January 1, 2017 — December 31, 2017. We’ll be granting 16 awards across four major categories, including:

• Design
• UX & UI
• Apps & Development 
• Marketing & Branding

It’s important to note that you must be a Shopify Partner in order to apply for the competition, and that if you’re submitting any client work, you need permission from the merchant you worked with.

You might also like: Announcing the Winners of the 2016 Ecommerce Design Awards.

Categories

Have a Shopify commerce project you’re proud of? Take a look at our 16 new categories that cover all corners of the commerce industry.

Submit your own work or consider nominating a colleague. New this year, we’re allowing both Shopify Partners and merchants to nominate fellow commerce colleagues and creatives, whose work they think should be recognized for an award.

Submit your project to one of the categories below for a chance to win a VIP prize and industry recognition.

Design

Design is at the heart of everything we do, so it should be no surprise that design is one of our main categories this year. From a page’s aesthetic to its functionality, our expert judges will be on the lookout for the best designed pages 2017 has to offer.

Award categories

• Best Product Page
• Best Collection Page
• Best Home Page
• Best Custom Design with Slate

Judges

Cynthia Savard Saucier, Director of Design at Shopify

Outside of her work at Shopify, Cynthia is also the author of Tragic Design, Cynthia is passionate about human beings and their means of communication. She has always sought a deeper understanding of how people think, interact, and connect.

Jeffrey Zeldman, Founder of studio.zeldman

Jeffrey is the co-founder of the web design, front end, and user experience conference An Event Apart, as well as publisher of A List Apart Magazine and A Book Apart. Jeffrey has written two books, most notably the foundational web standards text, Designing With Web Standards.

UX & UI

The better it is, the less people notice it. User experience design and user interface design are crucial steps to happy users, more customers, and increased revenue. Typically not the stuff of design awards, this category truly focuses on celebrating those making the commerce experience better for everyone.

Award categories

• Best Animated Motion Graphic for UI
• Best Shopify Integration with WordPress
• Best Mobile Commerce Experience
• Best Storytelling Through UX

Judges

Val Head, Author of Designing Interface Animation

A web animation expert and author, Val has a talent for getting designers and developers alike excited about the power of animation. She’s the author of Designing Interface Animation and teaches CSS Animation online.

Vitaly Friedman, Editor-In-Chief of Smashing Magazine

Vitaly loves beautiful content. After working as a freelance designer and developer for six years, he co-founded Smashing Magazine, a leading online magazine dedicated to design and web development. Vitaly is the author, co-author, and editor of all Smashing books and currently works in the lovely city of Freiburg, Germany.

Marketing & Branding

Whether online or offline, marketing and branding can make or break today’s entrepreneur. How we communicate, educate, and interact with clients and users speaks volumes about the professionalism we bring to commerce.

Award categories

• Best Ecommerce Copywriting
• Best Ecommerce Course
• Best Offline Marketing Event
• Best Abandoned Cart Recovery Experience

Judges

Ezra Firestone, CEO of Smart Marketer

Ezra Firestone has been working in ecommerce for over a decade, and is thought by many to be one of the leading ecommerce experts in the world. He owns and operates one eight-figure and two seven-figure ecommerce businesses, and uses the insight he gains from these businesses to produce his courses.

Melissa Gonzalez, CEO of Lionesque Group

Melissa has become the go-to retail and pop-up architect for businesses looking to launch their company, test new markets, or insert their brand into strategic conversations. Beginning with the vision of the branded experience, Melissa guides clients throughout the entire lifecycle of the pop-up experience, and helps them re-imagine what’s possible in a brick-and-mortar space.

Apps & Development

Whether a third-party app is listed in the Shopify App Store, or custom built for private use, apps built by the partner ecosystem take merchant businesses to the next level. The way these apps are designed and operated are crucial to merchant success and deserve to be celebrated. 🎉

Award categories

• Best Store Experience Using Storefront API
• Best App Experience Using the Marketing Events API
• Best Store Experience Using Shopify Scripts
• Best App Design Using Polaris

Judges

Gavin Ballard, Founder of Disco

Gavin’s consultancy, Disco, helps businesses solve their Shopify problems, and increase their bottom line. He’s the author of the Mastering Shopify Themes course, as well as the popular Bootstrap for Shopify theme framework

Ellen Li, Product Designer at Shopify (Developer Experience)

Ellen works on the Partner Dashboard to simplify app development and analytics, and has helped make tools and resources (like Polaris!) to enrich app development for Shopify Partners. Outside of Shopify, Ellen enjoys building websites and tossing frisbees.

Prizes

Your hard-worked projects deserve a little industry love, appreciation, and some kudos, right? That’s why winners of a Shopify Commerce Award will get a VIP Shopify Unite experience (our annual partner and developer conference), and some special industry recognition. This includes:

• A ticket to Unite 2018
• An optional $1,000 USD towards travel expenses
• Two nights accommodation
• Front-row seats for Unite keynotes
• Winners dinner and award reception

In addition, we’ll shower our winners with industry recognition, including:

• Exclusive Shopify Commerce Awards trophy
• Coverage in notable industry blogs and online magazines

The Shopify Commerce Awards competition closes December 31, 2017 — be sure to get your commerce projects submitted today!

You might also like: How to Win the 2016 Ecommerce Design Awards - Part 2 with Verne Ho.

Celebrating you 🎉

We want to celebrate the exemplary work that you, our Shopify Partners, do for merchants and the commerce industry as a whole. Help us recognize the achievements and level of excellence this community has to offer!