How to hire a Shopify Expert from your Admin Panel

what's up? everyone edwin here, from resolutions design, back at it again. it's been a while, actually, uh. so, for those of you guys that have been antikipating for the uh, for my latest videos, we got something very nice coming up very soon. so, for those who are new, please don't forget to turn on that notification. uh, there's something very, very good coming up, uh, in the next few weeks or days, rather, and let's just get right to it. so what are we toking about today? what we're toking about is how do we hire a shopify expert from within your shopify store? uh, i'm sure a lot of you guys. when you build your website, eventually, you guys eventually get stuck. eventually. i said that too many times and sometimes you just need help. you need a few tweaks, you need to adjust something, or you know you put stuff together or even follow my tutorials, whatever the case may be, and you feel like, hey, you know what? life is just too complicated right now. i got a family, i got a job, i got this, i got that. i really want to launch my store, but i'm not going fast enough or i don't feel like my website looks nice enough in order for me to compete against the saturated market that exists out there. so you're probably watching this video for that, and that's the purpose of this tutorial. the only thing that i ask for is just a demolish like. really just hit it hard with your keyboard or something. go with your mouse and hit that blue like button super hard and the subscribe button and, uh, i'll be your guide to always train you on anything related to shopify. okay, so this is pretty simple, but this is just in case if you don't know how to do this. so go ahead and log in into your shopify store. you're going to notike that you're in the back end here and what you're going to do is that you're going to look for your name on the upper right hand corner. so you see, right here, here we go. i'm going to click on this and from here, this drag down button, we're going to notike that we have a button that says hire a shopify expert. so we're going to go ahead and click on that and next, you know, we might get sent to like: um, how do you call it? a questionnaire, rather, connect you into the world of shopify expert. this is what it looks like. let me go ahead and zoom in here real quick. so make sure that all of you guys can see all of this. okay, all right. so basically, again, the purpose of this is so that you could hire someone for many different reasons. it doesn't just have to be specifically for the web dev. but here we go. we have this, uh, active, or we can create a job. you might have it active. so these are any jobs that are open, closed, archived, whatever, but you could go ahead and create a job. so click on this one right here and you could see hire shopify expert and look at all the different services. let me go ahead and try to explain what a lot of this stuff means, but, mind you, shopify is always improving this page. so if you're looking at this at a later date and you see something just a bit different, just remember that shopify is always updating this interface to make sure that they give you the best experience so that you can find the right person for you. okay, so whoever that could help you, right? okay, so here we go. what types of services from very high end? what are we looking for? are you looking for marketing and sales, a store set up, development and troubleshooting, visual and branding, content writing, expert advice? this is my opinion about this thing here. i'll be very honest with you, listen. so i feel that the way that this list here- obviously it's not alphabetikal order- shopify felt that marketing and sales should be the first thing, because a lot of people have trouble with that, right, uh? but in all honesty, based on a lot of people who come into the shopify expert marketplace, i don't think that marketing and sales is the number one, primary reason as to why people come here. i feel that store setup, or starting from the beginning, is one of the most highest requests that people come into this, uh, into the site. so we're gonna click on here. i'm not gonna dive into what i believe, right? so let's just go into store setup. to give you an example as to what this could look like, and from here you notike that you have different options to choose from. uh, the store builder redesign: are you migrating from another platform over to shopify? do you need help with product and collection setup? is there something like a theme customization that you need, perhaps some custom visual elements such as buttons, banners and visual effects? store setting: back-end configuration. so this has to do with everything on the back end. um, you know, i also have videos about how to set up your shipping. so if you haven't seen that video, go ahead and check it out. guys, um, payment settings, custom urls, etc. that's what this is. do you need help with pos integration? pos is that, uh, you know, if you have a brick and mortar store and you want to charge people, uh, because you have an event or something like that, that's what a pos system? okay, and then set up and design guidance. so i'm guessing, right here, this store setup and design guidance. this is more like, just, you know, very simple, maybe a consultation or something of that sort. but i'll tell you what a lot of people choose. so a lot of people choose this right here: store build or redesign. a lot of people choose this. so once they choose this here comes into the um, the other aspect of you know the page for setting this whole thing up. sorry, all right. so what type of solution are you looking for? do you want a basic store setup with minimum theme tweaks or do you want a full custom setup which includes theme customizations, visual designs and non-standard features? uh, do you want to allow people to buy products from an existing website or blog? all right. so this right here. i you know, at this point of the video, i mentioned to the team at shopify that this confuses a lot of people. uh, we get a lot of inquiries from the shopify expert marketplace and you'll be surprised how many people click on this without really understanding what they're clicking. and then they put their their issue. they say, look, i'm looking for someone to build me something x, y, z, all that stuff right, but they don't realize what it is that they're asking. right, right here. the real way to interpret this is: it's a full custom setup. what this means is that it's something built from scratch, something that does not look like a theme, right, even though it says including theme customizations. be very honest with you: including theme customizations, personally, to me, is a basic store setup with theme tweaks. that's what it is, because it's a theme, right. you're, you're setting up a basic store setup but then you're altering it with theme tweaks. but a full custom setup. that's when you want everything from scratch. that's when you're just like: look, let's go to the drawing board. i want my website to look nothing like the typical shopify themes that are out there. uh, how many of you guys listening to this video, watching this video? how many of you guys in the comments express what you think about this? like that, those shopify themes that you see, sometimes they all kind of look the same. if you feel that a lot of those themes look the same, please let me know down in the comments: what is it about those themes in shopify that makes you feel that they all look the same? because at times i do agree with you if you feel that way and that's why we definitely favor fully custom setups. so let me know what you think about that. or are you one of those that thinks, hey, it doesn't matter if it's a shopify theme or custom setup, as long as it's a good looking store really doesn't matter to me? let me know down in the comments on that as how you feel. but anyways, you would select one of these, right? uh, what store setup tasks do you need? done? right, and a lot of people they just look at this and they're like everything, i need the whole thing. right, there should be a button that says i need everything, or a checkbox, rather than you clic.

Why and How to Hire Shopify Experts, Developers or Agencies

hello everyone. are you running a business on Shopify and looking for Shopify experts? if you're looking to hire a Shopify expert, developer or freelancer, in this video I will give some tips to find the right person for your project. one: Define your needs. before you start your search for a Shopify experts, it's important to take some time to think about your specific needs. what exactly do you need help with? are you looking for someone to build a custom theme or create a custom app? do you need someone to help with a setup and configuration of your store, or are you simply looking for someone to provide ongoing maintenance and support? once you've identified your needs, you'll be in a better position to find the right person for the job. two: consider your budgets. how much are you willing to spend on a Shopify expert? this will be a key factor in determining who you're able to hire. Shopify experts can charge anywhere from thirty dollars to two hundred dollars per hour, so it's important to have a budget in mind before starting your search. three: check out job boards. there are a number of job boards that list Shopify expert jobs, including upwork, Fiverr, freelancer, people per hour and Shop a buffet. I prefer to work with an agency like shop of a vape, because they are more reliable, trustworthy and produce higher quality work than an independent freelancer shop a buffet. a Shopify service provider agency helped more than 10 000 online stores to build their successful Shopify store. they have 72 hours of full store setup, regular maintenance services and other development services. 4. post a job on shopify's Expert Marketplace. Shopify has an expert marketplace where businesses can post jobs and find Shopify experts to work with. this is a great option if you're looking for someone with specific Shopify expertise. 5. ask for referrals. if you know someone who has worked with a Shopify expert in the past, ask for a referral. this can be a great way to find a qualified candidate for your project. 6. conduct interviews. once you've compiled a list of potential candidates, it's time to start conducting interviews. during the interview process, be sure to ask each candidate about their experience with Shopify, as well as their availability and rates. this will help you narrow down your list to the candidate that's the best fit for your needs. 7. make your hire. after conducting interviews and reviewing proposals, it's time to make your final decision and hire a Shopify expert. once you've made your hire, be sure to provide clear instructions and expectations for the project. this will help ensure that your expert is able to deliver the results you're looking for. hiring a Shopify expert can be a great way to get help with building and managing your online store. when looking to hire someone with expert level skills in Shopify, there are a few key qualities you should look for. extensive experience with Shopify: the ideal candidate will have significant experience working with Shopify, both in terms of building and managing stores. an understanding of your business: the ideal candidate will take the time to understand your business goals and objectives. they should be able to provide insights and recommendations that will help you achieve your goals. a strong portfolio: the ideal candidate will have a strong portfolio of previous work, which will give you an idea of their skills and abilities. clear communication: the ideal candidate will be clear and concise in their communication. they should be able to explain complex Concepts in a way that's easy to understand. a positive attitude: the ideal candidate will have a positive attitude and be a pleasure to work with. they should be proactive and willing to go the extra mile to get the job done. flexible availability: the ideal candidate will be available when you need them. and flexible in terms of their schedule. affordable rates: the ideal candidate will offer competitive rates that fit within your budget. when looking for a Shopify expert, these are the qualities you should keep in mind. by finding a candidate that possesses these qualities, you'll be in a good position to get the results you're looking for. there are many benefits to working with the Shopify experts, including the ability to focus on other aspects of your business. when you have someone working on your store, it frees up your time to focus on other aspects of your business. increased sales: a well-designed and managed store can lead to increased sales. improved customer satisfaction: a well-run store can lead to improved customer satisfaction. a Competitive Edge: a well-designed store can give you a Competitive Edge over other businesses in your industry. these are just a few of the benefits you can enjoy by working with a Shopify expert. when you partner with the right person, they can help you take your business to the next level. there are pros and cons to both hiring a freelancer and an agency. when deciding which is right for you, it's important to consider your needs and budgets. hiring A freelancer is often the more affordable option, as they typically charge lower rates and agencies. however, Freelancers may not have the same amount of expertise or experience as an agency if they are incapacitated by sickness or any other cause, in the middle of your project you could be in trouble. by hiring an agency, you can be confident that they have the experience and expertise to get the job done right. additionally, agencies typically have a team of people working on your project, which can lead to faster results. ultimately, the decision of whether to hire a freelancer or an agency depends on your needs and budget. by carefully considering these factors, you'll be in a better position to make the right decision for your business. I hope this video will help you to hire Shopify experts, developers or Freelancers for your neck Shopify projects.

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Why Hire a Shopify Expert

hi, this is kevin king with pinehurst websites, and today i'm going to tok about Shopify experts and what they can do for you. so I just did a google search here and you've got Shopify experts and you can see the site links on Google. you've got your setup experts, your marketers, your designers, your developers. those are the most popular ones. but if you go into experts on Shopify, you can pick your category or you can just browse right here under each category. so you've even got photographers that can help you with images, IMO under setup experts and marketers. and I have a retail store. I also have three Shopify websites and one of them is for retail ones, for wholesale ones, for my web business, painters websites- so I've been selling on Amazon and eBay for a number of years, as well as our own website, and Shopify is by far the simplest platform to work on. but there are things that can be optimized within Shopify to really give you a boost in traffic and to help you integrate all your different sales channels. so having an expert can help you define the best tools for marketing. also to find the best ways to set up your products so that they're optimized for SEO, for example. if we were to do a search on a coral starfish bracelet. I just did a search in Google and you would want to come up on the front page. so you would want something where your products from your website- this is our retail website- will come up on the front page under the image search, for instance, and that's part of it is that it is optimized with all the the right tags that you want within Shopify. Shopify does a lot of it for you, but there's a small learning curve. it's certainly easier than any other platform to learn, but I think with expert guidance, it can really speed you along the path. also, you know one of the things. as far as SEO goes, I think it's important how you structure your blog. that's one of the best ways to be found within a web search. we've got some buy buttons on some of our items within our blogs and it just helps you to optimize your site much quicker by having a little bit of expert guidance. all of the information is out there and can be found, but knowing what to do, what's necessary to do on your website, what you need to look at, that's where an expert can speed you up, whether it's a marketing or designing your site or choosing the correct theme that is really optimized for search. not all themes in Shopify are created equal, so choosing the correct theme from the theme store can really give you a boost in SEO as well. also, structuring and choosing the right tools or apps that you want to incorporate into your store. an expert can help you with that as well, because there are a lot of apps to choose from and you have to find one that suits your partikular market. so those are some of the things that an expert can do for you, and I recommend that if you do need help with an expert, go through. check out their profile, check out the testimonials and find out what that expert can do for you. check out their website. on my website, as an added benefit, I also have helpful links for Shopify as well as my reviews on sites that I've done, and also I have a very helpful thing for Shopify. these are tutorials. a lot of them are video tutorials, and I also have an index so that you can find exactly what you're looking for. and these are tutorials that oftentimes I've done for my customers, and I'll create a video so they'll go back and they can refer to something, but I have that available to everyone so they can go through and do simple things on their website, like if you want to add a map to your website, for instance, or if you want to know how to do drop-down menus or smart collections on your websites. I have tutorials, I have artikles on SEO and all things that can help you, but you can definitely speed up the process by going through and finding the right expert for you. so check out Shopify experts. you can also check out pinehearst websites, because we are Shopify expert. thanks for tuning in to pinehearst websites. hope this was helpful for you.

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Working Remotely - A Shopify Experts How To Guide

hey guys, Jody, here I'm gonna go over a couple of things that I have learned over the last couple years of working remotely. I feel that, since, now that we're in a time in the world where everybody is being quarantined and kept in their own homes, I think there's a couple of useful tips that I can show you that will really help your your day to day, your day to day operations with when it comes to your business and what you're looking to do. these are a couple apps that we've used inside my company for a long time, and they have really really come a long way since we first started. so let's hop over the screen. I'm going to show you a couple of them. the first one that I want to show you is crisp. so crisp is an AI base tool, and this AI base tool is actually a noise cancellation tool. so when you are on zoom' call or you're on a Skype call and maybe there is noise in the background, they use adaptive AI in order to suppress of the unwanted sounds and amplify your voice. so we've used this a bunch of times in busy coffee shops when there's construction going on outside. it's a super easy app to to install and you basically go to your dashboard. now let me show you this here: on your dashboard it installs up at the toss, up at the top, and you have you loaded up. you basically save the speaker that your using, the microphone that you're using, and then you turn it on and it is incredible on how much it can suppress noise. so you, if you have dogs barking or you have kids playing in the background, you can continue to do your job without having any distractions on the line, because we all know what it's like to have distractions on the line. alright, let's tok about number two. number two on this list is zoom. now, assume has come a long way. our video conferencing, I should say, has been around for a long time, but zoom was the first company to actually get it right. so zoom allows you to do all sorts of really cool things. if you have a zoom, let me pull one up here for you. if you have, if you've never used in before, you basically get an app that you install in on your computer. you have access to an app on your phone. people have dialing numbers so they can call in from anywhere around the country and it's very easy to build up a virtual meaning that you can have face-to-face contact. ever since Microsoft bought Skype, Skype used to be the standard that we used, but they messed around with it too much and it ended up not being a really great, reliable tool. so we stopped using Skype and we move it over zoom and we haven't looked back. it's our morning, meaning we do our morning All Hands meeting in a zoom conference call. we tend to do audio only sometimes. we will do video if everybody is set up and going, but a lot of times when people are working from home, they let the personal hygiene stuff slide a little bit, so that means that they may not want to be seen on camera. all right, the next big app that I have to show you guys is trip mode. so if we come over to my computer here, trip mode shows up in the top right hand corner as a little train. what it allows you to do is, once you turn it on, you can select which programs are actually accessing internet. now, if you're someone who travels a lot and you're used to tethering and using data packages, this app will save your butt, because sometimes you can get Dropbox, which means that when you turn on your internet and you're tethering and maybe you don't have your Dropbox paused and someone has shared a huge file with you. all of a sudden, you get to a point where your data is completely used up and you don't know understand why trip mode saves this problem. trouble is also super useful when it comes to trying to limit the amount of bandwidth other programs are using. so if you're on a limited bandwidth situation where you don't have enough pipe in order to push your video signal through- and it might be because Dropbox is deciding to synchronize in the background- you can turn on trip mode. you can block all of the services that you are using, except the ones that you want to be accessing the Internet, and you can make use of that entire pipe, making the communication a lot better. I mean, trip mode is something that I use all the time. I use it more than I thought I would when I first got it. when I first got it, I thought I would only use it for tethering. turns out I actually use it in my day to day work when it's about trying to get video conferencing to work the way I wanted it. so trip mode, really, really great app. next, let's take a moment and tok about the difference in Wi-Fi. now, this isn't really an app, but this is something that I thought would be really helpful to kind of explain to you the difference between a 5g wireless connection and a 2.5 g wireless connection. so when you're working at home, you might have a router that probably has two connections and you may not know what that, what the difference is between 5g and 2.5 to you. a lot of people really think that I mean 5g sounds like it's a bigger number so it should move more data, which is true. but the drawback to 5gv is because it's millimeter wave you, it doesn't go through as many walls. so say, for example, you're working from home, it's a beautiful sunny day and you want to go out on the patio and start using your wife Remote Wi-Fi out there. you might be better off connecting to the 2.5 g version, because 2.5 g goes through walls much better than 5g does. I know that I personally have a garage downstairs where I like to go and put on YouTube videos when I'm working on them on my motorcycle or when I'm trying to do workouts, and I can't even get my 5g signal through one floor of a building. the 2.5 g, however, does make it through. now be aware that when you're running 2.5 g, you are going to be on lower bandwidth. it doesn't push as much bandwidth through. it can barely handle video. so you know, if the option is available for you to go 5g- and most of the time I think like it's a good idea to be line-of-sight to the router- definitely go with 5g. however, if you have to go through walls and you're in a different part of the room, go with the two-and-a-half G. it'll definitely give you more flexibility. all right, now let's tok about equipment that I use. a noise pair of noise cancelling headphones have done magic for my personal health as well as my ability to concentrate at home. so I have a pair of quite soft Bose headsets. these are noise canceling. they auto shut off, which is really, really important, especially when working at home and you could get distracted. I find that the auto shut off is a huge feature for me, especially when someone calls or I take them off and I get distracted. it really a to save the battery and I don't go and put them on and go. oh, my goodness, oh, they're now dead and now they're not useful for me. so I sometimes actually even wear these noise-canceling headphones when I don't even have a, when I don't even have any music playing or any podcasts on. I just like the idea of them drowning out all of the other noises that are around me, like things that show up that you don't necessarily notike, like outdoor noise, noise from heaters, noise from refrigerators, all the stuff that happens inside a home that, when it's quiet and you're focused, can actually drive you a little crazy. alright, let's take a minute and tok a little bit about software. so for my team and what we use, slack is essential. slack is a instant-messaging. if you haven't heard of it by now, it's instant messaging for teams. it allows people to communicate around the world. you can install apps into it. it's really, really useful. you can spin up a slack channel super, super easily. it doesn't cost anything for the first 10,000 messages and then if you want to start using it in keeping everything, then it's time to start paying for it. we personally started paying for it about two years ago and it is the most essential tool that we use across our entire company. it is where all of the work actually happens is on slack. all right, I want to tell you about another tool that we

How to Find the Best Shopify Developer, Shopify Agency, or Shopify Partner

what's up everybody? it's Joe with IWD Agency. we're an agency that helps grow and scale ecommerce brands online. we're going to go over some tips on picking your shopify partner to help you grow your store online. if you're serious about ecommerce, you want to pick a partner that's going to help you get to the goals you have set for yourself and for your business. so a few things that you'll want to consider when picking a shopify partner to help you grow is, first of all, what type of team do you need? what are you looking for? make sure that you're clear with your intentions, where you're missing, what gaps you have and what type of team will fill those needs for you. so there are teams that are more strategic and they will sit down with you and look at where your gaps may be, where your conversion rate is low, where your your marketing is low, where users are not understanding your messaging. there's brands that will come in and help you tighten all this up and continue to optimize your site for you. and there's also other partners that are less strategic and they're more action-oriented and they'll wait for you to come with ideas and come with what strategy that you may want to implement. so make sure that you're clear on what type of agency or what type of partner you're looking for. are you looking for the full suite of a strategic partner, someone that has that's going to come to you on a regular basis with suggestions and look at your analytiks and see where you're missing and see where your customers might be dropping off? or do you just need a development partner that you tell them exactly: hey, i want this app installed, i want these, these new pages on my site. so make sure you're clear with what you need. do you need a content writers? do you need someone that's going to be testing your site? do you need someone that's to be good, that's going to be doing graphic design? do you need someone that's going to be doing the analytiks for you? so there are partners that can do all of that for you, and then there's partners that are just going to be more action-oriented and are going to wait for you to tell them exactly what to do in their site. so be clear with your intentions and your goals, and then that's going to help you pick a partner that's going to fit the needs that you have. not all partners are built the same, so you need to make sure that you're well defined and what you're looking for before you start hunting. second thing that you want to consider when you're picking a shopify partner to help you grow is: do you already have a marketing team in-house, or do you want them to be your marketing team as well, or do you want another third-party agency to handle your marketing for you? all three options are good options, but if you don't have a marketing team in-house and you're considering a partner to do that for you, it's worthwhile to consider finding a shopify partner that can also handle the marketing piece of it. the reason that is is because the buck will stop with them. so if they're trying to help you grow to your potential and grow your audience and grow your sales online, well, the buck will stop with them. as far as do the things that they do help you grow or not, it's not. hey, well, this partner over here didn't set up the ads correctly, or this partner over here there was a bug with a website and that cost us not to be able to do our job. if you do everything with one partner and they said, hey, we can help you grow to a certain level and they can't or did not, well, then there's no excuses. they are the ones that you can go and say, hey, what was the problem, what can we fix and what can we change, rather than having a whole bunch of different partners or agencies- marketing agency over here, development agency over there, design agency somewhere else- and having them all come together and try to figure out who does what and when, where, how. so something to consider if you do need marketing, to consider that as part of the agency that you pick to help you grow your store. the third thing that you want to consider when finding a partner to help you scale your store online is: make sure to get a contract, make sure to get everything- your terms- written down and signed before you start any kind of work. when working with a partner, things tend to start well, but we've seen in the past where, a lot of times where where there have been things that go wrong with the site- um, some discrepancies about how, what timelines to be hit, discrepancies about who's responsible for what, what are the payment terms if, if we part ways, who owns the core code? uh, who owns the design files? i'm gonna try to get all that stuff written down before you get started so that when it comes time to part ways or if there is some issues that you know exactly what the agreement was from the get-go. so make sure don't skip that step and get a contract so that everything is professional and that you- that everybody- knows the terms set for the relationship moving forward. fourth thing is set clear due dates and deliverables. this is something that a lot of people skip over, especially if you're in a rush on getting started, and it's always good to go ahead and get clear deliverables and clear due dates and get deliverables that are that are delivered in small chunks, rather than waiting three or six months down the road and wanting it all to be delivered at one time. but go ahead and set that, before you start any kind of work with a partner, that you have clear deliverables, that you have clear due dates, so that everybody's on the same page before you get started. if the partner that you picked, if they have too much work and they're not able to meet the timeline that you're looking for, maybe it is worthwhile to consider another partner. but go ahead and set that out before you get started with any work, because you don't want to be on two different pages before you even get started with the work. number five is: find a team that you're really excited to work with. find a team that you enjoy toking with, communicating with, that gets you, that gets your brand- uh, you, you want to work with your partner, ideally, you know, for a long term, and hopefully they get to know your business, they help scale your business, grow your business, but also that you enjoy getting on the phone with and and toking about: hey, what's the next steps? how do we get it to the next phase? how do we improve our site? where do we, how can we, amplify marketing? how can we get better conversion rate? how do we, you know, drive more people to the store? but someone that you know, find some, a team that you enjoy you know getting together with and that's excited about your brand, because you'll you'll want to build a relationship with them over the long term. number six is: go ahead, especially if you're working with anyone overseas, as set meeting, ties and working hours, you can set some time um down so that you can go over projects, issues that it can be very frustrating if you're the only way that you're communicating is through email and you lose days with questions back and forth. so if you go ahead and set some meeting times and working hours, then you'll know what time the partner that you're working with or online, you can head up with, up with slack and different ways. also go ahead and set what is the best method of communication. um, a lot of teams like ours will set up a slack channel for your project. that way we can have the quick communication back and forth and we try to make sure that we lower the communication barrier so we get stuff done quickly and on time. if you have any delays with emails and back and forth, then that can. that can really cause some major delays on your timelines and your deliverables. anyways, that's all i have today. thanks for checking out our channel and we'll see you next time. you.

The Shopify Experts Marketplace (Shopify Unite Track Session 2019)

please welcome to the stage Danny Williams and Liz kouto. I'm a product marketing manager on the platform team. my name is Danny, I'm a designer on the platform team and we're so excited that you've all joined us here today. so, with that said, we'll get straight into it. as you all know, running a business is really hard. even though Shopify provides a ton of resources to guide merchants, there are times when a unique business has unique needs for areas like Web Design, custom developments and marketing. merchants will look to hire someone to help with their specific needs, and it isn't just a handful of cases. in a recent survey, we found that one in three merchants look to hire service provider in the past six months. it's not surprising that a lot of people are looking to hire. are you our Shopify partners? that's why, in 2011, we introduced the first iteration of our Shopify experts directory. so this was great. merchants needed help, partners need clients, and now you both had a place to connect. but, as it turns out, just having a place to connect isn't quite enough. a couple summers ago, we sent a survey to our experts to see how things were going well. you did share some success stories with us. you also told us about the vague requests you were getting and the leads that were first services you didn't even provide because these vague requests. in lack of detail. you're telling us how you spent a lot of time going back and forth with merchants and these conversations weren't leaving anywhere. so when we asked exactly how many of these leads that you were spending so much time with turned into paying clients, you share that the conversion rate was only around 5%. if so many merchants wanted help and so many of you wanted to work with them, then why were there so few instances of merchants and partners working together successfully? well, we think we may have addressed to these issues. we've evolved the Shopify experts directory and added tools from the shopman. now complete services marketplace beta-2 introduced the Shopify experts marketplace. today we'll take you through this new product and show you how this is built to help more merchants and partners work together successfully by addressing the three key areas of a merchants partner relationship: discovery, evaluation and collaboration. now ahead, it's Danny to take you through the products. Thank You, Liz. to understand why so few leads returning into paying clients, we started by looking at the beginning of the merchants partner lifecycle. what we found was that merchants tend to have really specific goals and needs right and with this in mind, we realized that how we categorize experts was just too broad. it didn't really provide merchants with a meaningful amount of information to understand who would be best suited for their specific need. so what this means- that you'd be contacted for things that you don't do and passed on the things that you do. let's say, for example, a merchant who's looking for help with social media marketing can be really daunting for them to scroll through page after page of just marketing agencies to try to figure out who would be best suited for their specific task. so you can see how this could become pretty time-consuming or overwhelming. even so, it's no surprise that some of these merchants would just give up and look for help elsewhere. so, to address this, we've updated how we categorize experts to now focus on the topics and terms that are more specific and familiar to things that they're looking for. where before we had a single flat of experts, we now have six top-level categories of marketing and sales: store setup, development, troubleshooting, visual content, branding, content rating and expert guidance, all with their own subset of categories. now, with this recategorize ation affords us to do is to also provide recommendations to merchants in context. so let's say, your merchants and you're trying to install a Facebook pixel on your shop or trying to set up Google Analytiks and you need to edit some liquid theme templates- we can now surface a link to that. merchants direct them to the specific help they need accomplishing that task. all this really means that you're now going to get more of the right kind of leads coming to your businesses. which brings us to our next area of focus: evaluation. to make it easier for merchants to understand who would be best suited for their specific need, we try to understand how they actually go about figuring that out themselves. how do they figure out who would be best suited for their task? right? what was their evaluation criteria? and what we found out was really no surprise. merchants cared most about price passed work in a portfolio of some sort and ratings and reviews. so to prioritize this information, we've restructured our ranking algorithms to now focus less on how many merchants you've referred to Shopify and more on the quality of the service that you provide to clients by looking at things like your rating, the number of jobs you've completed for a specific service and response rates. all this ultimately translates into a more transparent and trustworthy experience for merchants and really provides experts with a clear path as to how you can climb to the top of results. now we also know, as I mentioned before, our merchants tend to have pretty specific goals and needs, right. so to help make that information even more contextually relevant and helpful, experts can now create listing pages for the services they offer. so you now have more space to elaborate on the type of deliverables and scope of work you offer for a given service. you now have more space to showcase past work, elaborate on the types of clientele industries you typically work within, and we've made ratings and reviews more robust by incorporating metrics like communication and quality of work. now all this really means you're now better able to differentiate yourselves, your businesses and set better expectations with prospective clients. this brings us to our final area of focus: collaboration. once a merchant decides to contact you, things can really go one of two ways right. one: you guys are a great match, quickly align and scope, budget, timelines and you get straight to work. or not so much: lots of back-and-forth, unrealistik expectations, not an ideal client, right. so to avoid this second scenario, we've created a detailed job creation workflow that allows merchants to specify more of their job requirements and scope of work upfront, which means, instead of receiving a vague request like hey, I'm looking to read is on my website, do you think you can help? you'll now receive a detailed brief with information around the scope of work, the context on the merchants, business and their priorities, so you can now determine if this is the kind of client or project you'd want to take on, even before interacting with the merchants. now, let's say you do want to take on this project. to make collaborating with Shopify merchants even easier, we've built in chat, file sharing and invoicing tools directly into both merchants and partner admins, so now a merchant can manage and pay for their work with an expert in the same place that they manage their products and orders. and on top of that, we've made ratings and reviews more robust and we've built in automatik feedback loops for you to complete jobs and receive reviews so you can spend less time chasing after clients for rating and more time delivering a high quality service and building a reputation on the platform from start to finish. we've built the whole collaboration process right into admin. we're putting work with partners right into the heart of merchants workflows to create convenience, reduce context switching and keep merchants engaged so you can get the job done faster and more efficiently. when we put these new tools to the test, what we found was about 5%. conversion rates went up to 25%. this means the potential for five times as many merchants finding help and five times as many leads turning into pa.