Ethercycle is an ecommerce consultancy and Shopify Plus Partner based in Chicago, Illinois. For Kurt Elster, Ethercycle's founder, the path to success wasn't without its pitfalls.
In this case study, Kurt shares how he embarked on his entrepreneurial journey, and what challenges he faced along the way. He also shares how Shopify played a role in Ethercycle's growth, and what business decision was critical to Ethercycle's success.
The Christmas holidays are a stressful time. Your in-laws fly in for a long visit, the weather is lousy, you spend more than you anticipated on gifts, and you can feel yourself coming down with a cold.
For 72 hours or more, your life turns into a bad sitcom.
Now imagine you’re a retailer. On top of the personal drama, you’re facing a single day that may make or break your entire fiscal year: Black Friday. That’s actually why it’s called Black Friday. It’s the day that a retailer’s books go from red (operating at a loss) to black (operating at a profit).
Retail storeowners are motivated by two things: earning money from their store and reducing their risk. With the holidays around the corner, a retailer wants to be prepared to make the most out of Black Friday with the highest degree of success – and the lowest degree of stress. So tackling a full-site redesign in October is probably out of the question. While it might work, it’s too risky.
Instead of gearing up for a huge project, let’s focus on 12 quick wins that you can implement to prep any store owner for Black Friday and the holidays. In this case, we’re going to define "quick win" as anything a Shopify Expert can achieve in a day for their client.
The first client is always the hardest to get. For any new business, no matter how compelling your offer is, if no one has heard of you, they can’t hire you.
No one knows this better than Shopify Expert Kurt Elster. Before running a profitable ecommerce consultancy, Kurt was faced with the challenge of finding new clients and building a business from scratch.
In this article, Kurt shares what he learned from growing his own design business as well as his advice for designers or developers looking to land their first client.
Does anyone like writing proposals? Probably not. But they don't have to be a pain to write, and they shouldn't be a pain for your clients to review. Kurt Elster — co-founder of Shopify consultancy Ethercycle — walks you through how to write an effective statement of work that will help you win more clients.
In this article you'll find:
For freelancers, billing clients an hourly rate is often the assumption. And while you might think you're limited to billing a certain way, the reality is other professionals bill different ways, and you can to.
Today, we explore why one senior ecommerce consultant chose to start billing 100 percent upfront, and how you can do the same.
Branding isn’t just for your business: as an entrepreneur, building a personal brand for yourself is just as important. In our hyper-connected world, your brand is how you set yourself apart. It’s a way to start making connections, building relationships, and drawing in great clients.
In this article, you’ll learn:
There's a lot to consider when it comes to building and launching a successful Shopify store. From the design and development of a great theme, right through to the production of beautiful product photography, and strategic marketing campaigns — there’s a lot of moving parts.
As much as you might want to dive head first into Shopify theme development, it’s often difficult to know where to start. Should you begin experimenting with Liquid hands-on, or diligently read our documentation from beginning to end?
Each one of us learns differently, but one thing in recent years has become clear—online video training has transformed the way we educate ourselves. These increasingly popular courses can help you take your design and development skills to new heights, by offering a platform for learning a specialized skill-set at your own pace.
On the partners site, we have two resources that will teach you about Shopify theme development.
In our guide on learning liquid, you will get a primer on getting started with Shopify theme development. In the Shopify Partners Academy, our course series will teach you Shopify’s core features and functionality. By taking this course you will have a clear understanding of the front end development tools and frameworks used in Shopify.
We've teamed up with SkillShare, one of the world's leading online learning platforms, and two of our top Shopify Experts to produce two new courses aimed at teaching new and experienced web designers how to work effectively with the Shopify platform.
We've ensured these courses are completely free — that way, you can start your path to 10x'ing your Shopify theme development skills today. Here are four courses we recommend to level up your theme development.
You might also like: 4 Essential Tips for Building Your First Shopify Theme
To build themes, you need to understand Shopify’s core features and functionality as well as the front end development tools and frameworks. The Shopify Partners Academy is a self-study course series with 11 courses that will walk you through the nuances of Shopify’s platform. This online course series is designed to help you level-up your product and business skills.
Within the partners academy and our course, Shopify Theme Development Basics, Shopify Plus Partner, Rocket Code, takes you through the essentials of developing world-class Shopify Themes for your client. You will learn how to set up a local development environment, utilize the Shopify Theme Editor, and use the Shopify Ajax API. You will walk away with tips and best practices for tackling responsive design on Shopify for theme development.
Get started with theme development in the Shopify Partner Academy
Get up to speed with Shopify theme development basics in the Shopify Partners Academy. Learn tips and best practices for tackling responsive design on Shopify.
To access these courses, you need to be a Shopify Partner. Not yet a partner? Sign up today!
Take the course
Learning Liquid is the cornerstone of every great Shopify developer’s success. Whether you’re just starting out with Shopify themes, or you’re a seasoned Shopify Expert, there are always new and useful things to learn that will help with your everyday theme development. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of hints, tips, and tricks for using Liquid that will help take your Shopify theme development skills to the next level.
In this guide, we’ll cover:
If you're new to Shopify, start here. Senior Ecommerce Consultant Kurt Elster's three-hour course is intended for web designers and developers with little to no knowledge, and acts as a comprehensive primer on the Shopify ecosystem. This course will teach you how to get started with theme modification, and walks through the basics of offering your clients a completely custom development.
With over 17 bitesized videos, Kurt will show you how to add a new line of services to your existing web design business, by equipping you with everything needed to find success with Shopify.
This course will feature an in-depth look at the following topics:
New to Shopify theme development?
This 17-part crash course will provide you with everything you need to know to start designing and developing beautiful ecommerce websites with Shopify.
Register todayIf you are a seasoned Shopify professional, and looking to take your skills to the next level, this course is for you. In this 90-minute course, Shopify Expert Gavin Ballard will share the skills and knowledge that have enabled him to work on advanced themes and bespoke apps on the Shopify platform.
This course will teach you how to create exceptional and immersive ecommerce experiences; from using progressive enhancement on product pages, to “Ajaxifying” your cart, and more. Gavin will also share his best practices to help you streamline your own workflow and work more effectively in teams.
This course will feature an in-depth look at the following topics:
Looking to 10x your theme development skills?
Learn Shopify theme development in this 90-minute course. Take your skills to the next level.
Register todayWe're focused on helping you find success on our platform. From our Shopify and web design resources to our Shopify and Liquid tutorials, we're constantly releasing new resources to enable you to create effective ecommerce solutions for your clients, and beautiful experiences for their customers.
What makes Shopify Pursuit different from any other growth or ecommerce conference? And how can you get the most out of going? To show you how to make the most of your experience at Pursuit, we spoke to several Shopify Partner businesses across the world, to see how they’ve gotten the most out of Shopify conferences in the past. They will share how to:
Curious about who will be talking, teaching, and inspiring at this year’s A Day with Shopify?
Today, we’re pleased to announce the speakers for A Day with Shopify 2017, our series of one-day conferences aimed at helping you become a more successful Shopify Partner.
In this article, you’ll learn:
![[Free Course] 10x Your Shopify Theme Development Skills with These Free Courses](http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0533/2089/files/shopify-skillshare-courses-hero.jpeg?10577776649577466401)
