To let you work faster when notifying buyers, Shopify now uses a template to prepare the email you send when clicking on “Email Buyer” from an order screen. That means you can set up a form-letter that has the usual stuff and personalize it before it’s sent.

To use the new buyer contact form template, first click on it in your shop Admin section’s Email & Notifications section:

Then edit the template to include the usual text you use in emails to buyers:

Now when you send a buyer an email,

... the templated parts appear already filled in:

This is the Shopify App Showcase, where we profile a new app from the Shopify App Store every week, describing its features and how a storeowner can benefit from using it. Feel free to leave some feedback about things you’d like to see in the next profile.

OrderCup

OrderCup is a new app that prints shipping labels for a variety of shippers, including UPS, FedEx and USPS. Instead of copy-and-pasting, with OrderCup everything is done automatically – all forms are auto-generated and your customers even get the tracking number sent to them. The reviews in the App Store show how useful OrderCup is, and as a Shopify customer, you get a month of free phone support and priority e-mail support.

Check out this video showing how to install OrderCup in Shopify and ship an order.

OrderCup is built for medium-sized enterprises, but priced for the small business. Not only does it integrate fully with Shopify, it also integrates directly with hardware used in shipping – thermal printers, electronic scales and bar code scanners. It silently prints to the correct printer (without on-screen prompts popping up), automatically captures weight from electronic scales (also without prompt), and is even able to work with scanners in a point-click-ship environment for larger users.

For a complete list of OrderCup features, click here, and take a look at what others say about OrderCup on their testimonials page.

A handy cheat sheet for all the awesome Shopify web designers/devs was posted on the forums

Our Twitter contest is over and the results are in! We received thousands of votes for over 200 beautiful stores. The winning stores are as follows:

	No no no yes no 221 votes
	Khepri Comics 195 votes
	NestLiving 104 votes
	Nerd Bots 103 votes
	Little Bird Electronics 82 votes
	Bento and co. 74 votes
	Uppercase 56 votes
	Defunkt Shirt Company 52 votes
	Baby Melons 49 votes

Of course, the voters also get something – 20 iPod Nanos and one 15-inch MacBook Pro were given away everyday of the contest, and will be shipped out to all the winners this week. The winning votes were Tweeted by the following people:

@MapleSt
@GraciesCove
@darthapo
@corriespondent
@nsedef
@bokiboka
@bdomingos
@timgorichanaz
@TonyMeluskey
@Coffy73
@changds
@taterbugtx
@serialbox
@TzakShrike
@ajyase
@boop2801
@stephenkissel
@ClthPprStchs
@jpstephens
@LostAtSeaShop

And the grand prize winner of the MacBook Pro went to @Tany
who voted for Bento & Co.!

Congratulations to both sets of winners! We hope you enjoy your prizes and make good use of them. Make sure to send us photos that you take with your iPod cameras, and in the meantime, check out the winning stores to see great products and great design.

We recently added a best-selling sort-order for collections allowing you to sort a collection so that the best-selling products show up first in the collection: a great way to showcase your top performers.

If you are currently manually maintaining a list of best-sellers then you definitely want to take advantage of this new feature. It may also be a good idea to take advantage of this for your frontpage collection so the first thing customers see are the most often purchased items; a popular sales technique that often leads to increased sales for your shop.

We’ve just updated our forums! Our design team has been working on this project to give the forum a new look and new functionality.

The new look and feel of the forums is the first thing you’ll notice.

Then:

Now:

We’ve also added some new features:

• What you see is what you get editor (WYSIWYG)
• New search engine
• New Job Board section

The most important part of the update is the Job Board, which will allow you to post requests for things like site or logo design work, custom app development, and anything else that you need to have done for your store. Soon this will be integrated with our Partner network to make it even easier to find the right people for the right job.

The Shopify Design Contest has been a big success so far, with over 200 stores submitted and thousands of votes!

Congratulations to the following winners so far:

@MapleSt
@GraciesCove
@darthapo
@corriespondent
@nsedef
@bokiboka
@bdomingos
@timgorichanaz
@adrianfava
@TonyMeluskey
@Coffy73
@changds
@taterbugtx
@serialbox

There is still a week of prizes left, including the grand prize of a 15-inch MacBook Pro, so if you haven’t entered the contest yet, what are you waiting for? Go to thecontest page and vote!

Are you a storeowner?

Have your customers vote for you by putting a button on your store! We’ve designed these buttons that you can download individually here or you can use this contest icon creator made by Shopify Concierge.

This is the Shopify App Showcase, where we profile a new app from the Shopify App Store every week, describing its features and how a storeowner can benefit from using it. Feel free to leave some feedback about things you’d like to see in the next profile.

StoreSync

StoreSync lets you take your business on the road with you. Install the Shopify App and the iPhone app, and you can check orders, products and sales statistics wherever you go. Not only that but StoreSync uses Apple’s Push Notification to let you know when you get a new order.

And just for Shopify customers – a free trial to see how StoreSync can help your business.

StoreSync was designed from day one to allow store owners to take their stores with them wherever they go. MNDCreative, the publishers of StoreSync, have worked over the last four years as consultants and freelance developers for online businesses. This has given them lots of experience which they transferred to making this great app,

In their own words: “We seek to give store owners not just a convenience factor, but also a practical service that allows them to enhance their business, and build off the current feature set of their online store. The StoreSync iPhone app is the first step of many that we’ll be taking into this arena.” -Matt Newberry of MNDCreative

Find out more and install this app in the App Store, or check out Practical eCommerce review of StoreSync.