Today we released the second installment of Pro Tips for the Build a Business contest. In this series we talk to the greatest thinkers and entrepreneurs about what they do best, and try to get tips for all the Shopify owners out there.

This time around we have Seth Godin, who by many is considered to be one of the greatest marketers alive. Author of many well-known books, Seth’s latest book, Linchpin will be given away to 50 lucky contestants in our Build a Business Contest.

In the meantime, though, enjoy this awesome interview with Seth which was conducted by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com.

Leave a comment on the videos and tell us what you think!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Who better to give practical advice than those doing it! Shopify is collecting tips for success from our top store owners. We’ll be posting the best ideas and suggestions weekly.

Here’s the first two:

Tip #1

“Choose a good domain name for your store. Having your own domain rather than using the subdomain supplied with your store adds credibility and professionalism. Choosing a good name can also increase visitors to your store. When I registered DrChristophersHerbs.com I saw an increase in sales due to the keyword density of the name itself. In fact, 66.74% of my traffic comes from search engines, most of them searching for “dr christophers herbs” which corresponds with my domain name.” - Addison Kirk of www.DrChristophersHerbs.com

Tip #2

“Customize your collections menu so visitors can shop by age, price point or recipient to take some of the guess work out of the gift-giving process. Be creative in naming your categories to entice your customers to shop your site in new ways. Customers will appreciate knowing what is “tops for toddlers”, “pretty-in-pink” or is a “great gift under $20”.” - Cathy of CBHstudio

Watch a video and read on how to organize your products into collections.

Have a great tip you’d like to share? Submit yours at winningtips@shopify.com

At Shopify we’re all pretty competitive, and are serious about settling differences in a professional way. This is why we decided to start out first (annual?) Shopify Street Fighter 4 Tournament.

We’re playing a double elimination-style tournament using Challonge!, and you can see the live bracket by clicking on the image below. So far the battles have been intense, with some really close fights and some trash talking. We’ll be posting the results sometime next week.

If you think you’re good enough to join future Shopify tournaments, click here.

Designed by the awesome Lee Martin, the store features everything from t-shirts to CDs, so have a look.

Also until this Monday, enter the code SHOPIFY at checkout for 10% off everything in the store!

Two Shopify peeps were featured in an awesome New York Times article published yesterday, written by Lora Kolodny.

Tobi was interviewed for the article and Daniel got the photo credit.

You can read the article here.

We are very excited to announce the acquisition of MNDCreative, and with it StoreSync, which many of our merchants use to manage their stores with great ease and mobility right from their iPhone.

MNDCreative’s CEO and lead developer Matt Newberry will be joining the Shopify team to be the Mobile Lead, and StoreSync will now be available exclusively for Shopify customers. What does this mean for you?

1) StoreSync will now be free for those who currently use it with Shopify
2) Tighter integration with Shopify features means the experience will be even better for our customers
3) More exciting developments in mobile ecommerce

Keep checking for very exciting new announcements related to mobile payments in the future.

You can see the official press release here.

Welcome to the team, Matt!

Update: TechCrunch is reporting on this.

We recently launched the new Wiki design and wanted to share how its design evolved from how it looked then to how it looks now.

The Old Wiki

The old wiki theme was just the default from MediaWiki. From a UI perspective, the theme leaves a lot to be desired.

Having "Go" and "Search" is confusing to the user:

Most of the navigation links won't be used by the majority of the users (ex: Special Pages):

These tabs are confusing and generally unhelpful. It looks like a main navigation but isn’t:

Redesigning the theme to be visually more appealing was important, but these issues had to be addressed.

Mockup Version 1

For the first mockup, we didn't stray too far away from the original Wiki layout. We scrapped it because we ended up feeling that light text on a dark background made it more difficult to read, though this is a controversial topic on the web.

Mockup Version 2

In addition to switching back to dark text on a light background, we took out the Shopify logo because it was unnecessary. We started from scratch again because the Wiki's navigation was just as bad as the original navigation – the focus is on the wiki-specific links like “Recent Changes”, and we wanted it to be on the primary content instead: the Getting Started section, Using Shopify, Designing Themes, etc.

Another reason for scrapping this mock up is consistency. This mock up is a completely different visual design than anything else on Shopify.com

Mockup Version 3: The Finished Product

Here’s the final product: a significant step up from the original theme in terms of usability and design:

The Forums and Wiki now share some common design elements, so users will feel more at home:

The new navigation is better then what we had before. We had bigger plans for improving the navigation, but because of some technical limitations of the MediaWiki platform, this was the most pragmatic solution:

The new search bar is much cleaner and less confusing. The unnecessary and confusing buttons have been removed, yet it keeps the same level of obvious functionality:

The new Wiki is also a fixed width layout; not a liquid layout. This means that no matter how big your monitor is, the Wiki’s content will always remain the same width. Fixed vs. Liquid is a hotly debated topic, but fixed layout makes the Wiki's content less intimidating and more readable.

What do you think of the new Wiki design? Do you prefer light text on a dark background or vice versa? Do you miss the old liquid layout? I would love to hear your feedback in the comments.