Why more freelancers should enter awards: Anthony is Freelance nominated for four 2026 nominations

I’m Anthony Bliss, a freelance Shopify designer based in Falmouth, Cornwall. I design bespoke Shopify and Shopify Plus stores for direct-to-consumer brands, working directly with clients and alongside agencies. I’ve been independent since August 2023.

I’ve been designing for over twenty years. The first ten were in branding, and I moved further into digital over time before ending up in ecommerce. That route matters more than it might sound. Not many people working in Shopify UX came through brand design first, and the mix of high-end design and genuinely good UX is what sets the work apart. I wouldn’t get the results I do without both.

Clients come to me because they’ve seen the work. They stay because the process is personable, the projects are enjoyable, and the results speak for themselves. It’s me from the first research call through to the final prototype.

This year that work has been shortlisted four times at the UK eCommerce Awards 2026, across two clients.

The nominations

• Food & Drink eCommerce Website of the Year – Drink Finder
• UK eCommerce Website of the Year – Drink Finder
• B2C eCommerce Website of the Year – East at Home
• UK User Experience of the Year – East at Home

The work: Drink Finder

Drink Finder is run by Constantine Stores, a Cornish wine and spirits merchant trading for over 65 years, with more than 5,000 products across retail and wholesale. The job was a high-risk migration onto Shopify without losing customers the business had spent decades earning.

The range had quietly turned from the brand’s greatest asset into its biggest obstacle. The answer was a comparison toggle on the collection pages, letting shoppers weigh bottles side by side on details like origin and age without opening a product page. In a category built entirely on comparison, that turns a catalogue you had to wade through into one you want to explore.

Measured on the client’s own till data, September to February year on year, with marketplace channels stripped out so the figures reflect the website alone:

• Website sales grew 34%
• Customer numbers grew 32%

Those came from actual sales rather than analytics, and they landed while spending on premium wines and spirits across the market was falling.

Ant was incredibly accommodating, ensuring the site received a modern upgrade without alienating our core customers. He kept the ‘Drink Finder’ soul intact while significantly smoothing out the user journey. He didn’t just give us a facelift; he built a platform that performs.

Jon Wigmore, Marketing & eCommerce, Constantine Stores Ltd, home of Drink Finder

The work: East at Home

East at Home makes restaurant-quality curries achievable at home. This was not a rescue job. The existing site already converted well above the industry standard, and the brief was to launch bold new branding and grow order value without breaking the thing that was already working. That’s harder than fixing something broken, because there’s limited upside and a great deal of downside.

The centrepiece is a bespoke quantity selector. As the customer chooses how many to buy, the overlay recalculates the total, the saving and the price per pouch live, so the value of buying more lands at the exact moment of decision. No countdown timers and no manufactured urgency. Clarity instead of pressure.

Comparing the same eight months before and after launch, year on year, from GA4 UK traffic:

• Revenue grew 82%
• Conversion rate improved by 14%
• Mobile revenue grew 86%

The conversion rate rose while paid acquisition was pushing the audience colder, which means the site itself was doing the persuading rather than a warm, loyal following.

When I first saw Anthony’s work I knew he was the right person for us. He was a joy to work with, a true craftsman who takes pride in his work with expert knowledge and delivers amazing results.

Ali Zaman, Owner, East at Home

Why more freelancers should enter awards

Being shortlisted four times, on a list otherwise made up of agencies and national brands, means a great deal more to me than I expected it to.

I entered because I believed the work was good enough. That isn’t an easy thing for a freelancer to say out loud. There’s a quiet assumption in this industry that awards belong to agencies, that you need a marketing team and somebody whose job it is to write entries. You don’t. You need work that stands up.

So if you’re freelance and reading this, enter. Your work goes on the same shortlist, in front of the same judges, against the same criteria. Nobody asks how many of you there are. Most of us spend years doing careful work quietly and never put it in front of anyone who might say it’s good, and that’s a shame.

Mostly though, this belongs to the two clients who trusted me with it. Andrew and Jon at Drink Finder, and Ali at East at Home, each trusted a significant investment to one person and backed the process all the way through. Neither project reaches a shortlist without that.

Anthony Bliss is a freelance Shopify designer based in Falmouth, Cornwall, working with direct-to-consumer brands across the UK. You can read the full Drink Finder case study and the East at Home case study, or connect with him on LinkedIn.