Are you trying to decide between a Shopify or Shopify Plus account? Before you upgrade to a Shopify Plus account and enjoy its features, you need to know if Shopify Plus is right for you.
Before we go on, let us first consider what Shopify Plus is.
Shopify Plus is a Shopify Plan that provides Shopify store owners top top-tier services, including store hosting and other premium Shopify store features. Here are some features of Shopify Plus:
- Access to Shopify organization admin, where you can manage all your stores from one dashboard.
- Advanced Shopify apps for increased growths.
- Additional API calls
- Merchant Success Program
- Access to Shopify Plus Academy
- Up to 100 themes
- Shopify POS Pro for every of your organization's location for free.
Still, wondering if Shopify Plus is meant for you? Here are a few questions you need to answer.
1. Do You Need More Support on Your eCommerce Journey?
One thing we know for sure, running an eCommerce store can be very demanding, especially when you have to do everything yourself. To make things easier and ensure your store's growth, you must understand that you would need an expert's help to meet your store's goals.
Before you upgrade your Shopify Plan to Shopify Plus, you should note that with Shopify, you already receive exceptional support. So let's think of it this way, Shopify provides a platform for you to create your eCommerce site, but Shopify Plus goes the extra mile to hand you the tools you need to create this store.
So when you upgrade to Shopify Plus, Shopify partners you with experts to help you from start to finish. With Shopify Plus, you get access to 4 types of experts:
- Sales Consultants who would help you through the process of determining if Shopify Plus is suitable for you. While you might argue that they would want to make sales and probably push it to you, the truth is, in this case, they wouldn't sell you what you wouldn't profit from.
- Solutions Engineers, these experts come in during the sales process, helping you to ensure that the merchant's customer-facing, internal, and third-party systems will work seamlessly when you upgrade to Shopify Plus. They also help plan your setup and migration strategy in collaboration with partners.
- Launch Engineers, oversee the setup process of Shopify Plus stores for merchants consulting on migrations, integrations, customer use cases, payment gateways, opening new sales channels, SSL certificates, and checkout customization.
- The Merchant Success Program finally helps you to create a clear roadmap for your store's goals, connecting you with the right support and training. With Shopify Plus, you enjoy access to support and online courses in key business areas. You also enjoy full access to the Shopify Plus Academy, where you can learn to run your store more diligently from live workshops and training videos.
What's even better, you can join the Shopify Plus Facebook community, where you get to meet other entrepreneurs like yourself and learn from them.
2. Is Your Target an International Market?
One primary goal every store should have is to expand their reach into an international market, increasing their exposure. If you're looking to expand your store's reach into a global market, then Shopify Plus has all the tools you need. Marketers on Shopify Plus are allowed to spin up to 9 additional stores via different sales channels. As such, on these additional stores, you not only get a separate store, you also get separate integrations, inventory, and content. You can also set your pricing amount for international customers in their native currency.
Shopify Multi-store for international sales comes with numerous benefits, including:
- Tailored content to customers using their region
- SEO control
- Manual language translation
- International currency pricing and native currency checkout
- Separate warehouse integration
You would also need to consider both the pros and possible cons. One of which being that while you have more control over each region, you have to be sure if your team can handle the additional requirements. There are apps and services which make it easy to sync inventory, content apps and theme updates.
- More control means more work.
- Managing separate content for each region.
- More complex integrations.
- More SEO considerations
The bigger your company gets, the less free time you also get, which means that certain tasks start to become repetitive, taking away focus from other parts of the company. Shopify Plus is equipped with tools to automate repetitive actions, thus letting you channel that time to more vital areas of your company.
Shopify Plus comes with various tools that automate repetitive actions so you can focus on more vital areas of your store. Some of these automation features include:
Shopify Flow
Shopify Flow is a Shopify Plus automation tool that store owners can use to automate tasks through workflows. It can be used in the management of operations, such as order management and buyer experience.
Using a template from Flow's library or the visual builder, you can set up automation workflows that would save you time and increase productivity. The Shopify Flow tool also integrates with apps like Smile.io, Asana, Trello, and more.
Launchpad
Launchpad automates with front-end processes like product launches and marketing campaigns. It works best to help you prepare your Shopify Plus store for promotional events. By automating your front-end processes such as product launches or marketing campaigns. It helps your Shopify Plus prepare for any promotional event while saving yourself time. You can use it to choose products to put on sale, set up a collection discount for when your sale starts and much more.
4. Does Your Store Sell Wholesale?
With Shopify Plus, your business can take two directions regarding wholesale sales, use the Shopify Wholesale channel or build a bespoke one. The Shopify Wholesale channel is an app built by Shopify which fully integrates into existing Shopify Plus stores. Once activated, the wholesale channel functions alongside an online store as a separate instance, using existing core data such as products. The channel is quick to configure, which makes it a perfect fit for speed to market.
The built-in Wholesale channel is a perfect fit for small-to-medium wholesalers with traditional requirements. It also doubles as a minimum viable product for larger enterprises with an existing retail Shopify store.
Benefits of the Shopify Wholesale Channel:
Key Benefits:
- Much simpler setup for existing products and prices
- Price list support to help with percentage discounts and volume breaks
- Allows for draft orders and Shopify checkout integration
Drawbacks:
- Brand customization and customization of user experience not allowed.
- Orders default to draft, which requires a per customer setting to use checkout.
- Wholesale product content is not made available to the public.
Bespoke Wholesale Experience
With the bespoke wholesale experience, you get to build a system that meets your business's unique requirements. There has to be a combination of customizations to a Shopify theme, the utilization of Shopify apps, and potentially developing custom middleware. Each configuration differs depending on your business's needs, which must be built to work with Shopify's ecosystem.
5. Are You Looking for a Customized Checkout Solution?
While the default Shopify checkout isn't the ugliest, it is also not the best. This is because the store's identity could be lost in the checkout stage customer's journey due to the default checkout. On Shopify Plus, merchants can customize their checkout content, enjoying a holistic-like shopping experience, putting storefront and checkout as part of a more brand-focused experience.
Custom design
Shopify Plus merchants enjoy full access to the checkout.liquid file. This file is an integral part of the checkout customization process, acting as the key. Shopify merchants can now add, remove, and reorder content to match their store's branding by editing this file.
Many Plus store owners often opt for a custom breadcrumb menu which allows customer's see where they are on the page. Without this custom breadcrumb menu, there is a possibility that customers can sometimes miss useful navigational signposting.
Shopify's default checkout provides a basic breadcrumb menu. On Shopify Plus, however, the feature is improved, allowing you to customize it, giving you control.
Custom content
On Shopify Plus, you can let users sign up and log in to your store through their social media accounts. Merchants can also integrate auto-complete features into their checkout using Google's Autocomplete API. A custom auto-completion menu appears when customers start typing their address, showing autofill recommendations.
Shopify Scripts, a Plus-only tool, also provides options to improve the Shopify checkout. Plus, retailers may use Scripts to distinguish between consumers, offering personalized discounts or messages depending on various variables, including consumer marks, goods in cart, overall cart value, and so on.
A personalized checkout is unlikely to persuade a retailer to move to Shopify Plus on its own. For those who already have a Shopify Plus subscription or are thinking about upgrading, Checkout customization is a no-brainer and yet another way that Shopify Plus allows retailers to customize their shops further.
6. Is your team outgrowing their accounts?
The more your company expands, the more people you'll need to hire.
You will have a limit of 15 workers accounts with Advanced Shopify Center. That's a decent figure to shoot for when you're first starting out, but the employees will inevitably outnumber that number.
The good news is that Shopify Plus helps you to build an infinite number of employee profiles. As you manage your store on the platform, you won't have to be concerned about your staff's progress.
7.Do you have a high YOY (year over year) growth rate and at least $1 million in annual sales?
In a nutshell, Shopify Plus is a $2000 monthly investment. Suppose a merchant's monthly turnover exceeds $800,000. In that case, they'll be moved to a rolling model where they pay 0.25 per cent of their monthly revenue (for example, $1 million in monthly revenues equals $2500 USD every month). There is a 0.15 per cent surcharge if they use a third-party payment portal instead of Shopify Plus.
Shopify Plus retailers will take advantage of exclusive Shopify Payment rates:
- Domestic: 2.15 per cent + $0.30, saving you 10.5 percent over Shopify's advanced package.
- Amex + International 3.15 percent + $0.30
Shopify Plus begins with a one-year contract and only switches on a month-to-month basis after that.
Yes, you should move to Shopify Plus if the math makes sense and an extra $2000 per month makes sense because you're making up the difference between preferred Shopify Payment rates.
Final Thoughts: Should You Migrate to Shopify Plus?
Shopify Plus is ideal for eCommerce businesses looking to scale and expand. However, before you migrate, be sure to talk to your team to see if it's the right decision.
To determine if Shopify Plus is the right platform for you, you have to take into consideration your annual revenue and current objectives. If you're a seven-figure business, Plus' features will help you advance. If you're just getting started, it's best to concentrate on growing your business until you're ready to upgrade. You can still enjoy access to default Shopify integrations to manage your store.