Why Migrate to Shopify PLUS?
The Ecommerce world is undergoing rapid transformation: the needs of brands and merchants are changing so quickly that it risks confusing all businesses that do not have long-term plans and visions, with clear objectives for the next 2 or 3 years.
The world of physical retail is undergoing even more transformation; news about store closures and new openings is a daily occurrence.
This is all a consequence of the new consumer behavior patterns that we have all revolutionized in the way we connect with brands and their products. Just think of Instagram, marketplaces, video streaming, smartwatches, and not to mention the now classic physical stores and ecommerce.
If we stop and think carefully, everything that used to be the place of purchase, i.e., the store, is transforming into an experience space, and everything that used to be the experience (media and online), i.e., the digital, is becoming the place of purchase. Roles have reversed: for example, consider Nike, the #1 brand in the world in terms of omnichannel.
Nike stores are becoming sensory experience spaces, shifting the actual product purchase to the digital realm.
- Brand Goals in 2020
- Which Companies are Suitable for Shopify Plus
- Shopify PLUS Features
- Shopify PLUS Pricing
- Shopify PLUS Architecture
- Omnichannel with Shopify PLUS
Brand Goals in 2020
Let’s now take a step back in time to just 5 years ago and ask ourselves this question:
- What is the goal of a brand that wants to carve out a space in the digital world?
In 2010/2014, the answer was: create an ecommerce site.
In 2014/2018, the answer was: create marketing strategies to increase sales.
From 2019 and for the next 3 or 4 years, the answer will be: create an omnichannel strategy to improve the shopping experience.
So, summarizing: in 2010, the focus was “technological,” moving to “sales,” and now it’s a mix of increasing sales, customer loyalty, and maximizing the shopping experience.
Technically, this translates into improving the “customer lifetime value” or the value of a customer over time.
What does this have to do with Shopify PLUS?
Simple: Shopify PLUS is the fastest solution to meet the business needs of a company.
But before we dive into the features of Shopify PLUS and its costs, let’s examine which characteristics a company should have to support a Shopify ecommerce.
Which Companies Are Suitable for Choosing Shopify Plus
At Sintra, we have identified 3 types of companies that are best suited for Shopify PLUS:
- Tier 1 – New Business / Startups
- Description: These are companies that do not have an ecommerce or have recently launched one
- Company Revenue: < 1.5 million
- Ecommerce Revenue: < 300,000 euros
- Goals / Needs:
- Raise brand awareness
- Increase company revenue
- Need digital guidance
- Tier 2 – Strong Growth
- Description: These are companies that already have an ecommerce and need to grow rapidly.
- Company Revenue: 2 to 10 million
- Ecommerce Revenue: < 1 million euros
- Goals / Needs:
- Improve brand positioning and adopt omnichannel strategies
- Conversion rate and retention rate are key KPIs for them
- Tier 3 – Mature Digital Company
- Description: Companies that are mature in the digital space, with allocated budgets for Marketing, IT, and Omnichannel processes.
- Company Revenue: 10 to 40 million
- Ecommerce Revenue: > 1 million
- Goals / Needs:
- Apply Omnichannel Customer Experience strategy
- Improve customer lifetime value
- Increase both Ecommerce and Retail revenue
These are the types of companies we serve and that we know are efficient and effective with Shopify PLUS.
Now, let’s take a closer look at the features of Shopify PLUS.
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Shopify PLUS Features
Before listing the specific features of Shopify PLUS, let’s review why we recommend Shopify as a platform:
- Fixed costs as the business grows
- Whether you have 1 visit or 1 million visits a day, the costs remain the same
- No bugs or security updates
- The platform is bug-free, and security is guaranteed by Shopify. You won’t need to install security updates or patches
- Guaranteed performance (10,000 orders per minute)
- Sleep peacefully the night before Black Friday; you won’t experience any site downtime or have to worry about hosting. Shopify is a SaaS (cloud) platform.
Now, let’s look at the specific features of Shopify Plus:
- Customizable Checkout
- The checkout of Shopify PLUS is customizable and modifiable to suit your needs.
- Global Sales Worldwide
- With Shopify PLUS, companies that want to expand internationally can easily manage sales and payments in different currencies and languages, ensuring a smooth experience for customers around the world.
- Better API Performance for Reliability and More Stable Integrations
- With Shopify PLUS, you can call Shopify APIs at double the frequency compared to the standard Shopify. This allows for faster updates and more solid integration with all clone stores.
- Launchpad App
- Launchpad is an automation tool built to plan, schedule, monitor, and manage events such as sales campaigns, product launches, and content updates. Want to automatically kick off a sales campaign and activate a custom design at midnight? You can do that with Launchpad.
- Scripts App
- This app allows you to automatically adjust prices, promotions, shipping options, or payment methods like “Buy one, get one free” and free shipping.
- Flow App
- Shopify Flow is the marketing automation tool that enables you to automate tasks so that you and your team can focus on growing the business.
- Launch Manager and Success Manager
- Each brand is assigned two Shopify experts: a Launch Manager who will oversee the project until go-live, and a Success Manager who will continue to support the project in the post-go-live phase.
Shopify PLUS Pricing
And here are the prices for Shopify PLUS.
 | |
| Costs | |
| Apps (Annually) | € 3000 |
| License (Annually) | €22.000 |
| Store Build | da € 45.000 a € 160.000 |
| Internal Operational Costs (Annually) | da € 36.000 a € 60.000 |
| Hosting | €0 |
| Maintenance | €0 |
| Total (First Year) | da € 106.000 a € 245.000 |
Note on License: The Shopify PLUS license costs $2,000 per month; this is actually the minimum percentage of the company’s revenue.
Shopify PLUS costs 0.25% of the company’s revenue, with a minimum fee of $2,000.
For example, if your brand generates €12 million online, the monthly fee will rise to about $2,500.
Learn more about all the features of Shopify Plus.
Shopify PLUS Architecture
Below is a typical ecommerce architecture on Shopify PLUS.
Starting from the bottom, there are the company’s IT systems, such as ERP, Retail Software, and CRM.
These systems provide data on users, products, prices, and stock, which are then passed to the PIM/OMS software (next layer) that synchronizes the information with all the Shopify PLUS clone stores.
Conversely, the Sintra PIM/OMS software can retrieve orders and customer data from Shopify and send this information back to the company’s ERP system.
It’s important to remember that using a PIM/OMS system allows businesses to centralize their data (orders, customers, products, inventory, prices, gift cards), overcoming technological barriers and enabling omnichannel strategies.
Now, let’s discuss omnichannel.
Omnichannel with Shopify PLUS
The logic behind omnichannel can be summarized as follows: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
An omnichannel strategy integrates every touchpoint to provide the customer exactly what they need, when they need it, wherever they are, and on any device.
The challenge lies in implementing the omnichannel strategy, which involves integrating both the physical retail world and the digital ecommerce world, and beyond.
What are the benefits of an omnichannel approach?
As reported by a retail study on IDC.com, brands that adopt an omnichannel strategy see the following impacts on business:
- A 15–35% increase in conversion rates
- A 5-10% increase in customer profitability with loyalty
- A 30% increase in customer lifetime value compared to single-channel sales approaches
But why is it so difficult to apply an omnichannel strategy?
Here are the main reasons:
- Lack of organizational structure
- Lack/poor analytical measurement of data across channels
- Siloed organizations/data divided into separate departments
- Lack of or poor-quality data
- Technological barriers
- Lack of understanding of customer behavior
That said, what are the features of Shopify PLUS that allow you to start your omnichannel journey at no extra cost?
Here’s a list of features used by major brands on Shopify PLUS to unify and improve the customer experience:
- Sales Across Multiple Channels:
- Ecommerce
- Amazon
- Point of Sale
- Facebook store
- Instagram shoppable
- B2B Wholesale Channel
- POS software integrated with ecommerce
- Multistore Functionality
- Multi-Warehouse Functionality
- Click & Collect (available via app)
- iOS & Android apps for salespeople and ecommerce managers
- Hundreds of integrated payment methods
Conclusions
Shopify PLUS is the fastest solution Sintra can offer to companies looking to grow digitally and adopt an omnichannel approach.
The platform’s features allow the brand to focus on the business rather than the technical aspects, and agencies can deliver value to clients by shifting the focus from technological obstacles to business objectives, all while reducing time and costs by more than half.
