The marketer’s ultimate guide to Shopify Plus

Think e-commerce websites and I’d bet my favorite sparkly rock that the first name that comes to your mind as the hosting platform is none other than Shopify!

But things have changed, and the world of e-commerce has evolved for entrepreneurs and marketers alike. Shopify Plus offers a range of benefits that have led to a marked shift towards this platform. 

So, irrespective of whether you are a marketer looking for a deeper analysis of Shopify Plus to craft strategies or an e-commerce owner wondering if you should make the switch to Shopify Plus, this blog will help you understand its evolution, distinction, comparison with competitors, and unrivaled market share.

Let’s explore the milestones in the journey ahead!

• Understanding the major points of difference between Shopify & Shopify Plus
• Competitor comparison ~ Salesforce commerce & Magento Vs. Shopify Plus
• Market share & trend analysis
• An insight into the advanced features of Shopify Plus & its impact on business & marketing
• Finding the right partner ~ Shopify & Shopify Plus talents availability in India

By the end of this article, you will have a clearer picture of everything that comes with Shopify Plus, understand the whole experience, know where it stands next to its competitors, and determine whether it will make a good platform for your e-commerce business.

It’s gonna be a long journey, ladies and gentlemen; we suggest tightening those seat belts! 😉

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Understanding the major points of difference between Shopify Vs Shopify Plus

Much like other platforms, both Shopify and Shopify Plus are meant to cater to the needs of different target audiences (e-commerce businesses in this case).

While Shopify is great for small to medium businesses, Shopify Plus is well–suited to meet the e-commerce needs of large enterprises and brands with high annual revenue levels. 

Let’s delve into the major points of distinction between Shopify and Shopify Plus based on the following criteria;

Now that we understand the differences, let’s explore the pros and cons of Shopify Plus as an e-commerce platform for enterprise-level businesses.

Shopify Plus benefits

. Scalability:

Shopify Plus is designed to accommodate high-volume sales and rapid growth, making it ideal for large businesses and enterprise-level merchants.

. Customization:

Offers extensive customization options, including access to dedicated support, advanced APIs, and personalized solutions tailored to specific business needs.

. Advanced Shopify Plus features:

Provides access to exclusive features such as custom checkout experiences, multi-channel selling, and automation tools, enabling businesses to optimize operations and enhance customer experiences.

. Reliability and performance:

 Ensures stability, reliability, and optimal performance even during peak sales periods, thanks to robust infrastructure and advanced technology.

. Dedicated support:

Includes dedicated account managers, technical experts, and priority customer service, ensuring timely assistance and personalized solutions for complex issues.

. Security and compliance:

Adheres to industry-standard security protocols, PCI compliance, and enterprise-level data protection measures, ensuring the highest standards of security and privacy for sensitive customer information.

. Integration capabilities:

 Offers seamless integration with enterprise systems, custom solutions, and third-party services through advanced APIs, enabling greater automation, efficiency, and scalability.

. Exclusive access:

Provides access to exclusive partnerships, resources, and events, fostering collaboration and networking opportunities within the Shopify Plus community.

Cons of Shopify Plus

. Higher cost:

Shopify Plus involves higher monthly fees than standard Shopify plans, which may be prohibitive for smaller businesses or startups with limited budgets.

. Complexity:

With more advanced features and customization options, Shopify Plus can be more complex to set up and manage, requiring technical expertise and resources to maximize its potential.

. Custom development costs: 

While Shopify Plus offers extensive customization capabilities, implementing custom solutions may incur additional development costs, especially for complex integrations or unique requirements.

. Dependency on the Shopify ecosystem:

 Businesses using Shopify Plus may rely heavily on the Shopify ecosystem for their e-commerce operations, which could pose challenges regarding vendor lock-in and flexibility.

Competitor comparison ~ Salesforce commerce & Magento Vs. Shopify Plus

Let’s begin by comparing Salesforce commerce and Shopify Plus. 

Salesforce Commerce:

• Targeted towards large enterprises and B2B businesses.
• Offers robust integration with Salesforce CRM, allowing for seamless customer data management and personalized experiences.
• Provides extensive customization capabilities and flexibility to meet complex business requirements.
• Scalable infrastructure capable of handling high traffic volumes and complex e-commerce operations.
• Comprehensive suite of features, including order management, marketing automation, and AI-driven analytics.
• Higher initial investment and customization costs.
• Requires technical expertise for setup, configuration, and ongoing maintenance.
• Suitable for businesses looking for a fully integrated e-commerce solution within the Salesforce ecosystem.

Shopify Plus:

• Designed for high-volume merchants and enterprise-level businesses.
• Offers a user-friendly interface and intuitive tools for easy setup and management.
• Extensive app marketplace for extending functionality and integrations with third-party services.
• Customization options include advanced theming, API access, and a script editor for personalized experiences.
• Scalable infrastructure with reliable performance, even during peak sales periods.
• Dedicated support with access to account managers, technical experts, and priority customer service.
• Lower initial cost and flexible pricing based on business requirements.
• Suitable for businesses seeking a comprehensive e-commerce platform with rapid deployment and minimal technical overhead.

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Magento is another competitor that we can pit against Shopify Plus so that you can see what works best for you. Let’s now look into a detailed comparison between Magento Enterprise and Shopify Plus.

Magento:

• Open-source platform suitable for businesses of all sizes, including small businesses to large enterprises.
• Offers extensive customization capabilities, allowing full control over the website’s design and functionality.
• Highly scalable architecture capable of handling large product catalogs and high traffic volumes.
• Comprehensive feature set, including advanced product management, flexible pricing options, and robust SEO capabilities.
• Requires technical expertise for setup, customization, and ongoing maintenance.
• Higher initial investment and development costs compared to hosted solutions like Shopify Plus.
• Provides flexibility in choosing hosting providers and infrastructure.
• Suitable for businesses seeking complete control over their e-commerce operations and customization options.

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Market share & trend analysis

In this sub-section, we will explore the current trends and statistics related to Shopify Plus usage, how enterprises integrate social media usage on Shopify Plus, and the segregation of companies using Shopify Plus by industry, country, revenue, and company size. 

An insight into the current trends and usage statistics of Shopify Plus

The following mind-blowing numbers show that Shopify Plus is quite a popular platform for running e-commerce businesses.

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Market share of e-commerce software platforms in the USA

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eCommerce Usage Distribution in Top 1 Million Sites

According to BuiltWith, as of June 2022, 25.5% (or 255,577) of the top 1 million live websites worldwide (by traffic) are e-commerce websites. Of those websites, 20% were powered by Shopify, second after WooCommerce.

If you like analyzing trends, the following graph explains the Shopify Plus usage statistics over the past seven years.

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Shopify Plus stores & social media usage statistics

In a world where scrollers make random purchases on Instagram and Facebook, most e-commerce businesses deploy social media’s power to amplify their connections with target audiences. 

If you are down for some number crunching, 79.6% of Shopify Plus stores use Instagram, 76.7% use Facebook, and 55.9% use LinkedIn.

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Distribution of companies deploying Shopify Plus based on multiple criteria

Based on industry

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Based on country

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Based on the company size

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Based on revenue

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An insight into the advanced features of Shopify Plus & its impact on business & marketing

Shopify Plus for enterprise-level organizations has several advanced features that we will explore under the following heads;

• Empowering enhanced mobile commerce

• Mobile-first approach:

The mobile-first approach of Shopify Plus focuses on ensuring that the platform and its features are optimized for mobile devices first rather than simply adapting desktop experiences for mobile screens later.

Here’s how the mobile-first approach of Shopify Plus is implemented with its advanced features:

. Responsive design:

All Shopify Plus themes are designed to be responsive, meaning they adapt and look great on screens of all sizes, from desktops to smartphones. This ensures that your online store maintains a consistent and user-friendly experience across all devices.

. Mobile Optimization Tools:

Shopify Plus provides tools and features to optimize the mobile shopping experience. This includes features like mobile-friendly checkout, simplified navigation menus for smaller screens, and image optimization for faster loading times on mobile devices.

. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP):

It supports AMP, which helps web pages load faster on mobile devices by stripping away unnecessary elements. This improves your online store’s overall performance and user experience on mobile devices.

. Mobile app integration:

It allows merchants to create custom mobile apps or integrate with existing mobile apps for their stores. This enables businesses to provide a seamless shopping experience for customers who prefer to shop via mobile apps.

. Mobile analytics:

Shopify Plus offers robust analytics tools that provide insights into customer behavior, including mobile-specific metrics such as mobile traffic, conversion rates, and bounce rates. This helps merchants understand how their mobile audience interacts with their online store and make data-driven decisions to improve the mobile experience.

. Mobile marketing tools:

 It includes marketing tools and features designed to reach customers on mobile devices, such as SMS marketing, push notifications, and mobile-specific campaigns. These tools help merchants engage with their mobile audience and drive sales through targeted mobile marketing efforts.

Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web applications that offer a native app-like experience while being built using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Shopify Plus offers advanced features to support PWAs, allowing merchants to create fast, engaging, and reliable shopping experiences for their customers across various devices. Here’s how Shopify Plus implements PWAs and their advanced features:

. Improved performance:

 PWAs built on Shopify Plus benefit from improved performance, including faster loading times and smoother interactions. This is achieved through techniques like lazy loading, caching, and optimized asset delivery, ensuring that the online store loads quickly, even on slower network connections.

. Offline functionality: 

One of the key features of PWAs is their ability to work offline or with limited connectivity. Shopify Plus PWAs utilize service workers to cache essential resources, enabling customers to browse products, add items to their cart, and even complete purchases offline. Once connectivity is restored, the changes are synced with the server.

. Add to the Home screen:

 PWAs can be installed directly onto the user’s device and accessed from the home screen, just like native apps. Shopify Plus PWAs support the “Add to Home Screen” feature, allowing customers to install the online store as a standalone app without going through an app store.

. Push notifications:

 PWAs built on Shopify Plus can leverage push notifications to engage with customers and drive repeat visits. Merchants can send targeted notifications to users, such as abandoned cart reminders, order updates, and promotional offers, helping to increase customer retention and sales.

. Responsive design:

 Shopify Plus PWAs are designed to be responsive, providing a seamless shopping experience across various devices and screen sizes, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops. This ensures that customers can access and interact with the online store comfortably, regardless of their device.

. Enhanced security:

 PWAs on Shopify Plus benefit from the platform’s robust security features, including HTTPS encryption, data encryption, and compliance with industry standards and regulations. These features help protect sensitive customer information and build trust with shoppers.

. Analytics and insights:

Shopify Plus provides analytics tools and insights tailored to PWAs, allowing merchants to track important metrics such as user engagement, conversion rates, and revenue generated through the PWA. This data helps merchants understand how customers interact with the PWA and make informed decisions to optimize performance and user experience.

Mobile optimization tools

Shopify Plus offers several advanced mobile optimization tools to ensure merchants can provide the best shopping experience for customers browsing their online stores on mobile devices. Here are some of the key mobile optimization tools and features available:

. Responsive themes: 

All Shopify Plus themes are designed to be responsive, meaning they automatically adjust their layout and design to provide an optimal viewing experience across different screen sizes and devices. This ensures that the online store looks great and functions well on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers alike.

. Mobile-friendly checkout: 

It provides a streamlined checkout process optimized for mobile devices. This includes features such as simplified forms, guest checkout options, and mobile payment integrations (e.g., Apple Pay, Google Pay) to make it easy and convenient for customers to complete their purchases on mobile.

. Mobile navigation menus: 

Navigation menus on Shopify Plus themes are optimized for mobile devices. They are collapsible and easily accessible, allowing customers to navigate the online store smoothly and find the products they’re looking for quickly, even on smaller screens.

. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): 

Shopify Plus supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), a technology that creates lightweight and fast-loading versions of web pages specifically designed for mobile devices. By implementing AMP, merchants can significantly improve the loading speed and performance of their online store on mobile, leading to a better user experience and potentially higher conversion rates.

. Image optimization:

It includes features for optimizing images to ensure fast loading times on mobile devices, where bandwidth and connection speeds may be limited. This may involve automatically resizing and compressing images without sacrificing quality, lazy loading images to prioritize the display of visible content, and using next-gen image formats like WebP to reduce file sizes further.

. Mobile app integration: 

While not strictly a tool within the Shopify platform itself, Shopify Plus allows merchants to create custom mobile apps for their stores or integrate with existing mobile apps. This provides an additional channel for reaching and engaging mobile customers, offering features like push notifications, personalized content, and seamless shopping experiences tailored to mobile app users.

Headless commerce capabilities

. Flexibilty & customization 

Headless commerce refers to the decoupling of the frontend presentation layer (the “head”) from the backend e-commerce functionality, allowing merchants greater flexibility and customization in designing their online stores. Shopify Plus empowers flexibility and customization through its headless commerce capabilities in several ways:

. Custom frontend experiences: 

With headless commerce, merchants can create custom frontend experiences using their preferred frontend technologies, such as React, Vue.js, or Angular. This enables them to design unique user interfaces, implement custom features, and tailor the look and feel of their online stores to match their brand identity and customer preferences.

. API-based architecture:

 Shopify Plus provides robust APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow developers to programmatically access and manipulate data from the Shopify platform. This API-first approach enables seamless integration with third-party systems, custom applications, and frontend frameworks, allowing merchants to extend and customize their ecommerce capabilities as needed.

. Content management flexibility:

 Headless commerce allows merchants to choose the best content management system (CMS) for their needs, separate from the e-commerce backend. This means they can use specialized CMS platforms like WordPress, Contentful, or Prismic to manage content such as blog posts, product descriptions, and landing pages while still leveraging the e-commerce functionality of Shopify Plus for product management, inventory, and transactions.

. Multichannel selling: 

It supports multichannel selling by decoupling the backend commerce functionality from the frontend presentation layer. This means merchants can sell products not only through their online store but also through various other channels such as social media platforms, marketplaces, mobile apps, and even in-store POS systems. By leveraging headless commerce, merchants can easily integrate with these different channels and provide a consistent shopping experience across all touchpoints.

. Scalability and performance:

Headless commerce architecture allows for greater scalability and performance optimization. By separating the frontend and backend layers, merchants can independently scale and optimize each component based on their specific requirements. This ensures that the online store remains fast, responsive, and capable of handling high traffic volumes, even during peak periods such as sales events or product launches.

API-first approach

Shopify Plus empowers an API-first approach through its headless commerce capabilities, enabling developers and merchants to leverage the platform’s powerful APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to build custom solutions, integrate with third-party systems, and create seamless omnichannel experiences. Here’s how headless commerce capabilities enable an API-first approach with Shopify Plus:

. Robust APIs: 

Shopify Plus provides a comprehensive set of APIs that cover all aspects of e-commerce functionality, including product management, inventory management, order processing, customer management, and more. These APIs are well-documented, reliable, and designed to be developer-friendly, allowing developers to access and manipulate data within the Shopify platform easily.

. Flexible integration: 

With headless commerce, merchants can integrate Shopify Plus with any frontend or backend system of their choice using APIs. This flexibility enables seamless integration with third-party applications, custom frontend frameworks, content management systems (CMS), customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, marketing automation tools, and more. Merchants can choose the best-in-class solutions for their specific needs and integrate them with Shopify Plus to create a customized ecommerce ecosystem.

. Custom frontend experiences:

 Headless commerce allows merchants to decouple the frontend presentation layer from the backend e-commerce functionality. Developers can build custom frontend experiences using their preferred technologies, such as JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue.js, or Angular, and consume data from Shopify Plus APIs to populate product catalogs, manage shopping carts, process orders, and more. This enables merchants to create unique and engaging user interfaces tailored to their brand identity and customer preferences.

. Omnichannel capabilities:

 An API-first approach enables merchants to sell products through multiple channels beyond just their online store. With Shopify Plus APIs, merchants can seamlessly integrate with social media platforms, marketplaces, mobile apps, in-store POS systems, and other sales channels. This allows merchants to provide a consistent shopping experience across all touchpoints and reach customers wherever they prefer to shop.

. Scalability and performance:

Shopify Plus APIs are designed to be highly scalable and performant, allowing merchants to handle large volumes of traffic, transactions, and data without sacrificing performance. This scalability ensures that the e-commerce platform remains responsive and reliable, even during peak periods of activity such as sales events or holiday seasons.

Let’s now look into the impact of Shopify Plus on business and marketing.

Shopify Plus has a significant impact on businesses and marketing in several key areas:

. Scalability and performance:

Shopify Plus is designed to support high-growth businesses and enterprise-level merchants. Its scalability allows businesses to expand their operations, product offerings, and customer base without worrying about infrastructure limitations. This scalability empowers businesses to seize growth opportunities and adapt to changing market conditions quickly.

. Customization:

It offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor their online stores to match their brand identity and customer preferences. From customizable themes and templates to advanced developer tools and APIs, Shopify Plus enables businesses to create unique and engaging shopping experiences that differentiate them from competitors.

. Omnichannel marketing:

Shopify Plus provides omnichannel capabilities, allowing businesses to sell products through multiple channels, including online stores, social media platforms, marketplaces, mobile apps, and physical retail locations. This omnichannel approach enables businesses to reach customers wherever they prefer to shop and provides a seamless shopping experience across all touchpoints.

. Data-driven insights: 

Shopify Plus offers robust analytics and reporting tools that give businesses valuable insights into customer behavior, sales performance, and marketing effectiveness. By analyzing this data, businesses can make informed decisions to optimize their marketing strategies, improve customer engagement, and drive revenue growth.

. Marketing automation: 

Shopify Plus integrates with various marketing automation tools and platforms, enabling businesses to automate repetitive marketing tasks, personalize customer communications, and target audiences with relevant offers and promotions. This automation helps businesses save time and resources while improving the effectiveness of their marketing efforts.

. Global expansion: 

It supports businesses in expanding their operations globally by providing multi-currency support, multilingual capabilities, and localized checkout experiences. This enables businesses to reach new markets, attract international customers, and capitalize on global opportunities for growth.

. Partnerships and ecosystem: 

Shopify Plus has a thriving ecosystem of partners, developers, and experts who provide additional services, apps, and integrations to enhance the platform’s capabilities. Businesses can leverage this ecosystem to access specialized expertise, extend the functionality of their online stores, and stay ahead of industry trends.

Finding the right partner ~ Shopify & Shopify Plus talents availability in India

Now that we are familiar with the different capabilities of Shopify Plus for your enterprise-level e-commerce business, you might want to explore the probabilities of finding the right outsourcing agency partner in India with the requisite Shopify for enterprises expertise.

Here’s a handy list of companies you might consider partnering with for your Shopify needs.

• Arham Technosoft
• Orange Mantra
• Codify Infotech
• Crawl Apps
• Shop Trade
• Krish Technolabs
• Control F5
• Think tanker
• Connect Infosoft
• Redcube digital media
• Mavlers
• Born techies
• Binary web solutions
• Lucent Innovation
• Synapseindia
• ROI Hunt
• Ranosys
• Infowind technologies
• Webcontrive
• Techtic
• Bytes technolab

Also, if you seek Shopify Plus partners, they can be bifurcated into two categories;

1. Service partners

Known for their technical expertise, they help migrate, integrate, build, and grow your website.

Popular services include;

• Store build or redesign
• Store migration
• Custom apps and integrations
• Wholesale/B2B

2. Certified app partners

They help extend the platform and customize your store.

Popular services include;

• Order and inventory management
• Shipping solutions
• Retail and POS
• Affiliate and influencer marketing

The road ahead

If you want to know how Mavlers can help address your Shopify needs, we suggest that you read our blog, which is linked herewith.