If You Are Exploring Shopify Plus, You Might Be in One of the Following Situations: Facing Challenges with Your Current Website Platform; You want to switch to a better platform.
Using the Standard Shopify Plan (Advanced); You want to upgrade to Shopify Plus and learn more about its features. Starting a Completely New Business: You aim to grow rapidly with powerful tools.
In this article, Bluefocus will help you explore Shopify Plus and its outstanding features that enhance business efficiency.
Concept of Shopify Plus
ou Might Understand That Shopify Plus is an e-commerce platform designed for enterprise customers with an annual Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) of $1M or more, aiming for even faster growth.
However, based on our analysis from implementing Shopify projects at Bluefocus, Shopify Plus is most suitable for brands with a volume of $5M+.
Moreover, Shopify Plus is built with powerful exclusive tools to help businesses grow quickly and efficiently.
Currently, some global brands using platform include Allbirds, Gymshark, Kylie Cosmetics, Redbull, Fashion Nova, and Fenty Beauty.
Shopify Plus Deployment costs
When Shopify Plus first launched, its pricing was not officially disclosed and remained a mystery.
However, since 2023, the official pricing for Shopify+ has been announced, starting at $2000 per month. This is the minimum cost and is non-negotiable.
This fee is the monthly subscription cost for Shopify Plus. Additionally, you will need to pay for third-party applications and website development on the platform.
You might wonder why Shopify Plus Deployment costs is so high (or if you’re switching from Magento, this figure might seem quite normal). The answer lies in the unique features of Platform outlined below.
Exceptional Features of Shopify Plus
You can summarize the essence of this platform into three key benefits:
- Increased Revenue at Checkout: Thanks to tools that optimize conversion rates and promotions.
- Effortless Operations: Through automation tools that handle daily tasks.
- Easy Scalability and Global Expansion: With Store Expansion features and B2B sales capabilities.
Additionally, Bluefocus will list all the features of this platform to provide you with a comprehensive overview.
The checkout page is a hallmark and distinctive feature of Shopify. As a standard Shopify customer, you cannot change or customize anything on this checkout page. However, this changes with Shopify Plus.
Customize Checkout Feature
The checkout page has always been a pride and distinctive hallmark of Shopify. As a regular Shopify customer, you cannot change or customize anything on this checkout page. That is, unless you are using platform.
No matter how much traffic you attract, your revenue depends on how many conversions and completed orders you achieve, and the checkout page is the final destination of the customer journey where you can optimize.
Full Control Platform for Checkout Page Customization
With Shopify Plus, you have complete access to:
- Modify and customize the checkout page to match your brand identity.
- Incorporate code snippets for tracking and conversion purposes.
Shopify Scripts Feature
This is a powerful tool of Shopify Plus aimed at achieving higher conversion rates and increasing Average Order Value (AOV) on each order.
When using Scripts, you can create unique pieces of code that function specifically on the checkout page to create promotions, change shipping fees, or adjust payment gateway orders according to your preferences. Here are some examples of script snippets, but you can unleash your creativity based on your actual needs:
Custom Pricing
- Reduce price by y% for specified products.
- Discount when purchasing quantity X or more.
- Discount x% when buying products A and B together.
- Buy one, get one free (BOGO).
- Discount on orders valued at xx or more.
- Discount or free shipping for VIP customers.
- Customize Shopify Shipping:
Adjust shipping fees for product
- Offer shipping discounts for customers with addresses in…
- Hide shipping fees/change order of shipping methods.
- Free shipping for customers with the tag “xyz.”
Customize Shopify Payment:
- Hide other payment methods and only display the most popular payment method in the customer’s country.
- Hide installment payment methods for orders under xx value.
- Display buy now, pay later option for orders over xx value.
- Change the priority order of payment methods.
Checkout App Extensions for Shopify Plus
Since late 2024, Shopify has introduced Checkout App Extensions, a list of third-party apps that allow for more powerful customization of the checkout page than ever before. Of course, this applies only to Shopify+ customers.
You can explore the list of Checkout App Extensions.
Here are some popular tools you can add to the checkout page:
- A/B Testing for promotion methods
- Upsell
- Countdown Timer
- Reviews
- Free gifts
- BOGO
- Tiers Pricing (discounts when reaching thresholds)
- SMS Marketing
- Live chat
One-page Checkout on Shopify
The most anticipated feature of Shopify Plus is the one-page checkout. In brief, instead of going through the usual 3-step process to complete a payment (Information – Shipping – Payment), everything is consolidated into a single page.
As of this year, One-page checkout is available on all Shopify plans.
This helps increase conversion rates by shortening checkout time and eliminating unnecessary information fields.
The one-page checkout feature is expected to be available for platform customers by late 2023.
Shopify Flow features
Since its inception, Flow has been a feature exclusively for Plus customers. However, customers using lower-tier plans such as Advanced can now activate this feature.
If you’re using it, you can create a range of automation capabilities to reduce the time spent on repetitive daily tasks. Instead of spending hours each day on manual tasks, Flow helps you save time and resources.
Some examples of automated flows you can set up include:
- Notify when a product is running low in stock.
- Cancel orders labeled as high risk or potential fraud.
- Group customers based on their spending amount.
- Tag orders with specific products in the cart.
- Automatically add products to collections based on their names.
- Send loyalty points accumulation notifications to customers.
- Send thank-you emails to customers who have placed orders.
- The only limit to Flow is your imagination for possible scenarios in website operation with platform.
Using Launchpad Feature – Flash Sale Automation
Shopify Plus‘s Launchpad allows you to set up marketing campaigns automatically, such as flash sales. Many Plus businesses are running weekly or monthly product launches and flash sale events regularly.
All processes can be automated with Launchpad. Launchpad allows you to schedule product launches, change prices, adjust inventory, and even customize themes before special events. With Launchpad, you can:
- Schedule new product/collection launches
- Apply discounts to products/collections for a specified period
- Schedule theme publishing for special campaigns
- Revert everything back to normal after the event ends
Using Expansion Store
Have you successfully built a brand in one market and want to quickly replicate the model in other markets/countries?
This feature is particularly suitable for:
- Businesses selling in multiple markets
- Businesses owning multiple brands and wanting to create a website for each brand
This feature allows you to duplicate a store with themes, data, products, and apps in just seconds.
For example, if you have a store using Shopify+ for the US market that took 3 months to build successfully, and you want to replicate a similar website for the European market, Expansion Store allows you to do that instantly, with up to 9 stores on the same Shopify Plus account.
This is particularly suitable for businesses owning multiple different brands and wanting separate websites for each brand.
Most importantly, you can manage all these stores on the same interface, in one place, and easily switch to another store with just a click.
Combined with Markets, a new feature of Shopify, you can select the country/market where you want to sell products and easily customize language, currency, and domain for each different market.
With Markets, you can:
- Change language/currency for each different market.
- Set up different shipping fees for each market.
- Adjust selling prices differently for each market.
- Set different tax rates for each market.
- Use different payment methods for each market.
Powerful processing capability
When using Shopify Plus, it provides powerful processing speed not only for the website but also for the Checkout page.
This means that the Checkout page of platform has a much faster processing speed than usual, helping to increase conversion rates.
For instance, if you’re running ads and experience a sudden surge in traffic during special occasions like Black Friday or Lunar New Year, and your website suddenly becomes congested or experiences errors, what will happen?
This platform can handle a massive amount of traffic while maintaining speed and customer experience, and it can process over 15,000 orders per minute.
Advantages of API Query Rate Limit
When customers have a large scale, there is often a need to connect APIs with third-party platforms related to CRM, ERP, CDP, WMS, or internally developed software.
With regular Shopify plans, the speed and access to API are often limited to a certain number of requests per second.
With Plus, the number of requests allowed is doubled compared to regular plans, allowing for quick query speed and real-time data synchronization.
Shopify Plus Merchant Success
This is a trained team to assist Plus customers and is available 24/7.
New Shopify+ customers can also work with Shopify Launch Engineers to support their technology needs and assist in transitioning from another e-commerce platform to this one.
The cost of deploying Shopify.
The package cost is quite high, and businesses with a revenue (GMV) of $1M or more are encouraged to use the Shopify Plus package.
This premium service package not only holds significance in terms of business growth but also serves as an excellent choice for optimizing costs for other services.
Combining the accompanying features with the premium package aligns well with the relatively higher cost because they facilitate rapid scalability while yielding better ROI.
When you have a GMV of $1M and decide to start with Plus, its features can help you increase GMV by approximately 10-15% in the short term by optimizing conversion rates (CR) and average order value (AOV).
Shopify Plus will be your optimal choice if:
- Your business has an annual GMV of $1M+
- Your current website platform is unstable and lacks robust features for scaling up.
- You have plans for significant growth and rapid expansion into various markets.
- You are willing to pay monthly fees starting from $2,000.
Conclusion
Bluefocus finds Shopify Plus to be the ideal solution for businesses seeking rapid and efficient scalability. With its powerful features, superior ROI, and high traffic handling capabilities, this platform empowers them to optimize operations and seamlessly expand into new markets, making it a valuable investment for achieving sustainable growth and success.
