Shopify Plus has been a trusted name when it comes to enterprise eCommerce businesses. The platform is gaining popularity for all the capabilities it offers. Now when we talk about Shopify Plus features, the platform never ceases to offer functionalities that are advanced and purpose-driven. Before we go any further on the features part, let’s first understand the global eCommerce scenario and why a feature-rich platform is the first requirement.
Global Retail Industry in a Nutshell
The global retail industry was sure to see a decline in the past 2 years owing to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the global retail eCommerce industry accounted for a whopping $4.9 Trillion in 2021 and is forecasted to grow over 50% in the coming four years.
Showing a steady rise, the online share in the retail industry hit the 21.3% mark during physical lockdowns worldwide in the year that shall not be remembered. These stats were a surprise because of pandemic related negative impact on in-store shopping and global restrictions which impacted the supply chain drastically.
What are we trying to say with these numbers?
The eCommerce industry is set to grow at a rate faster than ever. With more and more brands onboarding the eCommerce platforms, the competition rate is also higher than ever.
The brand puts its best foot forward and renders the most seamless shopping experience to its customers will stay ahead of the curve.
Here is where Shopify Plus comes into the picture and paints it big for all those retail brands out there.
A cost-effective eCommerce solution built for a change!
As mentioned earlier, Shopify Plus is an enterprise eCommerce platform that helps retailers start selling online by setting up a digital storefront in no time whatsoever. Retailers can customize their storefronts to match their branding, promotions, and marketing strategies to drive more sales by offering customers a seamless interactive experience on the eCommerce website.
Designed especially for enterprise-level developments and to handle huge volumes of data, Shopify Plus lets the retailers take their branding and customer experience game straight up to the top level. This is one eCommerce platform that evolves and grows with the brands from all perspectives.
With all said, you must be wondering why you, being a well-known brand, or even a newborn in the industry, must consider Shopify Plus ?Let us dive into that.
Top brands are not in here just for the technology. All they want is to sell their products faster and with optimal customer experience. They are looking forward to making a legacy of their brands with a cost-effective yet efficient enterprise eCommerce platform. And Shopify Plus empowers them to do just that with the following avant-garde features. Let’s dig deep to understand how each of the Shopify Plus features adds value for the eCommerce retailers.
In this day and age of globalization, retailers must cater to a global audience. This allows business owners to expand their horizons and also create an enhanced customer experience for overseas customers.
Shopify Plus allows the retailers to add up to 9 additional stores. These stores are clones of the original store but can be tailored to deliver a localized and nuanced experience. These stores can also be operated with custom domains like .com, .au, .in, .uk, etc. Business owners can also take advantage of selling in multiple currencies and languages with one login.
Businesses often collaborate with local retailers to sell their collections in a traditional brick-and-mortar store or online. This facilitates the preferred omnichannel business model for the retail industry.
Shopify Plus has a B2B feature that comes in handy in such cases. It gives the wholesale buyers access to a separate storefront, password protected. Buyers can easily view custom pricing for bulk purchases, bulk shipping policies, and collection of wholesale-only products. Also, the buyers can get the B2B invoice for their purchases without any hassles.
The retail industry doesn’t usually give much space to play with the margins. To top that, Shopify and Advanced Shopify charge extravagant 0.5% fees per transaction. This adversely affects the growth and profitability of the brand.
With Shopify Plus, businesses only have to pay a mere 0.15% per transaction. This lets the team generate more profits and entertain more cash flow. So, if you own an eCommerce store on Shopify, it is highly advisable to migrate to Shopify Plus to maximize your gains.
One of the aspects of a growing and profitable eCommerce business, or any business for that matter, is an increasing number of employees to manage various aspects of the online store functionalities. Very often, more than one staff person needs access to the admin dashboard.
Shopify Plus lets the business owners add multiple team members to the admin dashboard. Usually, this is done to carry out operations like managing new sales promotions, customer review approvals, updating product pages, or even managing orders.
The most challenging task for any eCommerce store is to handle the pressure of an upcoming sale or handle traffic spikes on important days. And if they can shine through it all, they do manage to come out with unimaginable profit on the other side. Processing huge volumes of transactions every minute is something to worry about.
But Shopify Plus is designed to perform during high-traffic campaigns. It is ever ready to back you up in growing your business and catering to a broader audience each time. Equipped with unlimited bandwidth and transactions, Shopify Plus allows the eCommerce stores to handle around 11,000 checkouts per minute with a crazy 99.99% uptime.
It is evident for an eCommerce business to sell where the customers want to shop. Hence, the omnichannel eCommerce approach makes total sense by putting your shop across various channels and leaving no stone unturned to attract potential customers.
Shopify Plus lets the retailers sell their products on 20 online social channels and integrations across 175 countries. Businesses can also choose from more than 6600 mobile apps or partners to leverage influencers, user-generated content, and authentic product reviews.
In the eCommerce world, faster checkouts always translate into more conversions and smoother purchase journeys. Especially in the product-driven retail world, where what one brand is offering is most probably being provided by someone else too, that too at a better price. Quick checkouts are the only solution to definite conversion.
Shopify Plus lets you optimize your eCommerce website for speed and conversion. Its checkout is fully customizable with a mobile-first design, coupled with Shop Pay for a 60% faster checkout, translating into up to 18% higher conversion.
To shop online means to engage all the senses. Doing that can be a little tricky. But how about crafting seamless experiences using technology to showcase your products?
You can interact with your customers and tell your brand story using true-to-life videos and other interactive content on Shopify Plus. Retailers can use augmented reality and 3D on product pages to render a life-like shopping experience.
Retail businesses need to move fast in the industry to tap into seasonal trends. Shopify Plus gives you access to Launchpad to let you plan, automate and execute marketing campaigns effortlessly. From a flash sale, a product launch, to a sales campaign, retailers can even schedule bulk changes based on an ongoing campaign.
Launchpad also lets the retailers manage and monitor these campaigns. Creating invitation-only or limited-release product collections is also possible with the Launchpad.
A retail brand often needs to automate several processes on the storefront and the marketing front. Businesses can leverage flow to build, import, and even configure various automation for multiple business operations with Shopify Plus.
For example, retailers can set rule-based discounts to cater to different customer segments or send out offers at defined timelines. Shopify Plus can help businesses make their backend more productive and boost the brand’s overall reach.
With powerful eCommerce features and capabilities packed all in one package, Shopify Plus can help you grow your business globally. From new players to well-established brands, Shopify Plus can support a profitable eCommerce business.
To make a more informed decision, answer the following questions and decide what’s right for your business.
It can often be overwhelming to decide on the right eCommerce platform for your eCommerce business. But if you ever want help evaluating the pros and cons of Shopify Plus for your eCommerce store, you can reach out to our eCommerce experts at Krish.
Minal Joshi is a content marketer at Krish with a flair for eCommerce and Digital Commerce aspects. She is a MarTech fanatic with a knack of writing with which, she helps brands to curate, create, & commence digital brand positioning. Sharing insights via articles, case studies, eBooks, Infographics, and other forms of content creation is what she lives for. Being an ardent traveler, when not writing, you'll find her sipping coffee into the mountains or petting a stray.
21 November, 2019 Statistics show that the total holiday retail spending was up by 5.4% reaching $998.32 billion in 2018. With digitalization taking over, 2019 is sure to set new records for Holiday sales.
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