February 22, 2023
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Countless high-growth brands choose Shopify Plus to power their international businesses. We look at what makes it their platform of choice.
Whether you’re a new brand launching to market, or are looking to migrate your current e-commerce store, choosing which platform to take your online retail to is no snap decision. There are lots of considerations to chew over, and many of them crucial.
*Can we get all the functionality we need with this platform? *
*Is it robust enough to handle my business? *
Not forgetting... will it be within budget?
Remember, you should try to answer these with the long-term in mind. After all, you want your online store to be an investment, not a strain!
Of course, there are hundreds of e-commerce solutions out there. But if you’ve done your research, you’ll have noticed it’s always the same players coming out top. Needless to say, Shopify Plus is one of them, rated by top e-commerce consultants and favoured by some real big-hitter brands (see our list of the biggest brands on Shopify). As one of the leading partners, we have helped hundreds of high-growth brands scale their international businesses via Shopify Plus. Take a look.
So, what’s all the fuss about? With unrivaled scalability, low cost-of-ownership, and easy integrations, Shopify Plus is a compelling platform — especially for those businesses hungry to grow.
“Shopify Plus lets you scale from $1m to $100m without worry”Alex O’Byrne, Co-founder, We Make Websites
With that in mind, let’s delve a little deeper into why using this platform puts brands in such great stead.
With Shopify Plus, the theme layer is where your brand and design come to life. It's fully flexible and if you view our portfolio you'll get a glance at the versatility of the platform.
Adding features is also easy. Shopify boasts one of the largest eco-systems of partners. Most offer 'Apps' that are significantly quicker to install than doing it manually. Where you really need a bespoke integration, we can develop in to the Shopify API, delivering the exact features that you need.
But it’s not just about initial flexibility from design to launch. Crucially, it’s that this platform’s so adaptable there onward. You'll have a futureproof platform that offers new features as they become best-practice. A good example is Apple Pay and Google Pay, which became available to all Shopify Payments merchants soon after launch without any custom development. On a traditional platform rolling this out could take months.
If you want a solution that can evolve with you, you want to be looking at Shopify Plus.
High-traffic periods should be exciting for brands. For those on Shopify Plus, they can be! Designed specifically for larger businesses, Shopify Plus has made sure their platform can promise unlimited scalability, in catering for the needs of growing brands.
The platform’s fit to handle 1 million pageviews and 10,000 checkouts a minute. It also maintains an incredible uptime of 99.99%. All this, and your store’s performance remains untouched. You can be celebrating when your store is busy. Your customers will get what they visited for, and your team will get peace of mind.
To illustrate the sort of volume Shopify Plus can cope with throughout their network, during BFCM 2019, here’s what they handled:
Figures taken from Shopify: Black Friday / Cyber Monday by the numbers
Some of the most profitable brands on Shopify Plus automate marketing and operational flows. How? Because with Shopify-built tools like Flow, Scripts, and Launchpad, it’s so easy to.
These Shopify-built apps will reduce the amount of time needed for admin and merchandising tasks, in turn freeing up your team to focus on the bigger picture.
They can also be used for effective automated marketing, such as rewarding loyal customers and winning back old customers that haven't visited in a while.
On Shopify Plus, your brand will be harnessing the power of automations like these in no time, increasing customer lifetime value and driving profitability.
Shopify Plus is made for seamless integrations and your back-office operations are no exception. On this platform, you can get leaner by connecting your store to your core systems, take ERP, OMS, and WMS, as examples. Get this stuff connected, and get your time back to focus on growth.
Using a popular platform means that most providers you work with will already have an integration ready to go. For those that don't, the powerful and well-documented API allows us to integrate reliably in no time. This means operational efficiency without the headaches of traditional IT.
Out-of-the-box, this platform comes with all the features you’ll need to get an online store off the ground. But the opportunities to get even more sophisticated are endless.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Shopify’s app marketplace stands unrivalled. From reviews and search, to payments and shipping, Shopify Plus boasts the broadest range of world-class technology partners. Ready to integrate seamlessly and grow your business from all angles.
Shopify Plus comes PCI-DSS Level 1 compliant by default, which is The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard for organizations that handle credit card information. These are the highest standards of compliance for credit card processing, meaning the business and customers of every store powered by Shopify are always kept secure.
On other platforms, ensuring this level of compliance can set you back thousands on a yearly basis. On Shopify Plus, merchants don’t even need to think about credit card security.
Oh, and Shopify Plus is also constantly upgraded to deal with the latest security threats, so that’s another thing off your mind.
Merchants find Shopify Plus a breath of fresh air compared to other platforms. It has a modern, intuitive interface that e-commerce teams seem to love.
Even with all the functionality it offers, it remains extremely easy to use and your staff will pick it up in no time. With a simple store editor, Shopify lets you focus on your customer experience, rather than getting tangled up on back-end stuff.
Shopify Plus is the ideal platform for brands looking to scale up and expand to international audiences.
Firstly, Shopify’s architectural options give merchants who are currently only selling in one specific region, flexibility with how best to approach global expansion. Launching with a single multi-currency store is great for testing traction in new markets as it demands relatively low commitment. If successful, brands can then have the data to justify investing in an additional store solely for that region, localizing the shopping experience even more — think location-specific discounts and content. You can learn all about the different options for selling internationally on Shopify Plus here.
In addition to this, the Shopify app store offers a range of solutions for enhancing localizations and operations when selling to international markets. Take tax calculations, for example. With Shopify Plus, you simply switch on Avalara and they’re calculated automatically. And what’s more is, Shopify Plus continues to roll out new features on the regular, continuing to help merchants power their global retail.
If the aspects listed above aren’t enough to go off, how about you let the platform’s growth speak for itself? Since Shopify began and Plus launched in 2014, the company’s seen incredible growth. There are now over 1,000,000 brands selling online with Shopify all over the world.
As an enterprise option, Shopify Plus is stealing the market.
Not only do Shopify have a hefty market share, but they continue to put back into pushing their technology further. Exciting new features are added to the platform on the regular, making it smarter for their user base and ensuring they stay at the forefront of an ever-evolving industry.
If you’re considering a move to Shopify Plus, we hope this article helps you evaluate its suitability. Whether you’re sold on the platform or not, our Shopify experts are always happy to help with those burning questions!
