Shopify Plus features: advanced apps
Shopify has quickly grown into one of the biggest ecommerce platforms around, as it allows businesses to trade and sell from a sleek and feature-led interface. Shopify Plus is the top-tier pricing plan available on the software service and offers enterprise-level ecommerce merchants a range of sophisticated features and apps.
From point of sale to automation of routine tasks, there are a number of advanced apps available only to Shopify merchants on the Plus plan. This article discusses what these advanced apps are, what they do and how they can benefit your ecommerce store. Click on one of the links below to jump to that section:
- Shopify apps overview
- Shopify Plus advanced apps examples
- Shopify Plus advanced apps benefits
- Frequently asked questions
Shopify apps overview
There are thousands of practical and simple-to-use apps on the Shopify platform. These are designed to make your online store easier to use for your customers, easier to operate for your staff, customisable, optimised and generally more functional for the increasingly complex needs of a growing ecommerce business.
There are already some great apps available to all Shopify merchants through the extensive Shopify App Store. These include Plug In SEO which provides on-page SEO services such as keyword suggestions, detecting and fixing broken links/404s, and templates for bulk editing metadata and descriptions.
Shopify Plus expands the range of apps available through the basic Shopify plan to offer even more advanced features for enterprise-level ecommerce companies. There is a suite of Plus-only applications that merchants can take advantage of to improve store functionality and performance, from customer support to shipping.
Shopify Plus advanced apps examples
There are hundreds of excellent advanced apps at your disposal as a Shopify Plus merchant, and the Shopify Plus Certified App Program includes a curated selection of high-quality apps designed for the complex needs of enterprise ecommerce. Some of our favourite Shopify Plus advanced apps include:
Shopify Flow
We have discussed the incredible power of Shopify Flow before, and we still believe it is an exceptional addition to any Shopify store. This powerful application allows automation across all types of routine business tasks including inventory management and help desk support.
Launchpad
Launchpad is another excellent automation tool that allows you to schedule a huge range of tasks and is only available for Shopify Plus merchants. You can change product pricing to reflect the start and end of a flash sale, publish new products at a specified time and boost inventory levels during events. As well as this, Launchpad lets you customise products for events and track data to see how they performed.
Easyship
Easyship is a cloud-based shipping service that gives Plus merchants access to global couriers and shipping solutions that save time and money. You can show your customers the best rates at the checkout with tax and duty fees included for shipments to different countries, monitor and manage your shipments in a single platform and send customers a link post-purchase so they can track their orders in real-time.
Transporter
Migrating content to Shopify can be a long, boring process, but the Shopify Plus Transporter app makes this much easier. This data migration tool seamlessly imports order data, customer information and products through CSV files. This intuitive application is a must-have if you're looking to migrate content over to Shopify and want to launch your new site quickly.
Bulk Account Inviter
This app lets you invite your customers to activate their accounts for your store through a bulk email to custom customer groups, saving time if you have moved to Shopify Plus from another platform and have imported your customer accounts.
Shopify POS Pro
Shopify POS Pro brings your online store together with any other physical location that you're selling your products. This comprehensive application helps with store management, metrics, customer management and much more. The Pro version opens up a range of additional features including sales reports, demand forecasting, sale item suggestions and a lot more.
Recharge
This is a Plus-approved portal that allows subscription businesses to create a better shopping experience by offering incentives and letting customers manage their subscriptions. Recharge provides merchants with actionable performance insights and analytics to identify opportunities for product upselling or improvement.
Shopify Plus advanced apps benefits
A key benefit of some of the advanced apps highlighted above is the ability to automate many of the routine everyday tasks that take up your staff’s valuable time. By implementing automation tools like Flow and Launchpad, you can remove the burden of manually completing tedious and time-consuming admin tasks so that you can focus on improving the customer-facing aspects of your business. You can also automate your marketing processes with Klaviyo and send customers automatic push notifications for recovering abandoned carts, flash sales, products back in stock and more with PushOwl.
The Shopify Plus suite of advanced apps makes importing and processing data and content much simpler. These tools can also support you in gaining a deeper understanding of your store(s), business and customers so that you can continue to grow and improve. Real-time analytics and tracking products or events can really help you nail down where your store is succeeding or falling slightly short of the mark.
You can encourage customers to keep returning to your store by inviting them to create an account and reminding them to return to an abandoned cart, improving your conversions and sales. Shopify Plus aims to make ecommerce business more streamlined and multifunctional, so many of its advanced apps operate through a single dashboard for an all-in-one solution.
Frequently asked questions
How do you qualify for Shopify Plus?
There are no direct requirements for setting up a Shopify Plus store, although the platform is most suited to large ecommerce stores with high sales and traffic volumes and global growth ambitions. View our rundown of Shopify Plus requirements here.
How is Shopify Plus different from standard Shopify?
The biggest difference between Shopify and Shopify Plus is the scale and functionality of the platform. We have discussed the differences in more detail in our guide to the Shopify and Shopify Plus plans.
Does Shopify Plus charge a transaction fee?
Transaction fees only apply to Shopify Plus accounts that use third-party payment processors. In this case, there is a 0.15% charge for every transaction. This is to cover security safeguards. If you opt to use Shopify Payments, there will be no fee. Better yet, you receive up to 18% higher conversion rates when using Shop Pay with Shopify Plus.
