Building and promoting a Shopify store can be a grind. That's why more and more stores are looking for ways to boost their cred (and profitability) through brand marketing partnerships.

Teaming up with another brand to boost awareness and profits is nothing new. Everyone from Bonne Belle & Dr. Pepper to BMW & Louis Vuitton has joined marketing forces in the past—with epic results.

The good news is, you can use some of the past brand marketing partnerships to build your own partnership ideas for your Shopify store.

In this guide, we're going to walk you through six examples of successful brand marketing partnerships, and how you can replicate their success stories into your Shopify store.

Why should Shopify stores look to partner with other brands?

Partnering up with another brand is one of the oldest marketing tricks in the book.

However, a lot of Shopify owners struggle to see how a partnership can work in eCommerce. The reality is, it's the message behind the partnership, and the way a campaign is built, that makes it successful—not the platform the products are being sold through.

The positives for partnering with another brand are endless. Firstly, your store builds up a strong partnership with another brand and boost your bottom line. And if the partnership is successful, it can make your store a more sought after choice for other stores wanting to partner up.

The big win of partnering up is, more often than not, one of the brands is a little less known than their partner. Not everyone will be willing to spend their hard-earned cash in an eCommerce store that hasn't built up its name yet. But partnering with a brand that's doing well in the eCommerce space? Yeah, that's going to drive traffic straight through your doors.

Not only will partnerships make you more reputable, but it can also decrease the risk for shoppers that are making a purchase on a new site for the very first time.

But other wins come out of successful brand marketing partnerships.

#1. You can join PR forces

When it comes to marketing budgets, it's only natural that one partner will have a larger budget than the other. If you're joining up with another brand, the budget burden of marketing a new campaign or product is instantly halved.

But it's not just about chopping your marketing budget. Any influencers, bloggers, and high-level journalists that your partnering brand has relationships with can also be opened up to your store. Use them to your advantage.

#2. More resources = better offers and giveaways for your customers

Okay, so the advantage of being able to join budgets with a partnering store is a big one.

If you do decide to join forces with another store, you can pool money for a cash award or products for a bundled giveaway in exchange for a customer's email address.

The reward? You will be collecting a bunch of new email addresses for remarketing campaigns later, long after the partnership has run its course.

#3. Partnerships can create a ton of awareness for both brands

Whether the partnering store is selling similar products to yours or they're in a completely different field, combining brands means you can bring a ton of awareness to your brand through new audiences.

According to Gregory Pollack from MarketingProfs, the secret to a partnership's success and awareness relies on integration.

"Well-crafted partnership brand marketing should include every possible touchpoint that your business has with its customers—both traditional and non-traditional marketing, including the Internet, special events, advertising, promotions, public relations, packaging, merchandising, and a host of other marketing components," he writes.

"Marketing alliances don't just present an opportunity to create promotions; they also establish a base from which to create distribution opportunities, providing a great chance to leverage either geographic distribution or merchandising within a store."

Okay, so now you know why you should be partnering up with another brand. Let's look at how you can use past successful brand marketing partnerships to supercharge your own successful campaigns.

6 examples of successful partnerships you should steal

1. Apple and Hermès

The popularity of the Apple Watch has been insane. The product has outsold every last one of the biggest names in the watch industry over the past two years:

In 2018 alone, Apple sold 22.5 million of its trademark watches. It makes sense, then, that fashion giant Hermès was keen to get a piece of the (Apple) pie.

The partnership between the two brands was first carved out in 2015. It proved so popular that Apple geared the release of the third Apple Watch around the new Hermès Apple collection.

It's a super smart collab. Not only has Apple been able to market the Hermès version of the watch at three times the regular sales price ($1400 a pop), it has also exposed their product to more fashion-conscious consumers.

Fashion Director Roseanne Morrison said the collab has proven a success for both brands.

"I think some of those collaborations have been good for both brands because it elevates some of these long-term heritage brands to a new level of technological synergy that can help them get younger customers," she said.

How can you use it in your own store?

If you are struggling to crack into a new market, this type of campaign is perfect for getting consumers to look at your products in a whole new light.

Has a tech store caught your eye recently that you can see matching up with the quirkiness or edginess of your own store? Do you own an office supply store that is struggling to crack into the millennial market?

Reach out to a brand which is absolutely nailing the market you are trying to crack. See if they would be interested in building a product, or joining promotional efforts. Chances are, your potential partner is also struggling in the market that you're dominating.   

2. Spotify & Hulu

Spotify and Hulu have recently decided to bundle up their products and offer them both at a discounted price.

The partnership works on a two-tiered system.

For the first 3 months, the user gets Hulu for $2.97. After that, they will get both services for $5 cheaper than if they were paying for both services separately.

It's super smart if people were already thinking about signing up for Hulu (it might be the push they need to sign up). And if a customer is already paying for both services separately, it will be saving them money.

It's also a win-win for Spotify and Hulu. Both brands are opened up to a different target audience, and a lot of consumers may be curious to give the products a try purely because of the low price tag.

These partnerships take a lot of work, but the benefits can be worth it.

How can you use it in your own store?

Even if you aren't selling tech, you can still use this example in your own store. Pair up with another Shopify store, and ask them if they would be willing to bundle some products with yours for a discount.

The best way to do this would be to run a promotional campaign that boosts both brands. Try selling the product bundles on a separate landing page, so you're able to track and measure their success effectively.  

3. HDX Hydration and Clean Bottle

Everybody loves free samples.

The key to making sure you aren't throwing away money with free samples is partnering up with a store that aligns with your target market.  

It was this formula that drove the partnership between HDX Hydration and Clean Bottle.

HDX Hydration sells clean, healthy hydration mixes for bottled water. They were only just starting out in their Shopify journey when they approached Clean Bottle to collaborate.

HDX Hydration knew they had to crack their target market to succeed. By teaming up with a company that produced easy-to-clean water bottles, they quickly narrowed in on their target market.

The company approached Clean Bottle and asked them to ship free samples of their product with their purchases. This ensured that their freebies were landing in the hands of customers that were already qualified for their product.

How can you use it in your own store?

Team up with a company that could include your free samples in their shipments. Or go one step further, and offer to include their free samples in your shipments as well.

By having a minimum spend, your partner will also increase their profits on their sales. The allure of a free gift is sometimes all it takes to push the customer to spend more.

4. BuzzFeed & Best Friends Animal Society

There is a reason so many brands team up with a charity. Consumers love to feel like they're helping out society when they make a purchase.

BuzzFeed recently teamed up with Best Friends Animal Society to boost pet adoption numbers.

The idea was simple. The animal charity would tap into BuzzFeed's 200M+ readership, and BuzzFeed would publish an article called, "We Interviewed Emma Watson While She Played With Kittens And It Was Absolutely Adorable."

Obviously, not everyone has a massive readership like BuzzFeed, but the idea is used by charity groups everywhere. Pair up with a company, and consumers will feel better making purchases when they know their money is going to charity.

How can you use it in your own store?

Pair with up a charity for social cred. Studies show that consumers are more responsive when there is a single charity involved, so approaching one and inviting them to partner up is enough.  

Pick a charity that will align with your brand. A 2015 study by the Huffington Post found 92% of companies said brand alignment is the single most crucial factor when selecting a charitable partner, so choose wisely.

For example, if your store sells organic candles, then a charity that helps with environmental causes would be a better fit than a charity that helps with cancer research. Apps like Easy Donation can be customized to include your chosen charity at your checkout.

Making it easier for a customer to donate can be crucial to the success of the partnership and the amount of money you end up raising for them.

5. H&M & Alexander Wang

Who remembers when Alexander Wang partnered up with H&M? Yeah, it was weird. But it worked.

While H&M is known for their bargain purchases, an entry-level Alexander Wang product can cost hundreds of dollars. The collab seems like an unlikely partnership—until you strip it back to find out what each brand gained from it.

While H&M were able to boost their status as a credible and fashionable brand through the partnership, Wang was also exposed to a new target audience. Customers that might not have thought about high-end fashion before were suddenly being exposed to it in their typical purchasing environment.

The success of the collaboration isn't a one-off. Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, and Balmain have also had successful partnerships with the clothing shop.

How can you use it in your own store?

If you're selling up-market items of any description, you're already limiting your market to those with expensive taste.

Think about stores that share a similar style, but offer products at a completely different price point. Reach out and ask if they would be willing to run a cross-collaboration, where you each featured your products on each other's sites for a month.  

JCPenney ran a similar campaign recently with brand Sephora. They included a link to the brand in their top navigation, that allowed customers to shop from the Sephora collection directly on JCPenney.

This allows for one-stop shopping and is ideal if you're collaborating with another store but want to retain traffic.

Better yet, you could connect with a brick and mortar store that doesn't have an online presence. Offer to sell their products on your site for exposure, and in return, ask them to give coupon codes to every customer that makes a purchase in their store.

6. LucasFilm & CoverGirl

Makeup and… Star Wars? It happened.

In 2015, LucasFilms paired up with CoverGirl to create Light and Dark Side makeup lines to win over a younger, female audience.

The partnership meant both brands were given extensive press coverage during the lead up to the film's premiere. And it paid off. 8 weeks of high impact Primetime TV promoting and micro-targeting resulted in a 725% boost in retailer sell-in, and the campaign became the #1 trending topic on Facebook.

It's not the first time CoverGirl had paired up with a film. In 2013, they teamed up with The Hunger Games in a similar campaign that resulted in a 400% sales increase for CoverGirl.

How can you use it in your own store?

This campaign should be mirrored by stores who are already successful and are looking to open up new target markets. If you are just starting out, try a less-risky partnership from one of the other ideas on our list.

If you're up for it—think outside the box. Reach out to a store that you would never think of partnering up with.

If you own a clothing store, why not try collaborating with a fellow pet supply store? As of now, 70% of all U.S. households now own a pet, and the market was valued at $72.1 billion in the U.S. alone last year. It's statistics like this that prove thinking outside the box could be worth its while when it comes to brand partnerships.

Brand partnerships are perfect for Shopify stores—if they are executed correctly

There are a ton of reasons why brands enter into partnerships (and you may be wondering why you haven't tried it before now).

Using another brand can boost your credit and your marketing capabilities. Plus, brand collaborations also offer your store a unique way to expose your brand to an entirely new target audience.

But partnerships aren't easy. To make brand collaborations work, you need to pick the right partner, and put in the groundwork. Use famous collabs (that have worked) from the past to brainstorm ideas about how you could partner up with another brand, and don't be afraid to think outside the box when you're approaching brands to join forces with. Sometimes, the most unlikely brand marketing partnerships turn out to be the most successful.

Shopify Plus has a ton of features that make them stand out from other e-Commerce platforms. One of the main differences between Shopify vs Shopify Plus is the open app marketplace for standard users and the Shopify Plus technology partner program. And, successful store owners know you should always hire a Shopify expert over a run of the mill agency.

That’s why the partner program is so helpful. So, what exactly makes these certified technology and service partners stand out from the rest? Read on to find out.

What is the Shopify Plus Partner Program?

Anyone running an online store has heard of Shopify, and high-volume sellers have explored the Shopify Plus platform. And, when thinking of making the switch, it’s important to know what help is available. 

The standard Shopify platform has other types of partners such as affiliates and developers.

The Shopify Plus partner program, first launched in 2016, is a directory of hand-selected technologies and services that have been vetted by the platform itself.

Partners are proven to have expert e-commerce and platform experience, so they can be trusted by any Shopify Plus merchant.

Both technology and service partners have access to an exclusive resource database to help them grow with the Plus platform and continually provide better service to their users. The community works together as a team, collaborating to create a Shopify Plus partner ecosystem; this gives merchants access to a holistic growth platform rather than standalone services and software options.

Access to Shopify Plus Partners is one of the biggest merchant benefits of upgrading to Shopify Plus.

Not on Shopify Plus? Check out our review (or our comparison with the standard Shopify plan) to help make your decision.

How are the Shopify Plus Partners Selected?

Anyone who wants to become a Shopify Plus partner goes through a rigorous screening process. Applications are taken seriously and only top agencies and software solutions are chosen.

How Many Partners are There?

Currently, Shopify Plus has 65 technology partners and 127 service partners (51 agencies and 76 solutions). Like the platform itself, the partner program is an exclusive community. While these numbers are likely to grow with the platform, they probably won’t scale as quickly as the standard Shopify options because of what it takes to get in. 

Technology Shopify Plus Partners Overview

With a standard plan, you have access to nearly any Shopify app you can think of. With a Plus plan, the platform recommends and enables easy integration with only the best e-commerce software.

Technology partners give merchants seamless integrations with popular tech:

• SEO/ SEM
• PIM
• Search
• EDI

Accessibility to these options helps online store owners accelerate growth through the use of advanced software.

What Technologies are Available?

26 different types of e-commerce software are available from technology partners in the Shopify Plus partner program. Everything from affiliate marketing to POS and warehouse management can be enhanced with an app. 11 of these options work with the Shopify Flow app, which turns tasks into automation.  

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Not all Shopify Plus apps are yet compatible with the Flow interface, but those that are stand out from the rest. Take a look at compatible apps in the Shopify Plus partner technology section to see what they can do for your online sales operations.

1. dotdigital Engagement Cloud

Image source: dotdigital

The Engagement Cloud by dotdigital can help you build committed, enduring relationships with your customers. Connect with and empower your shoppers with a suite of tools including email, mobile, social, and advertising. Implement automation, segmentation, and rich customer profiles.

In a nutshell, this is an advanced customer relationship management (CRM) platform to integrate with your Shopify store. It collects, stores, and analyzes data about your customers to help you make the most informed shopper interaction decisions.

2. Gorgias

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Use Gorgias, the complete Shopify helpdesk, to help your customer service representatives view all of your messaging platforms from one location. Your reps can edit customer orders without leaving the app. And, you can automate answers to simple, frequently asked questions, freeing up time for your team to focus on answering more complex queries.

Trust a top rated solution to provide your shoppers and customers with the best possible service experience of your e-commerce brand.

3. Klaviyo

Image source: Klaviyo

One of the most full-featured e-commerce email marketing campaign platforms is available on Shopify Plus with Flow integration. Klaviyo makes your email campaigns more intelligent and effective through powerful segmentation, detailed analytics, and informative reports.

This platform shines brightly in a sea of fierce competition because it has everything you need to create, implement, automate, and analyze your email marketing efforts with the least amount of work. Users are satisfied and it’s made the cut.

4. Listrak 

Image source: Listrak

Listrak is a customer data empowered digital marketing cloud that promises to deliver results. From a 360-degree customer profile to customer insights, AI personalization, and conversion rate optimization (CRO), this platform will help you orchestrate all of your cross channel marketing promotions.

Compared to other similar platforms, Listrak users have three times higher engagement, six times higher revenue, and two times higher conversion. Overall, it is a trusted solution to bring your marketing efforts to the next level.

5. LoyaltyLion -

Image Source: LoyaltyLion

Loyalty Lion knows that an online merchant’s future success depends entirely on its existing customers. So, they deliver a solution for web retail store owners to create data-fueled loyalty programs as unique as their brand. This app is proven to help businesses increase customer retention and sales.

In addition, it’s trusted as a solution for thousands of e-commerce companies worldwide. It enables top-of-the-line rewards programs that can award a specified amount of points for any action taken on the connected website and more.

6. Nosto

Image source: Nosto

Nosto helps you personalize the customer experience you deliver. It collects data to analyze shoppers’ omnichannel behaviors and purchases. The world’s leading digital commerce AI can give your website visitors targeted, personalized recommendations based on what trends it recognizes in their behavior.

Top machine engineers, data scientists, and PHDs have been working for the past seven years to continually improve the patented technology. If you want to inspire your customers, this app is well worth looking into.

7. Bronto

Image Source: Bronto

Leading the way in e-commerce email marketing, Bronto by Oracle integrates seamlessly with Shopify Plus. The API is versatile with many tools to help you deliver optimized campaigns. You can store customer data and purchase information in the existing CRM, or integrate it with another. Create personalized email campaigns that you can send at the right time, to the right shoppers.

Automation is handled through an easy-to-use drag and drop interface, so most merchants aren’t overloaded with the frustration of learning new, complicated technology.

8. Smile

Image source: Smile

Smile.io is the solution that can help you turn first-time shoppers into lifetime buyers. The app is reward program management made easy. You can design a program your way, then make changes instantly, in real time. Using the system will negate the need for your IT or dev team to work on your promotions by simplifying the processes.

You can view your program member details to see what actions users have taken and see their points balances and other information. A simple reporting dashboard will help you see important customer data that can help influence better future campaigns.

9. Swell Rewards 

Image source: Swell

Another great reward platform management platform (created by Yotpo) on the Shopify Plus technology partner program is Swell. Using this app, you can create tailored customer experiences using multiple campaign options. Maximize engagement and enhance your brand with 15 out-of-the-box campaigns that will drive high-value purchase behaviors.

The flexible program logic includes granular campaign settings that enable you to customize your program to your own specific goals. Using the VIP tiers, you can encourage your customers to take actions that drive them up the ladder for higher reward benefits.

10. Tapcart 

Image source: Tapcart

Tapcart will help you retain customers by creating your own aesthetically appealing mobile app. Sync it with your store and experience eight times more sales from customers who download and use your app. Nurture more customer loyalty, improve your buyer retention, and boast about your newfound 26-second average checkout time.

The beauty is that you can design and update your app from anywhere, including your mobile phone. So, change your colors and fonts and upload new content on the go. Leverage built-in oush notifications to get your customers back after shopping. Tapcart integrates with many other e-commerce apps available with Shopify Plus.

11. Yotpo 

Image source: Yotpo

Leverage a full-suite e-commerce solution to create more happy customers and drive more online sales.

• Reviews and Ratings
• Visual Marketing
• Loyalty and Referrals
• Customer Insights

You can use Yotpo to showcase user-generated content (UGC) across your website, easily collect reviews, and display your visual content with reviews to optimize your brand image. In addition, you can Q&A for more detailed product descriptions.

Use your UGC across multiple marketing channels and build loyalty programs that encourage repeat purchases.

Related: Our list of the best Shopify apps on the market.

Service Partners Overview

Shopify Plus service partners are the best of the best agencies and solutions for e-commerce business services. Those who leverage them know they are the smartest options for building their brand.

Service partners work in a wide range of fields.

• Product Development
• Retail Strategy and Activations
• e-Commerce Business Strategy
• Functional e-Commerce Strategy
• Technical e-Commerce Strategy
• Brand Strategy and Identity (Marketing)

Expert agency knowledge assures high-volume sellers the most robust strategies, including customer service, increasing their likelihood of success. Service partners are likely to understand the tools available from technology partners, so they open highly-targeted, specialized doors for online store owners.

What Services are Available?

According to the service partners page on the Shopify Plus website, Between the 127 service partners recommended by Shopify Plus, there are solutions and agencies in 40 countries and 22 industries providing 19 different services.

1. 3-D Modeling - Leverage one of five trusted 3-D modeling services to help your business achieve commercial success. In e-commerce, this is a powerful way to compete with the best.

Furniture retailers and others have been using this technology to deliver three-dimensional image representations of what their products will look like in the customer’s home. Work with agencies and solutions that already know your audience and best practices.

1. Accessibility Compliance - You should adjust your website for accessibility. Why? Because you create better experiences for customers with disabilities. This fact is just as true as it is offline -- there’s a reason brick and mortar businesses install wheelchair ramps and use braille.

Your digital store is no different. Getting an expert to help you will improve your reputation and brand recognition because you will become more inclusive.

1. Automation With Shopify Flow - Being the first ecommerce automation platform to streamline manual tasks, Shopify Flow has become a must-have for high-volume online stores. Integrating your store with the system will free up time for your team so you can focus on the tasks that really matter.

You can even use the platform to track, analyze, and report on how well your automation helps your bottom line. Doing so informs your future automation strategy. You should select a service that understands your needs.

1. Brand Strategy and Brand Identity - Customers purchase products because of a story that they have bought into. I believe it was Seth Godin who said something along the lines of, “If we all made purchase decisions based on the truth, everyone would drive a used Honda.”

Your brand identity is your story, and it’s why people choose to purchase from you or click away forever. Shopify Plus’ partner brand services work with companies like you every day and know what it takes to tell a tale of success.

1. Business Strategy - Your business strategy is your company’s foundation. It is everything you stand on. All e-commerce companies need a strong business strategy to survive. And, they need to continually make updates based on the insights they receive about their sales.

So, you need to have someone analyze your business plan, from time to time, helping you make adjustments where they are needed. Choose someone you can trust from the Shopify Plus partner program directory.

1. Content Strategy and Development - The fundamentals of creating a successful content marketing strategy are complex, to say the least. Many online store owners get this part wrong from the beginning.

One of the best ways to make sure your content is helping you drive sales is to hire an expert. Choose a vetted partner to give yourself the highest chance for success and rest easy knowing you’re making the right moves.

1. Digital Marketing Strategy and Execution - Just because your store exists online doesn’t make you a digital marketing expert. After all, the two are not mutually exclusive. It’s important that you work with others who understand this.

Your service provider should see what creates success and what causes failure daily. Use the partner of your choice to ensure the highest chance of increased ROI from your digital marketing efforts.

1. Fulfillment Services - Outsourcing the fulfillment process to a third-party vendor can improve your operations by freeing them up from a lengthy returns process and human error on your part. Put someone trustworthy in charge of your order fulfillment so you can focus on running a business without excess stress.

If they’re in the partner program, you can rely on them to live up to their word, otherwise, they wouldn’t be there.

1. International Expansion - If you’re looking for an undeniable opportunity to scale your operations, look no further than international expansion. By selling your products overseas, you open new sales channels worldwide.

And, if you implement your ideas with best practices in mind, you’re most likely to see increased sales and profits with your online store. Make the most of your exports and new stores with someone who knows exactly what to do and has proven their expertise.

1. Mobile App Development - The development of mobile apps for sales has revolutionized the way people shop. Use an app to send push notifications to your shoppers, provide an enhanced and convenient experience, and watch the sales roll in -- if you do it right anyway.

Find a consultant who works on a daily basis with brands like yours to shine on the Shopify Plus platform. If you get this right, your sales could start to increase faster than you think.

1. Ongoing Website Management - You already know that your online store isn’t a “set it and forget it” machine. It requires maintenance. And, the more often you upgrade your website, the better.

Furthermore, not everyone knows the ropes of the inside of Shopify Plus’ e-commerce platform. Since the partner service developers have undergone rigorous scrutiny before being able to join, you are most likely to find a solution with one of them.

1. Product Development - When it’s time to come up with new products to sell in your store, you need a lot of information. But, what factors are most likely to bring you success? And, what factors are likely to cause your inevitable failure as an online store? Work with someone who knows so that you don’t have to make a costly mistake.
2. Retail Strategy and Activations - Your business strategy should include -- but won’t always be synonymous with -- your retail strategy. While you may end up getting lucky with a business strategist who also has retail strategy expertise, this isn’t always going to be the case. When you need someone to help you determine how you’re going to sell your products, check out the partner program first. This is where you’re most likely to find exactly what you need.
3. Systems Integrations - You’re not going to become a high-volume online seller by cutting corners. You will want to use the best quality and most effective tools you can afford. But, you don’t want to get tied into any contracts you can’t uphold, and you shouldn’t have to take risks with your software.

So, find an integration specialist from a trusted source to make the most of your Shopify Plus store operations. Make sure the tools you use are compatible with one another to avoid customer-end hiccups that could destroy your sales.

1. Virtual and Augmented Reality - Hand-in-hand with 3-D modeling, virtual and augmented reality can serve you by bringing your products into the customer’s home before they ever make a purchase. Work with someone seasoned with the intricacies of the processes.
2. Website Audit and Optimization Strategy - Your website audit and optimization strategy will fall in line with your digital marketing, but won’t always be the same. Instead, sometimes you will need someone to come in and go over your website with a fine-toothed comb to tell you what you could be doing better, and what you’re already doing well.
3. Website UX Design and Development - A user experience (UX) designer will audit your website, much like referenced above, but their focus will be on how a customer will experience your site as opposed to search engines, etc. Consult an expert by checking out the partner program directory.
4. Wholesale/ B2B - Are your a wholesale or B2B seller who seems to run into the problem that people assume all best practices are suited to B2C operations? If so, you’ll need wholesale and B2B services to keep your strategy on track.

Your market is completely different than someone in retail, so get help with your strategy from someone who knows your audience well. Choose a wholesale specialist to consult with about your operations.

1. e-Commerce Strategy - Now, this one should be a no-brainer, and you’ve made it this far, so you’re an expert, right? Well, wouldn’t it be nice to work with someone who is an expert in your niche, on your platform, and knows today’s best practices?

Probably, yes. So, make sure you’re getting the right person by looking in Shopify Plus partner directory first.

Final Thoughts

Are you ready to grow your Shopify store, or looking to upgrade to Shopify Plus? Learning about the partner options available with the platform will help you make an informed decision. And, there’s more where that came from. Subscribe to the Gorgias newsletter to receive more industry knowledge to help you make the right e-commerce decisions.

Without a doubt, Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms. Entrepreneur magazine ranks it as one of the Top 6 Ecommerce Platforms for Small Businesses. And Inc. Magazine ranks Shopify in their list of Top Seven E-Commerce Platforms. What’s more, Market Watch calls Shopify “the leading multi-channel commerce platform”.

Headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Shopify is an e-commerce platform for both online stores and retail POS (point-of-sale) systems. Shopify describes itself as “One platform with all the ecommerce and point of sale features you need to start, run, and grow your business.”

According to Shopify, more than 800,000 businesses in 175 countries use its e-commerce platform. For the calendar year 2018, the platform’s total gross merchandise volume exceeded $41.1 billion. In a recent earnings forecast, Shopify expects 2019 revenue to be between $1.48 billion and $1.50 billion.

Out of the box, Shopify offers a low threshold for entry and is easy to set up and use. Shopify offers several basic plans and pricing models for a variety of business types and sizes. Their entry pricing model serves as an excellent example for current and future startups to emulate.

However, for more robust businesses and existing enterprises looking to migrate to a new e-commerce platform, there is Shopify Plus. Launched in 2014 the Plus option is geared towards enterprise level businesses. As a result, it is more robust. In this article, we’ll explore Shopify Plus, look at Shopify Plus pricing, and compare it to a few other e-commerce platforms.

Advantages of Shopify Plus

While Shopify is adequate for your average e-commerce outfit, larger enterprises have more extensive c-commerce needs. Consequently, these companies need better-than-average solutions. As a result, many flagship brands, including Kylie Jenner, Red Bull, and others, use Shopify Plus.

Even though all of Shopify’s options (including Shopify Plus) use the same dashboard, editor, and help center, Shopify Plus offers these enterprise-level companies much more functionality than any of Shopify’s other plans.

For example, Shopify Plus comes with unlimited staff accounts along with personalized help and support. On top of that, it can handle over 10,000 transactions per minute. This means that large-volume retailers don’t need to worry about whether their site will crash. Marketing educator, consultant, and SEO specialist Nate Shivar lists a several of Shopify Plus’ other main advantages.

• Scaling Reliability — Proven infrastructure which supports enterprise-level businesses or business’ scaling up to that enterprise level; also beneficial for retailers who need seasonal scaling to accommodate increased holiday traffic
• International Deployment — Built-in tools like geo-targeting, currency, and language options to easily and quickly expand internationally
• APIs, Integration & Extensions — Add-on friendly and easily extensible with its own App Store ecosystem
• Predictable Pricing — Starts at $2,000 per month, which includes a lot of beneficial services:

• Development and Maintenance — Includes hosting, servers, bug fixes, order management, bandwidth, feature implementation, and file storage are all part of the platform
• Technical Support and Account Management — Dedicated account manager for each client
• Marketing — Includes many standard marketing tools

All of these features make Shopify Plus an ideal option for launching an e-commerce site or adding e-commerce options to existing sites.

Check out our in-depth post of the benefits of Shopify Plus for more information.

The Base Costs of a Shopify Plus License

As stated above, the Shopify Plus annual licensing fee starts at $2,000 per month. So you could plan on spending at least $24,000 per year on the license alone. In addition, you will spend an extra percentage depending on your revenue. Since Shopify Plus bases pricing on usage and sales volume, the license cost increases when you exceed $800k in a month.

On top of the basis licensing fee, Shopify Plus also has a fee structure based on revenues. This is the actual pricing of the platform. There is a ceiling to this pricing — the maximum license fee is $40,000 monthly. For example, according to Shopify Plus pricing, a $1,000,000 per month company pays $2,500 in monthly licensing fees. In order for that same merchant to pay the maximum $40,000 monthly license fee, they would need to reach $16 million in monthly sales.

So what does $2,000 a month buy you on the Shopify Plus platform? This monthly license covers a number of services, including:

• Hosting Fees
• Maintenance Costs
• Version Upgrades
• Native Multi-channel Capabilities
• Shopify’s POS solution — along with integrated selling solutions for eBay, Facebook, and Amazon
• Account Management — including a dedicated Launch Manager and Account Manager who typically provides:

• General Shopify support and suggestions
• About 3 hours per month of basic front-end development work
• Guidance for growing your store
• Onboarding support
• General Shopify Plus solutions advice

Overall, the Shopify Plus pricing structure is competitive. Especially considering that this cost includes hosting. Specifically, this pricing positions the platform on the lower end for enterprise-level e-commerce solutions.

But what if you already have an e-commerce presence? Can you migrate to Shopify Plus? The short answer is ‘Yes’. If your business already has an online store, but have thought of switching to a new platform, then this Shopify Plus pricing guide is perfect for you. This guide won’t dive into the technicalities of migration, but it will mainly focus on options and pricing.

Moving an Existing E-commerce Site to Shopify Plus

An increasing number of retailers have chosen to move to Shopify Plus including MVMT, Gymshark, Hawkers, puravida, and Emma Bridgewater. Of course the Shopify Plus website touts all the platform’s features, benefits, and perks. However, Shopify does not explicitly list the cost of migrating your site from your current e-commerce platform to Shopify Plus.

In general, the lack or standard pricing for moving your site to Shopify Plus is mainly because each business is unique. Specifically, Shopify Plus asks you to contact them, so they can walk you through the process, plans, and pricing.  This makes sense, especially considering that your specific Shopify Plus pricing depends on several factors including scale, revenue, traffic, and others.

Side Costs of Shopify Plus

Although Shopify doesn’t outline the side costs of migration, at the same time, there are some sample prices from third-parties that serve as solid guidelines. Based on a hypothetical mid-level Shopify Plus project, we’ve outlined some more specific pricing for a mid-level enterprise’s first year of using Shopify Plus. Overall, a mid-level user could expect to spend between $130,200 and $270,200 during their first year with Shopify Plus. Below is a cost breakdown:

• $60,000 to $200,000 — The average build cost for a Shopify Plus site; depends on the scope of the project and complexity of the site
• $24,000 annually — Annual Shopify Plus licensing cost, starting at $2000 per month; this increases based on your revenue level
• $36,000 annually — BAU development costs
• $7,200 annually- Third party services for shipping, personalization, search, etc.
• $3,000 annually (about $250 per month) — Average yearly app costs

Factoring in Costs for Shopify Apps

Shopify Plus has a great deal of functionality. At the same time, third-party apps boost and extend its capacity even further. These apps meet needs like enhanced SEO tools, enterprise-level functionality, and enhanced site personalization. As a result, when talking about Shopify Plus pricing, be aware that you’ll need to spend money on additional apps for improved functionality of your e-commerce site.

In general, the norm for Shopify Plus third-party apps to pay a monthly licensing fee. One of the great benefits of this pricing model is the low cost of entry. Yet at the same time, paying a monthly fee for numerous apps tends to add up. If you are accustomed to Magento, which generally offers one-off license fees for apps, this will require an adjustment to your budgeting.

So even though you’ll spend less money up front, your total monthly costs for Shopify Plus apps may be more than you’re accustomed to. What’s more, apps have different monthly costs — licensing fees for Shopify Plus apps range from $50 to $500 each. However, one major benefit of monthly app licenses is that if you don’t like an app or find you don’t need it, you simply stop using it and find another app.

Be aware that if your business requires a specialized, custom-made app, then you’ll pay a premium for it. For example, development firms tend to charge $90 to $175 per hour for built-from-scratch apps. So the actual cost of the app will depend on its complexity, function, and size.

Related: Our list of the best Shopify apps for ecommerce merchants.

Site Design and Build Costs

Regarding site design and build, Shopify Plus does offer templates you to purchase. Yet if you choose a template, you’ll inevitably want to personalize it to differentiate your site from all the other e-commerce sites out there. This means you’ll pay for personalization, either in the form of a tailor-made site or a heavily-modified template.

Whether you do this design and build work in-house or contract with a design firm or a freelancer, it is important to factor in this cost. Depending on your needs, the estimated cost for this service might range between $75,000 and $100,000 (or more). And of course, the actual cost hinges on the complexity of your site and your business’ specific needs. Larger merchants with more complex needs will spend considerably more during the design and build process.

When migrating your site to Shopify Plus, make sure you work with a firm or freelancer who specializes in this platform. Overall, the firm you choose should be both creative and practical. This means they should deliver a unique, attractive, user-friendly site which also delivers exceptional functionality on every level.

Because of this, finding the right agency to build your site is key to success. Consider working with a Shopify Plus Technology partner to ensure you get the build possible.

Payment Processing Costs Via Shopify Payments

On top of the licensing fees, every merchant pays payment processing costs to a payment processor. This is true whether you use Shopify Payments or third-party processor. At the same time, you might find lower charges by using a third-party payment processor. In addition, be aware that Shopify does charge a 0.15% fee if you use a third-party payment provider.

Shopify Plus Pricing Compared to Other Platforms

How does Shopify Plus pricing stack up to other e-commerce platforms? Below we examine a few of the most popular platforms and compare them to Shopify Plus:

Shopify Plus vs Shopify

When talking about Shopify Plus, it’s helpful to introduce regular Shopify. With this plan, you get a 14-day free trial period without any up-front setup fees. Simply you can jump in and set up your store while you decide which pricing plan best fits your needs. There are three monthly pricing options:

• Basic Shopify (for starting your new business) - $29 per month
• Shopify (for growing your business) - $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify (for scaling your business) - $299 per month

Each of these plans comes with different options and levels of service for your business. All three come with an online store, sales channels, 24/7 customer support, unlimited products, the Shopify POS app, and other features. Yet, as you can imagine, the more you pay, the more options you get for your business.

For example, the Basic plan includes 2 Staff Accounts while the Shopify and Advanced Shopify include 5 and 15 Staff Accounts respectively. In addition, Advanced Shopify has exclusive features like an Advanced Report Builder and Third-party Calculated Shipping Rates. However, Shopify Plus definitely has even more to offer.

Read our in-depth comparison of Shopify and Shopify Plus.

Shopify Plus vs Magento 2 Commerce

First released in 2008 by Varien, Inc, Magento is an open-source platform. Written in PHP, Varien originally developed this e-commerce software with the help of volunteers. Varien released the first general-availability version of Magento on March 31, 2008. After changing hands a couple of times, Adobe later acquired the platform. On November 17, 2015, Magento 2.0 was released.

Overall, Shopify Plus is less expensive than Magento 2 Commerce. According to Ecommerce Guide:

The ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ of a website built on Shopify Plus tends to be cheaper than a site built on Magento 2 Commerce.

The site also suggests that this lower cost makes Shopify Plus a better option for businesses that are currently at lower revenue levels. The article also details a few other costs comparisons between Shopify Plus and Magento:

• Design/ Build Costs — Magento Commerce builds tend to cost more than Shopify Plus projects. One reason for Shopify Plus’ lower build cost is that the builds involve less integration work and less backend development. In the end, less time working on the build means you spend less money up front. Specifically, Ecommerce Guide estimates spending about $100,000 for a Shopify Plus build and between $150,000 to $500,000 for a Magento 2 Commerce build.
• License Fees — Although both Shopify Plus and Magento 2 Commerce come with a license fee, Shopify Plus charges on a monthly fee while Magento charges an upfront, annual license fee. As is the case with Shopify Plus, Magento also bases the fee on your business’ revenue level. However, Magento bills you up front annually as ‘Gross Merchandise Value’. So for Magento Commerce licensing fees, expect to pay about $2,000 per month if you’re at the lowest monthly level fee.
• Hosting — As stated above, the $2,000 per month Shopify Plus license fee includes hosting. Shopify Plus hosting includes security patches, SSL certificates, PCI compliance, and other things. In comparison, Magento offers two options. Magento 2 Commerce Cloud has a similar hosting package but at a slightly higher monthly fee. Magento’s base cost is around $3,333 which includes the license and hosting.
• Site Maintenance — For monthly maintenance, fixes, and updates, Shopify Plus is typically cheaper than Magento.

At the end of the day, Shopify Plus is generally less expensive than Magento 2 Commerce. At the same time it depends on your business’ specific needs.

Shopify Plus vs WooCommerce

For small to large-sized online merchants that use WordPress, WooCommerce is a popular open-source e-commerce plugin. Designed specifically for WordPress, it launched September 27, 2011. The fact that the plugin is free (the base product) easy install makes it an attractive to businesses of a certain size.

In a comparison article, Simon Gondeck puts Shopify Plus up against Woo Commerce. He bases his comparison on several factors. Gondeck uses the example of a lower mid-market ecommerce business making between $1 million and $10 million in annual sales.

For a Shopify Plus site, he estimates the build cost (design and development) to be around $30,000. The monthly license fee is $2,000 per month, but Gondeck adds an estimated $2,000 per month for ‘developer maintenance costs’. At the end of the first year, he estimates the cost for a Shopify Plus site to be about $78,000. However, once the site is fully developed, the second year cost would drop to an estimated $48,000 per year.

For WooCommerce, Gondeck estimates the build cost to be about the same as Shopify Plus (around $30,000). However, he believes WooCommerce has lower month to month maintenance fees and costs. Although the developer maintenance costs are similar (about $2,000 per month), the monthly license fee (which includes the domain and hosting costs) is only about $200 per month. With all the costs totaled up, WooCommerce comes in at around $55,200 for the first year with an ongoing annual cost of about $26,400 per year.

Yet in the end, Shopify Plus pricing comes out slightly higher than WooCommerce in a head-to-head comparison. Gondeck recommends Shopify Plus for its simplicity and ease of use out of the box. He specifically recommends this e-commerce platform “for larger businesses with no current ecommerce presence.”

Shopify Plus vs BigCommerce Enterprise

Founded in 2009, BigCommerce develops e-commerce software for businesses. According to the company, the BigCommerce platform has processed $16 billion in total sales.

Like Shopify, BigCommerce has also launched an enterprise-level platform, BigCommerce Enterprise. Launched in May 2015, the platform was designed to accommodate high-volume retailers. And like Shopify Plus, BigCommerce also hosts some big name brands such as Skullcandy and Ford. So how does Shopify Plus pricing compare to BigCommerce Enterprise?

As we’ve already said a couple of times, Shopify Plus pricing starts at $2,000 per month with increases based on your sales volume. Also, Shopify Plus has no hosting fees, support fees, or monthly maintenance costs. In contrast, BigCommerce Enterprise’ pricing various greatly. Like Shopify Plus, BigCommerce doesn’t explicitly list prices for the Enterprise platform. However, according to WebMakeWebsites, you can get a basic plan for around $400 per month.

However, Nate Shivar puts the BigCommerce Enterprise’s monthly price at around $1,000. Yet, depending on your business’ capacity and needs, the high end of the monthly fee can add up to $15,000 per month. In the end, Paul Rogers states:

The pricing of Shopify Plus and BigCommerce generally comes out very similar — the licensing is comparable (with BigCommerce Enterprise being based on order volume and Shopify Plus being a GMV model with a minimum fee) and build costs are generally in the $75k – $200k bracket for both, in my experience. Shopify Plus does have some additional charges if you choose to use an external payment provider, but this is relatively low (0.25%).

Like Shopify Plus pricing, your actual BigCommerce pricing monthly depends on your sales, traffic, and other factors.

In Conclusion: Advantages of Shopify Plus

Without a doubt, Shopify is one of the top e-commerce platforms available today. And with Shopify Plus, enterprise-level businesses benefit from exceptional functionality to meet all their e-commerce needs. Compared to popular platforms like Magento, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, Shopify Plus is a great platform for new e-commerce sites or for companies looking to migrate to a more robust platform. So whether you’re already at the enterprise level or you have plans to scale up to the next level like Campus Protein, Shopify Plus is certainly one of your best e-commerce options.

Still on the fence? Read our in-depth review of Shopify Plus.

Gorgias is a customer support helpdesk providing flawless customer service for Shopify stores. Currently, we partner with over 1,000 merchants and our Starter plan is only $10/month. Get started for free or schedule a demo today! Or Contact Us Today to learn more about what we can do for your Shopify site.

And the Margin that Customer Service Impacts Your Net Profit.

In, The State of the Ecommerce Customer Service Industry Report for 2019, we found that a surprising 79% of respondents do not know the cost of a support ticket on the company.

This is quite scary, as this metric helps define the overall profitability of the product, and set reinvestment schedules for the growth of your company.

If costs overtake margin, you lose money with every sale.

While the Gorgias mission is to turn customer service from a cost center into a revenue generator, we do need to acknowledge the raw costs of customer support in order to bake it into our calculation of margin.

What metrics are we going to cover:

• Cost per support ticket.
• Cost per order.
• Cost per revenue.

Why should you track these metric?

• It helps baseline your opportunity for growth and profitability.
• You can make concerted efforts to lower your cost with customer service improvements.
• You can track indicators that something is going wrong with your business, and may require extra attention from the Head of Ecommerce or COO.
• You can hold your head of customer service accountable for staying within appropriate margins, and incentivize them accordingly.

Now, let’s get into it…

Step 1: Calculate your Cost Per Ticket

Here’s the data you need to collect:

Total cost of customer service. This includes technology, employees, managers, office space, equipment, travel… Everything. This should be easy to calculate if your accounting department is doing their job; they should be able to just hand you over a number. A monthly breakdown of the trailing 12 months is best.

Tickets per month. This can be found in your Gorgias dashboard under “Statistics.

Be sure to set the dates to match appropriately:

Now that we have these two numbers, we can get an understanding of our cost per support ticket.

Simply divide: In this example, we’ve got 1651 tickets in December. We spent ~$4500 on customer service. Therefore each ticket costs us $2.73.

Knowing your average cost per ticket helps you understand the time and value behind resolving customer inquiries. If this number goes up, then you’re inquiries are getting more complex - its either taking more time or more people to answer the same number of questions.

If you ever see this number spike, it’s likely due to a flaw in your product design. Immediately begin looking for commonalities among tickets, inspecting your inventory, and trying to get to the root of the problem before you make even more customers unhappy.

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Step 2: Calculate Your Support Cost Per Order

Next up, you need to know your support cost per order, in order to bake customer support into your margin.

Here’s the data you need to collect:

• ‍Orders per month.

To find this, simply log in to your Shopify dashboard, go to Orders, and add in a couple filters:

You can then “select all” and it will tell you the count of orders. For additional accuracy, you may want completed orders, not including refunds or other issues.

For our example month, we placed 2621 orders. That gives us a cost per order of $1.73

According to our Ecommerce Customer Service data, we estimate that small stores will see 88 support tickets per 100 orders, or roughly 1.1 support tickets for every $100 in revenue.

While large stores, with over $500k revenue/month, will see only 56 support tickets per month and .4 support tickets per every $100 in revenue.

How does your support cost per order compare with these benchmarks? Let us know in the comments below.

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Calculate Your Cost Per Revenue

Sometimes it's helpful to calculate your cost per revenue as well, which is simply grabbing your net sales number from Shopify and dividing by tickets.

Data you need to collect:

Revenue.

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Step 3: Consult with COO / Head of Ecommerce

You were previously calculating your margin without including the cost of support…

Even though support drives customer satisfaction, retention, and, in some cases, sales, it also has a clear impact on margin.

How does this new metric affect your COGS? Your margin?

If your average order value is $50, with a $13 margin, you now have only a $11.27 margin.

How does that affect your advertising objectives?

How does it affect your ability to invest into product research?

What can you do to improve your cost per order?

A lot. Mostly, this is called: ticket mitigation.

Here’s some of the more common opportunities:

• Updating your FAQ page.
• Improving your product detail pages.
• Video explainers.
• Onboarding videos.
• Educational retargeting campaigns,
• Stricter / more clear checkout processes.
• Improved notification emails to users.
• Faster shipping.
• Implementing new channels like SMS, on-site chat, or phone.

Final Thoughts

When you hire a new support agent, or manager, you will see your costs go up.

This is the nature of business: you’re investing in a new hire with the expectation that there will be more demand for them to fulfil.

You’re job, as an operations manager, head of Ecommerce, or COO, is to make sure those costs don’t get out of control while you look to scale your business.

Figure out what margins are acceptable to you and invest in growth cautiously. We’ve seen all too many companies fail because they oversupply and hit stretches of low demand.

That being said, if the business has healthy cashflow, and reasonable growth, I’d invest more in customer service before upping my ad budget.

It takes time to onboard new agents, and if you don’t have someone matching that demand, you’re creating unhappy customers, which is a surefire way to eat your margins even faster.

‍By Ross Beyeler, Founder and CEO of Growth Spark

Often, a support team answers the same questions over and over…

Or issues returns repeatedly for reasons that could be addressed internally…

Maybe the sizing isn’t well represented, the fulfillment house has mixed up SKUs, or your product images aren’t clear or detailed enough.

If you can lighten the load for your customer support team, you can save significant time and costs, while at the same time improving the buying experience for your customers.

The goals here are to:

• Reduce repeat inquiries
• Shorten first response times
• Speed up problem resolution time
• Lower overall customer care costs

The key is to address your customers questions and issues before they ask your support team. Here's how you do that:

A Better FAQ Page

91% of shoppers would gladly try to answer their own questions first using an online knowledge base or FAQ page before reaching out to a customer service team, according to a survey by Coleman Parkes for Amdocs.

This means that your FAQ page is a huge opportunity to answer your customers’ most common questions and issues so they don’t need to reach out to customer support.

FAQ information typically falls into one of two distinct buckets: product-specific and buying process.

Product Specific: Common questions about individual products may be better off addressed on the product pages rather than in a broad FAQ page. You may need to provide clearer or more comprehensive product descriptions, or consider more or better photography to clear up common product questions.

Buying Process: Questions about shipping, returns, policies, and other operational topics are best addressed in a single easy-to-find page like an FAQ.

When is the last time you cross-checked the content of your FAQ page with the data from your customer support team?

There are many customer support tools like Gorgias that will make it easy for you to track the reasons behind why users submit a ticket.

Once you begin tracking the topic, or tag, of your questions, you can easily identify the questions that top the list, and permanently add the responses to the FAQ.

Bonus points: Prioritize the FAQ page based on the frequency of each customer service inquiry so that the most relevant answers are closer to the top.

Your next step is to set up a monthly meeting with your head of customer service to review the feedback coming in from your customers and ask yourself:

• What are the most frequent topics of support inquiries?
• What issues take up the majority of your support team’s time and resources?
• What issues are emerging or could emerge do to seasonality or new initiatives within our company?

Remember, an FAQ page is:

• Easy to find
• If shoppers can’t find it quickly and easily, they won’t use it and all your work answering all of their questions will go to waste. If you have an answer on your FAQ page, yet people are still inquiring, they might be having trouble finding the page.

• Searchable
• Include a search bar so that shoppers can easily find the answers for their specific problem without having to read through everything else.

• Easy to read
• Use simple, conversational language. Technical slang gives most of us a headache, and leaves most people reaching for the closest live human to explain it in terms they understand.

For more on FAQ pages, check out this Shopify article.

Now that you have your FAQ page squared away, be sure to track visitors to the page and note any changes in volume, and look for changes in your support ticket volume around those related questions.

Remember: You should never answer a support ticket only by referencing your FAQ page. Always include the information they are asking for directly within your response. After that, let the customer know that there is an FAQ page for more information, to avoid future tickets.

See Where Your Customers Get Tripped Up

Have you watched actual customers explore your online store to see where they stumble?

Customer behavior tools like Hotjar make it easy to review how customers navigate your website. One way that customer behavior analysis tools can help you understand exactly how your customers are using your site is with heat maps.

A heat map is a visual representation of the most popular (hot) and unpopular (cold) elements of a website page. They can give you an at-a-glance understanding of how people interact with individual website pages. Elements that get the most views and interaction are shown in red, so you can immediately spot what your users are clicking on. Those that most people tend to ignore appear in blue.

Once you know which parts of your website are most (and least) useful to shoppers, you can tweak those elements to make the on-site experience easier to use.

Customer behavior data can inform on-site improvements, such as:

• Identifying any “dead” pages so you can remove them
• Recognizing “deep” content that requires too many clicks for customers to reach, and making it more visible or accessible
• Ensuring that customers can easily see and access main links, buttons, and CTAs
• Making sure that important elements are getting the attention they deserve
• Checking whether any static elements are getting clicked too often, and adjusting them to clarify that they aren’t a linked object

It may require some A/B testing to ensure your changes deliver results.

Learn from Returns

According to a recent Shopify post, during the holiday season, Ecommerce returns surge to 30 percent (or as high as 50 percent for “expensive” products).

Return deliveries are estimated to exceed $550 billion by 2020 in the U.S. alone.

Many of those returns are probably associated with a customer support ticket - whether customers are asking questions about the product they received, or need help processing their return.

Anything you can do to reduce the number of returns - and the number of customer support requests associated with them - can mean a huge boost for your bottom line.

So, what causes returns?

Returns can often be traced back to a disconnect between customer expectations and the reality of the product once they receive it. It may be that:

• It doesn’t fit the way they expected
• It doesn’t look or feel like they thought it would
• Delivery came later than they expected (or not at all)

All of these problems (and more) can be prevented in advance with improvements to your website content.

Sizing Issues

While fit can be a difficult factor to get right online, including detailed dimensions is a big step in the right direction. Some apparel merchants are taking sizing one step further with interactive fit guides, like the one above Nudie Jeans, which uses an app integration called Virtusize:.

Appearance Issues

Poor quality or not enough product images can make it difficult for customers to accurately understand what your product will look like when it arrives at their home.

You can easily reduce your return rate by making sure your product photography is clear and high-quality, and illustrates all of the primary parts of each product. More complicated or detailed products can also benefit from a video or 360-view.

Detailed product descriptions can also help address confusion about product appearance and feel. Sol de Janeiro does this with a multi-tab product content area that defaults to a brief product highlight, with additional tabs to provide more details.

Fulfillment Issues

Are orders not being fulfilled to the right customers?

Are deliveries taking longer than they should?

Analyzing your fulfillment data and using that information to make adjustments to your website content - such as average delivery times - can help eliminate a source of customer support calls.

For example, maybe you want to be able to deliver every order within two days, but your current fulfillment resources simply can’t make that happen consistently. Being up-front and clear about realistic delivery times (like The Black Dog does in their Shipping FAQ page, above) will help set customers’ expectations appropriately.

Bonus: To get setup on two day shipping, consider our partners at ShipBob.

Final Thoughts

Continue to study your on-site data using Google Analytics or Shopify’s native analytics and look for high exit % pages. These may be pages where prospects or customers are running into a dead end and being forced to turn to support.

You can also create a goal in Google Analytics that corresponds to contacting support, then reverse the user path to determine which pages lead to them submitting a ticket / hitting that “contact” or “support” button.

Chances are, there are a few areas of “low hanging fruit” that can make significant improvements to your customer support load once you find them and address the root concerns. And with those small fixes, you could see a big impact on your bottom line, and a better on-site experience for your customers.

Read more about customer support on our trusted partner’s site, Growth Spark:

• Shopify Store Customer Services: Turning Setbacks Into Opportunities

Best Practices for Shopify E-Commerce Customer Service

Ecommerce has become awash with digital bells and whistles. Technology has no doubt enhanced the shopper experience but the rapid rate of digital innovation has had a profound effect on customer expectations. By 2020, customers expect brands to automatically personalize experiences to address (not just predict) their current – and future – needs.

But, although customers expect more in terms of tech, they still crave the person-to-person connection. In fact, 75% of consumers want to see more human interaction, not less.

At LoyaltyLion we know that bringing back this human-touch depends on providing a good customer experience. Clearly, a worthwhile cause, as studies show that 86% of shoppers who received great customer care are more likely to repeat purchase. By going the extra mile to treat your shoppers as people – rather than numbers – you can secure a faithful, constant customer base.

Here are three insights that will help you bring the human touch back to your online store.

Use Data To Personalize Communications

Each customer is unique. They interact with your brand in different ways, all while having their own personal needs and desires. When a customer feels that you have taken the time to understand their unique requirements, they will trust and value your brand more.

Data and personalization go hand in hand. By using member information to learn how customers engage with your loyalty program, you can understand their feelings towards your brand and react accordingly. Being data-driven is the key to true e-commerce success.

One golden opportunity to personalize your communications this is through targeted emails. Use your Gorgias dashboard to identify past interactions and purchases, as well as a customer’s loyalty points balance. You can then use that member data to create bespoke rewards that you can send right to your customer’s inbox.

Maybe you’ve noticed that they keep eyeing a specific product range? If so, give them discounts on new products in that collection to tempt them to back to buy again. Or perhaps you’re aware that they’re just a couple of points away from their next reward. Give them a little nudge to return and receive their reward sooner. For example, LoyaltyLion user Dr. Axe alerts customers when they have rewards waiting to be claimed, and suggests a particular product to redeem that reward on.

Find Ways To Delight Customers

Shoppers love to feel that they’re your only priority and that you care about them on a personal level. They want to feel valued as individuals, not just another number in an extensive database.

Loyalty strategies should incorporate ways to surprise and delight customers. For example, making it easy to offer customers points on their birthday or taking a moment to personally congratulate them when they’ve made a certain number of purchases with you. Beauty Bakerie, for example, offers their customers 500 points on their birthday.

With Connectors for Shopify Flow, it’s easy to use LoyaltyLion and Gorgias to set up triggers that automatically create tickets on a customer’s birthday, reminding a representative to get in touch. It’s the thought that counts and going the extra mile will ensure your customers trust and remember you. Plus, you’ll feel good about it too!

Convert Negative Experiences Into Positive Ones

Customers get frustrated when they feel their complaints aren’t taken seriously. Dissatisfied customers will tell between nine and 15 people if they have a bad brand experience. Using Gorgias’ helpdesk and macros, you can help resolve complaints whilst maintaining a personal touch. For example, ethical online yarn store, Darn Good Yarn uses the helpdesk to analyse and automate how they solve common customer issues, using a whole database of the shopper’s history to address specific queries in a more informed way.

If you are reacting to customers have had a negative experience, your loyalty program can help you demonstrate you care. You might consider offering bonus points or benefits such as free delivery, or moving them up a loyalty tier so that they can unlock more exclusive rewards in the future. These tokens of appreciation can turn a bitter experience into a sweet deal.

Research shows that 94% of customers who have their issues solved painlessly said they would purchase from that company again. This shows that helping customers to solve their problems is key to securing their long-term loyalty. Treat your most valuable customers well by making their shopping experiences as easy as possible. In return, they’ll give you their loyalty.

It’s all about people-to-people

In a world where technology and data can give ecommerce stores a competitive edge, there’s a risk that we could lose touch with the human side of retailing. Human exchanges are still, and always will be, the primary driver of loyalty. So, use digital personalization to your advantage and treat your customers as individuals.  

It's been over 3 years since we've started working on the Gorgias helpdesk. The engineering team started with just me (Alex) and then gradually grew to a team of 5 people. We're a small team, but we've accomplished a lot during this period. Here are some stats from 0 code/customers/revenue in Oct 2015 to this:

• Handled over 16 million tickets.
• 2000 daily active sessions with an average length of ~4h each.
• 600 paying customers (companies).
• 17% MoM revenue growth.

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Modest numbers to be sure, but we're very proud that people use our product in a big part of their workday and hopefully are becoming more productive while doing so. The whole idea behind our product is to scale customer support with as little resources as possible. Given this, perhaps it's only natural to build our product with a small team as well?

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We've been suffering chronically from "not having enough people" - we still do. That forced us to adopt a certain engineering culture that I want to talk about in this post.

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When we first started building Gorgias, having just a few people on the team allowed us to progress at a pace where we could collect real feedback from our customers with things that really mattered to them rather than building every feature they ask for. A lot of their asks seemed legitimate, but because we didn't have a lot of people it forced us to prioritize the critical, high impact things first.

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Having a small team can act like a barrier that blocks you from building a bloated product.

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I want to make more of a case for the above statement, but first I'd like to get a bit more into what we did during the 3 year period.

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Once we've build an initial version of the app and got our first customers we quickly realized that building a "second Gmail" is super-hard:

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• Communication protocols (email/facebook/etc..) are complicated - we knew that before we even started, but it's difficult to describe the amount of work that needs to get done to make them work correctly. The amount of corner cases and weird protocol quirks is just staggering. In fact I would even go ahead and say that if you're integrating with any kind of external systems (webhooks, REST apis, etc..) then you're going to have a very hard time making them work correctly.
• Having a highly-available and fast app is very hard when you don't have a team of full-time SREs. Scalability was not our big concern when we first started because we didn't have customers, but having an app that was always on was very important, remember the ~4h average session length? It meant that we had to make some architecture and infrastructure decisions that allowed for a high uptime.
• Customer support software space has a very high barrier for entry these days. You need to have certain features before people start to even consider you as a platform. The switching costs are high as well because now you have to train your people on a new app and changing people's routine is hard.

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It takes a lot of effort to get to a point where you can compete with the likes of Gmail or Zendesk - both amazing products btw. This was definitely the case for us, for close to 2 years we had only a couple of customers and our product wasn't that good if we're being honest.

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So what changed a year ago? To put it simply: our product didn't suck anymore. Or sucked less. It had that minimum set of features and stability that made it attractive enough to our main customer base (Shopify merchants) that were passionate about productivity in the customer support space. That, and the tenacity of our CEO Romain who was convincing everyone that they should use us.

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So we started having our second wave of early adopters and all our hard work was finally starting to pay-off!

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Now that we had more and bigger customers we were starting to have performance issues, our app was slow, suddenly we were starting to get bombarded by viral facebook posts events or promotional events via an email campaigns, we didn't have enough monitoring in place, our app was pretty inefficient, the main database was a frequent source of congestion. So we started fixing those issues while still receiving numerous feature requests.

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Thankfully we didn't actually optimize our code that much before (no customers!) and there were a lot of low hanging fruits at first, but it still put a lot of stress on the team which was becoming tired and overworked and requested to hire more people to build those features and help with the performance issues.

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We all agreed that it would be for the best to have more people on the team, but hiring is hard. Competent coders are not just randomly looking for the next gig. SF is also a very expensive city and for a startup that raised $1.5M and a 2 years of money burned we couldn't really compete with other players in town. We've started working with some great devs in Europe, we worked with a few talented interns as well and we tried to get by until we could have more customers and hopefully raise some more money to hire more people.

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I could speak more about hiring in the Bay Area and there are a lot of things we did wrong and still have a lot of things to learn, but that's probably an even longer post than this one. But yeah, it's hard to find someone good, it's expensive, etc...

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So what is the situation right now? Well, it's not much better. We've raise d a seed extension round from SaaStr with Jason Lemkin and hired a few people in the Growth team, but we still have a hard time hiring in SF or remote. In the meantime we have a small team and want to talk about that.

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On the importance of saying NO

I think it's important to realize the advantages of having a smaller team and the single most important super-powers that you're forced to acquire is saying NO more often that you would with a bigger team. If you have a bigger team and say no to a feature, new platform, integration, etc.. it's harder to justify the decision. There are arguments like:

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... we have enough devs! They are paid to make features, so what's the problem!?

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... the data shows that 50% of our customers are saying that they want this or that feature, we must build it!

But do we absolutely need to build that feature? Are the customers going to be a lot less effective with your product otherwise? Is it going to be a big boost for them or just a nice improvement? Once a feature is there you have to maintain it, fix bugs, improve it, etc.. The thing with data driven decisions is that sometimes it can be biased towards some historical practice that might not have a place in your current world.

Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't listen to your customers, you absolutely have to, but be sure you understand well what they want before taking action and understanding takes time. Having an artificial brake on your enthusiasm might be a good thing.

Engineers build things, the natural tendency is to accept any technical challenge because of ego, curiosity, fun, etc... It takes discipline to say no and stick by it. A small team is making it easier to do it.

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Automation

When you have a small team you're forced to automate a lot more often some of your workflows. You don't have the luxury to do repetitive stuff so:

• You start writing more tests because you don't have people hired in QA and you don't want to repeat the same tests all the time.
• You add optional static typing, linting and other code quality tools because you don't have time to deal with random type errors or have debates about tabs vs spaces.
• You resolve repetitive bugs by doing some refactoring because you can't deal with the constant flow of tech support tickets.
• You make a lot of tasks retry-able so if a HTTP request to facebook failed you don't have to manually retry them.
• Cronjobs, cronjobs everywhere.

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Building the right culture is a long process

People that work at Gorgias come from different backgrounds and sometimes it can be challenging to be on the same page. In some cases our work processes are similar to many other companies:

• Github for our code and issues.
• Code-reviews on Reviewable - it's awesome!
• Jenkins to build our docker images and upload them to google cloud.
• Kubernetes to run everything on GKE.
• Sentry to collect production errors.
• Datadog to monitor everything.

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But there is so much more than just the above processes to engineering:

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• The way we all come together and decide how certain things will be built or fixed.
• The way we talk about a certain API decisions and refactoring.
• The way we deal with an outage and a bad bug that affects our biggest customers.

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These things need time to happen to be embedded in your engineering consciousness and if you're the first-time founder (like myself) you also need the time to understand how to operate in this environment.

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Management overhead

Never managed a big team so I can't really speak about it's dynamics, but I would expect that because there are more people there is a lot more bandwidth you have to manage, a lot more people have to agree, a lot more politics have to be settled. I don't look forward to that to be honest, the more time I can get away with hiring as little as possible without a big sacrifice of our growth as a company the more I'll try to delay it.

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I conclusion I would say that it's totally fine to have a small team, in fact, I'm considering it a competitive advantage that you should try to keep as long as you can.

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The irony

I made a point in this post that having a small team is a competitive advantage, but I also think that we are ready to grow our team a bit. Yep, we're hiring!

Facebook Messenger is becoming a new marketing channels for brands. They use it as a way to build personal relationships with customers and to drive higher conversion than traditional email marketing.

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Today, we're excited to announce our newest integration: Octane AI.

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The challenge with Messenger marketing

When a brand launches a marketing campaigns on Messenger, it typically leads to insane conversion rates. That's why the trend is on the rise.

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Another consequence is that a lot of customers respond to promotional Messenger communication. This generates a spike of support requests, that your support team has to deal with.

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Our integration with Octane AI lets you handle this support spike directly in Gorgias. Your agents have context about the customer: they see the conversation history before the Messenger conversation (did the customer email you last night?), and allow you to take action, like editing or refunding an order

What you can do with the integration

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• Respond to requests from customers, to make sure none of them falls through the cracks
• See the order data from Shopify next to your Messenger conversations
• Automatically respond to common questions, such as "where is my order"

Customers are already using Octane AI and Gorgias. Here's what Live Love Polish has to say about the Octane AI and Gorgias integration:

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“We’re really thrilled that Gorgias and Octane AI came together to make the customer service experience over Messenger even better for our customers. Accessible customer service is central to what we do at Live Love Polish. Answering customer questions via Messenger has made our customers happier.”

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Do you want to give this a shot? If you use both tools, just connect your Facebook page to your Gorgias account and see the magic happen. If not, create a Gorgias account, or sign up for Octane AI.

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Do you have questions? Just hit the chat bubble, our team would love to tell you more about the integration!