How to Sell

Shopify Plus
A sales resource for Shopify Plus Partners.

Last modified
10/2021
How to Sell Shopify Plus

Partners play a crucial role in introducing

new merchants to Shopify and providing
solutions that help them start, sell, market,
and manage their businesses.
This document is a comprehensive guide to Shopify Plus. It outlines the market
opportunity, positioning, and how to pitch Shopify Plus to your clients. Use this
resource to help develop a joint value proposition with Shopify, strengthen your
sales pitch, and learn Shopify Plus fundamentals.

Thanks for being part of the Shopify Partner Community,

The Shopify Partners Team

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How to Sell Shopify Plus

Market opportunity

The future of
commerce is now
We don’t need to tell you that today’s commerce industry is in a state of constant growth.
According to Forrester, ecommerce grew more in the first three months of COVID-19 than the
last 10 years combined, and almost one-third of the US economy was powered by ecommerce
by the third quarter of 2020. This shift permanently altered the way entrepreneurs start, run,
and grow businesses, as well as how consumers choose to shop and pay.

For some perspective, take a look at some telling stats from Shopify’s Future of
Commerce report:

• 84% of consumers have shopped online since the pandemic, compared to

The future of commerce is now

65% who have shopped in-store
• New stores created on the Shopify platform grew 71% in Q2 2020 compared to
Q1 2020, with a record number of merchants added to the platform in Q3
• Young consumers led the trend, with 67% shifting more of their spending to online
shopping compared to early 2020, ahead of older age groups (57% for consumers
35-54, and 41% for 55+)
• Buy now, pay later programs have been growing in popularity. The number of
Shopify merchants who offer buy now, pay later has increased by 60% since the
start of the pandemic

However, to say that commerce is growing barely scratches the surface. What’s
more important is how this growth manifests itself in the marketplace. The very core
foundations of consumer habits and expectations are evolving in response to a new
age of unpredictability, and the industry is shape-shifting to accommodate.

The world is more connected than ever, with any product or service we could wish for at
our fingertips. Online shopping is no longer a luxury; it’s become an absolute necessity to
help us stay safe, healthy, and provide for the needs of our families. The name of the game
for today’s merchants is ensuring that customers have access to what they want, when
they want it, in a way that integrates smoothly into their digital lifestyles.

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Disrupting legacy commerce

Enterprise software solutions for commerce have not evolved to meet the speed of
industry change. Instead, merchants have been confined to rigid, inflexible systems
with unrealistic time and resource costs.

As consumer experience expectations around omni-channel commerce continue to

evolve, brands will need to be ready. Succeeding in this environment requires technology
that enables brands to move quickly and innovate, without compromising on reliability.

New software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms can no longer require abstract technical

applications and enterprise architects. Traditional shops and legacy systems will be
replaced by 21st century thought leaders: digital agencies that push the envelope in
retail strategy and digital marketing.

Shopify Plus, in tandem with our ecosystem of partners like you, was built for this.

The future of commerce is now

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How to Sell Shopify Plus

Selling Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus at a glance

Enterprise organizations have complex, multi-faceted businesses that have traditionally
required a heavy investment of time, resources, and costly teams of specialists to execute
small and large tasks. We built the Shopify platform to put our merchants in control—
empowering them to do more of everything with ease and agility. This approach is even
more crucial right now given the pace of change in commerce.

Our platform puts merchants at the forefront of commerce trends, so they can scale further,
innovate, sell more, and create the best possible experience for their customers. This is
brought to life on Shopify Plus through core features like:

Apps and partner ecosystem

Shopify Plus at a glance

A massive ecosystem of apps, technology providers and agencies reduce the need for
integration and customization. Businesses can leverage all of the enterprise capabilities
of Shopify Plus with the consumability of Shopify.

Flexible, plug-and-play platform

Make changes fast with a drag-and-drop theme editor, or dive into the code for advanced
customization. Get started with Dawn, the new default online store theme, to express
your client’s brand—without having to code—then use sections everywhere to make
customizations with a few clicks. Or build a custom theme for your client from scratch.

Anywhere commerce
On Shopify, merchants can build storefronts anywhere—while managing everything from
Shopify. We offer more sales channels, payment gateways, and integration products than
any other ecommerce platform, enabling your clients to sell everywhere their customers are.
From Amazon and TikTok to Facebook Messenger and Shopify POS, you can check out all
Shopify’s sales channels on the Shopify App Store.

Also, Shopify’s Buy Button SDK can make any content site shoppable, while the Storefront
API and Custom Storefronts empower brands to build storefronts anywhere.

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Scalability and reliability

Shopify Plus’ cloud-based infrastructure—which powers over 600,000 merchants at 80,000
requests per second at its peak—works on a cluster of Shopify’s own servers running Docker
with the Rails app, along with a few AWS feature-based augmentations and provides 99.99%
server uptime. Shopify Plus has never had an outage on a Black Friday.

Rapid deployment
Shopify Plus requires no installation or deployment. It’s 100% cloud-based with standardized
APIs. Pre-existing connectors via the Shopify app store reduce the custom development and
integration requirements for many popular ERP, CMS and other business systems.

Implementation times of a Shopify Plus storefront are typically 2 to 3 months, but we’ve
seen faster with businesses that needed a solution spun up quickly. See how Heinz
launched in 7 days.

Whether we’re doing 500 or 5,000 orders a

Shopify Plus at a glance

day, Shopify Plus automatically scales with
us, without us having to do anything extra.

David Heath
Co-founder, Bombas

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How to Sell Shopify Plus

Built for growth

Shopify Plus is the only enterprise commerce solution built for high growth, high volume
businesses. It’s powered by the most advanced tools to help your clients scale, including:

Unlimited potential for growth

• Extend the Plus platform with apps and integrations, including two times more API calls
than with other Shopify plans—as well as Gift Card, Users, and Multipass/SSO APIs
• Expand internationally and allow your clients team to grow with unlimited staff accounts,
all managed from one central admin, with a unified view of automation flows, analytics,
insights, and user permission across all the stores in your organization

Easy to use

Shopify Plus at a glance

• Clients can manage every store and users in their organization from a single admin,
saving time that can be invested back into their brand.
• Shopify’s store editor is easy to use, so your clients can focus on their customer
experience, not their back end

Optimized for conversion

• See up to 18% higher conversion with Shopify Checkout when your clients enable
Shop Pay. It’s constantly enhanced for speed, conversion, and customer experience
across multiple devices.

Solve commerce problems with automation

• Leverage unparalleled flexibility to build the custom solutions and processes your
clients need to run their businesses
• Flow gives you the ability to access any data point in the Shopify Admin API and build
custom workflows for thousands of use cases and across dozens of 3rd party apps
• Automate workflows across your client’s stores and by connecting their existing third-
party apps—that have built Flow Connectors—to either trigger events in a workflow or
complete an action

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How to Sell Shopify Plus

Selling Shopify Plus

Enterprise-specific
features
For high-volume merchants, streamlining, customization, and functionality integration
are crucial for smooth operations. Take a look at our set of features developed just for
our enterprise merchants:

Shopify Scripts
Shopify Plus merchants can deploy complex promotion rules with inclusion and
exclusion logic through Shopify Scripts. Promotion logic can be applied straight

Enterprise-specific features
to line items on the cart page and in checkout.

High-performing APIs
Shopify Plus clients are given up to five times greater throughput of APIs, with access to
exclusive APIs like the Multipass/SSO and Giftcard API.

Checkout customization
On Shopify Plus, merchants fully brand their checkout experience through Liquid
templating and customize the data and views within the checkout process.

Internationalization
Each Shopify Plus account comes with 9 expansion stores to allow for selling in
additional regions. Plus, higher API throughput empowers our merchants to sync
inventory and product data across all of their international sites.

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Avalara Tax integration

Shopify Plus merchants get exclusive access to an automated “one-and-done” option for
taxes. Avalara Tax provides real-time tax calculation with guaranteed protection against
audit, obsolete data, and outdated tax laws.

Enterprise roadmap
Shopify Plus is continually rolling out new capabilities and features focused on
streamlining the management and deployment of enterprise commerce. There are
several products and tools coming later this year to help you unlock your creativity
with customizations, build for conversions, and scale with confidence. We’ll also be
expanding merchants' opportunities to sell globally, including end-to-end localized
storefronts from a single store.

Enterprise-specific features
Plus partner ecosystem
Shopify is made more powerful through our community of certified agency partners,
app developers, and experts who have a deep understanding of how to build on Shopify.
Even better, Shopify Plus merchants benefit from Shopify Plus-exclusive pricing and
discounts for dozens of apps and technology providers.

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How to Sell Shopify Plus

Selling Shopify Plus

How to refer a merchant

to Shopify Plus
We’re here to provide you with the sales support you need to refer, sell, and close more
Shopify Plus deals.

All Shopify Plus referrals should be referred through the Shopify referral form. This secures
your Revenue Share, if eligibility requirements are met, on closed deals.

Key things to include in the Plus Referral form include:

• Annual online and offline revenue for your client

How to refer a merchant to Shopify Plus

• Expected project kickoff date
• Merchant’s business location
• Your relationship to the merchant and how Shopify
can best support you through the sales process
• Your partner referral code

After submitting the referral form, all leads will be routed to our internal Sales Concierge
team for qualification. After being assigned to the appropriate sales resources, Shopify
will reach out to the merchant and partner.

If your referral requires specific technical support, Shopify may consult a Solutions
Engineer to assist with discovery, requirements analysis, architectural overviews, and
product demonstrations.

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Selling Shopify Plus

Additional resources
• Shopify Plus Blog
• Shopify Partner Blog
• eBook: Commerce Platform Evaluation
• eBook: Direct to Consumer Guide
• Global eCommerce Playbook
• Shopify Plus merchant success stories

Additional resources

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