The second level of the three main Shopify plans is the Advanced plan. Basic and Plus are the other two. This plan is for people who have already set up online businesses and want to get more out of the Shopify system, especially for marketing.
Here, we’ll start by talking about the things that the Advanced plan has that the Basic plan doesn’t. Then, we’ll talk briefly about the other features that both the Basic and Advanced plans offer.
First of all, the monthly price of the Advanced Plan is $107. This costs more than twice as much as Basic, which costs only $13 per month.
Let’s look at why, though, and then decide if it’s worth it.
Accounts of Staff
You can have up to 15 staff accounts with the Advanced plan. A staff account is an account in your Shopify store for your employees. People can work on important things for your online shop if you give them limited admin access.
This is a good idea for a busy store. With 15 staff accounts, you and up to 15 other people can work in your shop at the same time. This does not include your own access.
Here are some examples of what your staff can do:
- Make marketing campaigns. Have someone focus on making discounts, coupons, and Facebook ad materials to get more people to see your store and buy things from it.
- Process orders Staff members can look at the section for orders and start working on them. This person can close it or mark it as processed when the item has been packed and sent.
- Add more products and make the descriptions of the ones you already have better. You need to do this from time to time, especially for the ones that aren’t selling well.
- Write blogs and take care of SEO. Shopify has a section for blogs where you can have someone write helpful tips for your customers.
- Take care of customer questions or complaints. Customers may ask about your shipping rates, discounts, or how the discounts work, or they may have something to say. Make sure that your staff is ready to answer these questions.
Present Cards
If you’ve been to big stores, you’ve probably noticed that they sell cards that are about the size of a credit card. These cards can be used just like cash, but they can only be used at that store.
These are called gift cards, and they’re great for people who don’t know what to buy as a present.
With the Shopify Advanced Plan, you can do the same thing. But you won’t be making any cards. Instead, your customers can buy these cards online and then send them to their loved ones.
Now, their loved ones have to bring that card to your store and use it to buy something from you.
You can also make a physical card, but you’ll need Shopify POS to do so. You also need to go to a site called Shopify Hardware on other Shopify sites.
With this feature, you can design your gift card and then order it from Shopify. Shopify will print the cards and send you the real ones.
You can now give these physical cards to your friends and family or sell them to them.
Reports from experts
In business, you need to be able to look at numbers and data. This is the only way to make a smart choice when it comes to money.
With the Shopify Advanced plan, you can see great reports that are full of important information about how your business is doing.
Some of the numbers you will see are:
- The dashboard overview shows you a variety of numbers, such as the number of sales, the amount of money made, the number of visitors, the number of customers who come back, and more.
- Taxes and Finances is where you can see your bills, how much money you made from gift cards, your total sales, and more.
- Live View is a world map that shows how many people are on your site right now and where they are from.
- Behavior Reports This is where you can see the most-searched products in your store, which products people are looking for that you don’t have on your site, how long people spend on your site by landing page or device, and more.
- Marketing Reports This is a summary of your conversion rate, where the customer found you, like Facebook or a Google search, the average order value, and other things.
Even though most Shopify plans have the same reports, the Advanced plan has more content for behavior, marketing, and sales reports. Also, the Advanced plan gives you access to these reports, which you can’t get with the Basic plan.
- Retail sales reports show how much each product, POS location, staff member who handled the sale, or type of product sold.
- Profit reports These reports will give you a good idea of which products make the most money, which products sell the most by SKU, and how giving discounts affects your overall profit. You will also see reports about how many refunds you gave and how they hurt the profits of your business.
- Custom reports This feature lets you make a report that only shows the information you want to see. People who want advanced analytics will love it.
Fees for transactions
The advanced plan has a 1% transaction fee. Shopify will get 1% of the amount spent on each transaction.
If a customer bought items worth $100, Shopify would keep $1. You’ll only get $99, and you’ll have to take fees like the transaction fee for your payment gateway out of that.
It also costs money to have someone handle your online payments. For example, PayPal charges about 3% for each transaction. This fee is in addition to what Shopify already charges.
You can save money on this by having Shopify handle your payments instead. But only a few countries have access to this option.
You also have to take out the cost of shipping and other costs like taxes and handling fees from the $99 price. Make sure you price your products with these things in mind so you can still make a good profit after paying all your costs.
Other Goods and Services
If you choose the Advanced plan, you’ll get everything that comes with the Basic plan as well.
These things:
- Online store
- Support is available by phone, email, or live chat 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is also a community forum and a knowledge base.
- You can connect your Shopify store to different sales channels, like Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram, and make sales from there.
- Manual order creation lets you add an order from your admin page instead of having a customer go through your store’s checkout process.
- Codes for discounts and coupons
- The SSL certificate is free
Summary
The Advanced plan is best for medium-sized businesses that get orders regularly. The best thing about this is that you can add as many staff accounts as you want, and the reports will help you make smart decisions. The transaction fees are also very low.
