Over the last ~12-18 months, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at headless frameworks and which eCommerce platforms are suitable and best suited, to a headless approach. Most platforms are currently building out APIs to allow for headless builds and a number of platforms (such as ElasticPath and Commerce Tools) build their offering around being API-first / headless-first. This article is designed to provide an introduction into how Shopify can be used in a headless manner, as well as answer some top-level questions around the impact and good use cases.

When migrating customer accounts from an existing platform to Shopify Plus, these account holders will need to reactivate their account in order to log in and make use of their account information. This is pretty standard practice for a migration process and it removes any security issues with trying to migrate passwords etc.

Shopify Advanced and Shopify Plus are versions of Shopify platform, offering different levels of flexibility and feature-sets for different sizes of business. Lots of retailers will start on a lower plan of Shopify and then gradually upgrade as their turnover or requirements change, getting to a point (which is different for different retailers) where Shopify Plus starts to make sense. The most common reason for upgrade (in my experience) has been for functional (needing Plus-only features) reasons – for example adding new stores for international expansion, wanting to offer multi-currency, or just saving time via features like launchpad, flow etc.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been asked for advice on structuring international setups by a number of Shopify Plus retailers – with that advice differing depending on objectives and operational restraints.

It’s always good to be able to assess a platform’s suitability by looking at some examples of successful stores using that platform, so in this guide, we take a look at some of the best-known names that have now made the switch to Shopify Plus.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve had a number of clients who have ended up in a very frustrating position with Shopify Payments – generally down to them not being eligible to use it or having stores where it’s not available. For those of you that aren’t aware of how Shopify Payments works, it essentially provides a really clean, well-integrated payment solution (via Stripe) with a wide range payment options available (e.g. digital wallet payment options, international payment options etc, that can simply be enabled in the admin). This is great for those that are able to use Shopify Payments, but if one or all of your stores are ineligible – you’ll need to find an alternative payment provider.