Managing Multiple Shopify Stores

There are various considerations to make before setting up a new Shopify store, from choosing the right plan to the best inventory management options. If you want to run multiple shops on Shopify, it’s important to have the right strategies in place to keep your multi-site business running smoothly.

3 Reasons to Manage Multiple Shopify Stores

1. Strengthening Your Brand’s Value

Many businesses with luxury brands have outlets or off-price sales to appeal to diverse audiences. This strategy is perfect for businesses with prominent brands. Having your main store as well as another store where price-conscious customers can get cheaper products will prevent you from devaluing your other products and your store brand.

2. Entering International Markets

You can use Shopify's multi-store feature to streamline the process of expanding into other markets. Having distinct Shopify stores makes it easier to adapt your brand to a locale's culture, purchasing patterns, demands, and values. Expanding your brand into new areas can open the door to discovering new clients and broadening your business' reach.

3. Trying Out Different Business Models

You can also use multiple Shopify stores to experiment with different business models. Whether your approach is B2B or B2C, operating multiple Shopify stores allows you to modify your messaging and product presentation, as well as better target your consumer base.

Problems With Operating Multiple Shopify Stores

The multi-store approach complicates inventory tracking and order management, which may be its most significant shortcoming. When customers place orders from different sites for the same product pool, it may cause confusion, delays, and inaccuracies.

In addition, managing multiple shops and duplicating content can be a cumbersome task and divert your attention from many other duties you must complete to keep your business functioning successfully.

» Supercharge operating multiple Shopify stores by solving the common issues

4 Strategies for Managing More Than One Shopify Store

1. Choose the Right Shopify Plan for Your Business

• Separate Shopify plans for multiple stores Shopify merchants are most familiar with the Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify plans. However, none of them support multiple Shopify stores on the same account. If you already have a Shopify plan, the simplest way to get more stores is to purchase more plans.
• Multiple stores on Shopify Plus If you want to manage more than one store on one account, you need to buy a Shopify Plus Plan. This works well for high-volume businesses with massive traffic. Starting at $2000/month, this plan includes ten stores, with each extra store costing $250. Once you log in to your Shopify admin, you can navigate between your multiple Shopify storefronts associated with the same email address.

» Each store needs a separate account, but you can use the same domain

2. Use PIM to Manage Inventory and Orders

Despite Shopify's policy of not allowing managing more than one store from a single account, there's a more cost-effective solution than signing up for a Shopify Plus plan—installing a product inventory management (PIM) system to centralize your inventory.

Using the interface of a PIM app, you'll be able to see how your inventory is distributed throughout all your locations and boost your multi-channel inventory management. When your inventory is synced across multiple stores in this way, making a single modification to your inventory, product details, images, or orders will reflect in all your stores.

» Easily handle multi-store inventory with the best inventory management systems

3. Consolidate Customer Support

Centralizing your customer support is as useful as managing inventory from one place. Having a single customer support system that consolidates all your customer order data and queries will save you time and help you monitor support tickets and other communication for minimum slip-ups.

4. Have a Cohesive Theme

A strong, consistent theme with enhanced visual design helps reinforce your brand identity. Your multiple Shopify stores should be designed around a cohesive central theme. While your products and messaging should be customized for different markets, you don’t want to stray too far from the original design of your site that customers are already familiar with.

» Use the best practices for managing multiple Shopify stores to your advantage

Supercharge Your Multi-Store Management With Egnition

• Synchronize inventory levels and update product data across multiple locations
• Full multi-location support for maximum flexibility
• Free plan available

Operating multiple Shopify stores is a challenging undertaking, but it's worth it considering the increased potential sales, better positioning, and more targeted marketing efforts. In addition to keeping our multi-store management strategies in mind, you'll be able to reap these benefits sooner with the help of a dedicated app like Egnition's Multi-Store Sync Power.

Allowing you to automatically sync your inventory levels across multiple locations, this app can greatly facilitate your multi-store management and help you boost your store's bottom line more easily.