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Customers expect more than seamless transactions in the overly saturated retail environment – they demand personalized experiences spanning multiple channels. This blog covers the potential, limitations, and alternatives of Shopify Plus in providing an omnichannel.
Offering a smooth omnichannel experience has been called a “baseline consumer expectation” by Retail Dive and a “requirement for survival” by McKinsey. Omnichannel retailers’ loyalty programs must be as robust and flexible, delivering a consistent experience across online and offline platforms. Evaluating your existing loyalty program's omnichannel capabilities is crucial to ensure it meets these demands.
Shopify is widely recognized as a powerful platform for eCommerce, allowing retailers to scale their digital presence quickly. It is used in over 8 million websites (BuiltWith), making it the most popular eCommerce platform.
The Shopify Plus edition targets large enterprises that experience high traffic and make high-volume sales – a group that suffers high pressure to become truly omnichannel.
Any Shopify plan benefits from the Shopify App Store, which hosts third-party plugins to supplement features not present in the base product.
However, Shopify Plus plugins can sometimes fall short when handling the complexities of omnichannel loyalty programs – where customers interact across physical stores, mobile apps, and eCommerce platforms. While the platform excels in its core offerings, its limitations in omnichannel loyalty integration can leave retailers struggling to meet customer expectations.
For eCommerce with is where a composable approach, leveraging API-first loyalty platforms like Open Loyalty and integrators like Omnivy, offers a game-changing alternative.
Before diving into Shopify Plus's specifics, let’s cover some context.
Omnichannel retail has long past stopped being a buzzword. It’s the de facto new standard for retailers looking to meet their customers where they are.
Omnichannel retail allows customers to engage with a brand across multiple platforms – in-store, online, via mobile apps – without disrupting the shopping experience. This seamless integration between touchpoints enhances customer satisfaction, brand loyalty, and sales.
Omnichannel strategies also play a crucial role in retaining loyal customers by providing consistent and rewarding experiences across all channels.
And the results are there. Zara and Target are examples of big retailers that have attributed bottom-line success specifically because they adopted omnichannel strategies, as reported by IMD.
Target (…) won market share from all of its physical competitors thanks to the integration of physical and digital. Target discovered that multi-channel consumers spend four times as much as store-only consumers, and 10 times more than digital-only consumers. Through that period, more than three-quarters of their online sales were fulfilled by their stores, a combination of digital and physical that required seamless supply chain coordination.
Source: IMD
Read more: Omnivy Blog | Decoding Omnichannel: Definitive Guide for Marketers.
Loyalty programs are crucial for any retailer's customer retention strategy, especially in omnichannel retail.Â
A well-implemented retail loyalty program encourages repeat purchases and deepens the customer's relationship with the brand. The quality of implementation becomes even more critical in an omnichannel environment, as customers expect their loyalty benefits to be accessible and consistent, whether they're shopping in a physical store or online.
Implementing a customer loyalty program can bring numerous benefits to a business, including:
By understanding and leveraging these benefits, businesses can create a successful loyalty program that not only rewards customers but also drives long-term growth and success.
However, integrating loyalty programs across multiple touchpoints takes a lot of work. In a Shopify Plus environment, for instance, the built-in loyalty plugins often lack the flexibility to handle complex loyalty rules that operate across digital and physical channels.Â
In practice, managing customer data, tracking points, and personalizing rewards across these touchpoints can result in operational headaches for retailers.
"Poorly-integrated systems result in poor omnichannel experiences. The customer notices and moves on. To attract and retain customers across multiple channels, it’s essential to have a sturdy and flexible loyalty stack. And composable technology is the best answer to that."
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Karol Bzik, CPO of Open Loyalty
Shopify Plus is adequate for managing an online storefront but often struggles when asked to perform in a more integrated, omnichannel landscape.Â
This is where specialized, composable loyalty solutions come into play, offering retailers the tools they need to fully engage their customers across all platforms without the limitations of a one-size-fits-all plugin.
Shopify App Store plugins offer features like points-based rewards, tiered loyalty, and referral incentives. These Shopify Plus loyalty apps are often easy to install and manage, making them attractive for growing eCommerce retailers.
However, these plugins often reveal certain limitations for omnichannel retailers with complex loyalty needs – particularly those who operate across online, mobile, and physical stores.
While Shopify Plus loyalty plugins are great for quick deployment, they often lack the deep customization required for advanced loyalty strategies.
Retailers that need to tailor their loyalty programs to specific customer behaviors or unique business models may find that many plugins only offer out-of-the-box features that aren’t flexible enough. For example, creating dynamic reward structures based on a customer’s in-store versus online activity, or tailoring promotions by customer segments, becomes difficult within the constraints of these tools. Additionally, tracking reward points through various interactions such as purchases, social media sharing, and special occasions is often not customizable enough to meet specific business needs.
In practice, you see a similar look and feel across different stores’ loyalty components.
This limited customization can hinder retailers aiming to offer truly personalized experiences – a critical element for enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction that can become a deal-breaker in a competitive omnichannel environment.
Recently, we spoke with a multi-country European fashion retailer hosted on Shopify who considered using plugins to implement a loyalty program. With a product catalogue nearing 100k SKUs and product-based promotions, they ultimately deemed Shopify plugins wouldn't be enough. "Limited promotional capabilities and templatized business rules" made it very hard to differentiate their brand, they said.
As businesses scale, the complexity of managing multiple sales channels – online, in-store, and via mobile – requires loyalty systems that can keep pace. However, many Shopify Plus plugins struggle to scale alongside a retailer’s growth, particularly when integrating third-party systems such as POS software, customer data platforms (CDPs), and CRMs.
This can lead to delays in points accrual, slow system performance, and errors when syncing data across platforms. Managing rewards points across these channels can be particularly challenging, affecting both the retailer’s ability to manage the loyalty program efficiently and the customer experience itself. Retailers often need to migrate to more robust solutions when they find that their loyalty plugins can’t handle their growing operational demands.
Plugins also don't cater well to businesses working in multiple markets, according to conversations we had with a North-American shoes retailer on Shopify.
They had common needs for multi-market stores (handling multiple currencies and local loyalty rules) and also industry-specific challenges (custom logic to reward customers for recycling gear). None of these needs were met with Shopify plugins.
The business tried plugins limited by rules based on standardized Shopify events. As a result, it was difficult to build logic based on triggers from other sources, such as marketing automation, CDP, or other platforms.
One of the primary challenges of using Shopify Plus loyalty plugins in an omnichannel environment is the potential for a fragmented customer experience. Many plugins are designed specifically for online use, and their ability to integrate with offline channels, such as physical stores, is often limited.
This creates inconsistencies in how customers earn and redeem points across different channels, which should be a red flag in omnichannel. For instance, a customer might accrue points through an online purchase but need help redeeming them in-store, or they may see discrepancies in their point balances depending on where they interact with the brand. These inconsistencies in loyalty rewards can significantly impact customer satisfaction and retention.
These gaps lead to confusion and frustration, ultimately eroding trust in the loyalty program.
Lackluster analytics and difficulty reporting ROI
One of the critical shortcomings of many Shopify Plus loyalty plugins is their limited analytics capabilities.
While many plugins offer rudimentary reporting on points earned and redeemed, they often fall short in providing the detailed, actionable data needed to truly understand customer behavior, redemption patterns, and program engagement across both online and offline channels. This lack of depth makes it difficult for retailers to track key performance indicators like customer lifetime value (CLV), average order value (AOV), and repeat purchase rates, which are crucial for understanding the overall impact of the loyalty program.
This deficiency also extends to measuring loyalty programs’ return on investment (ROI). With comprehensive analytics, retailers can draw clear connections between loyalty initiatives and tangible business outcomes.
For instance, while a plugin may display the number of customers enrolled or points issued, it rarely provides insights into how those metrics translate into increased sales or customer retention.
This gap in reporting makes it difficult to assess the program’s effectiveness or justify continued investment. In an omnichannel world, where businesses need to measure the impact of loyalty across various touchpoints, this lack of visibility can be a significant barrier to maximizing ROI.
Other complaints we heard from a multi-brand coffee shop from Dubai synthetize the matter:Â by design, the plugins are prepared to handle general use cases. Sometimes that is enough, but for businesses in search of market differentiation, it's often not enough.
This coffee shop was looking to create omnichannel loyalty with Shopify apps. They found the apps solutions lacking in redemption capabilities – usually they were locked to Shopify cart discounts and couldn't add external rewards such as gift cards. Finally, they saw only very limited gamification features, and ended up going for the custom development route, which fulfilled their needs.
"Shopify loyalty plugins are easy to set up and allow a quick launch. However, they offer limited customization and are tightly integrated with a single channel. When multiple sales channels are used, these plugins often fall short.
Open Loyalty and Omnivy combine the best of both worlds: a powerful, composable loyalty engine paired with ready-to-use Shopify integration makes launching an omnichannel loyalty program a breeze."
Maciej Tyczyński, CTO of Omnivy
A composable approach in eCommerce and loyalty programs refers to the ability to select, integrate, and customize individual systems or "building blocks" that best serve the unique needs of a business.Â
Unlike monolithic platforms or out-of-the-box plugins, a composable architecture allows retailers to bring together specialized software solutions, each handling a different aspect of the customer experience or operational requirement.Â
This modular setup allows businesses to create a fully customizable tech stack tailored to deliver optimal performance for their specific loyalty and eCommerce needs.
One of the key advantages of a composable approach is flexibility. Instead of being locked into the limitations of a single platform or plugin, retailers can handpick and integrate best-of-breed solutions that specialize in specific functions – such as advanced search, Product Information Management (PIM), or AI-powered recommendation engines.Â
For loyalty programs, this flexibility is invaluable. Retailers can continuously evolve their loyalty programs by adding new features like personalized rewards, multiple wallets, engaging achievements, dynamic customer segments, and omnichannel touchpoints without overhauling their entire system.Â
As retailers grow and expand, their systems must scale seamlessly. Composable architectures are designed to support this growth by allowing businesses to add or remove components as needed.Â
This ensures that as customer needs and business operations become more complex – whether through additional retail locations, expanded eCommerce operations, or international expansion – retailers can scale their loyalty programs and other customer-facing technologies without hitting the roadblocks encountered often with traditional plugin-based systems.Â
In essence, composability allows for the future-proofing of loyalty programs, ensuring they remain adaptable and robust, no matter how large or complex the business becomes.
One of the most significant benefits of the composable approach is its ability to provide a unified customer experience across all channels, meaning it’s a perfect match for omnichannel.
By integrating multiple specialized systems that share customer data in real time, retailers can offer a seamless loyalty experience in any channel. Loyalty points, personalized rewards, and customer data are all synchronized across touchpoints, ensuring consistency and ease of use.Â
For instance, a customer can earn points online, receive a personalized offer via email, and redeem rewards in-store – all without any disruption or confusion.
A real-world example of a composable loyalty stack includes a combination of Open Loyalty for managing the loyalty program, Shopify for eCommerce, POS systems for in-store transactions, a personalized email marketing tool, and a data warehouse to centralize and analyze customer data.
This integration of best-of-breed solutions ensures that every aspect of the loyalty program is optimized – from online transactions to in-store experiences, personalized marketing campaigns, and data-driven insights for continuous program improvement.
The stack also allows integration with more specialized solutions not mentioned above: customer service, order fulfillment, third-party logistics (3PL), analytics, checkout, search as a service, return and exchange management, tax support, conversion rate optimization (CRO), product information management (PIM), carbon offsetting, and more.
For a more technical view on the subject, please read How to integrate an API-first loyalty engine with your tech stack.
The first step in implementing a composable loyalty solution is to assess your Shopify Plus loyalty implementation.Â
Starting with the customer experience: is the current implementation driving engagement, or are customers frustrated by inconsistent experiences between online and offline interactions?
If customers are unsatisfied, that’s a red flag, as it affects the bottom line. So be sure to identify gaps in customization, scalability, and customer experience – write down the “ideal world” scenario.
More operations flags include limited customization capabilities, wasted time and resources spent on data management, and struggles to scale the program quickly during shopping holidays.
Often, this step raises many questions and doubts, so it’s the ideal moment to talk with specialists in composable loyalty.
With the needs in hand, plan your composable loyalty stack implementation by considering key factors like the systems you need to integrate, the flexibility required for future growth, and the specific functionalities that will enhance customer loyalty (e.g., personalized rewards, real-time data syncing, and various reward programs).
The clearer the goals, the smoother the execution will be down the line.
Integration is essential. Fortunately, it’s a strong point in composable architecture.
For seamless integration, best practices include leveraging APIs and connectors to link Shopify Plus, Omnivy, Open Loyalty, and your POS systems.
A Shopify Plus store integrated with Open Loyalty enjoys customer data synced in real time, providing a unified view of loyalty program performance across touchpoints.
Once the solution is integrated, testing is crucial. Ensure all components work together as expected, from point accrual to reward redemption.Â
Regularly optimize based on customer feedback and program performance metrics (especially during peak seasons), refining your loyalty initiatives to serve your audience better.
We’ve explored the limitations of Shopify Plus loyalty plugins and how they can fall short for omnichannel retailers. But, more importantly, we explored how to go past these limitations and cater to increasingly demanding shoppers.
From customization and scalability challenges to providing a unified customer experience, relying solely on plugins can hinder your loyalty program’s potential. The composable approach, championed by platforms like Open Loyalty and Omnivy, offers flexibility, scalability, and the ability to create a seamless experience across all channels. With a composable stack, you can build a loyalty program that grows with your business and adapts to ever-changing customer expectations.
If you’re ready to take your loyalty program to the next level, contact us today for a consultation on how Open Loyalty and Omnivy can help you build a powerful, scalable solution tailored to your unique omnichannel needs.
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