Shopify Meets Direct Selling: Key Considerations for Success

Written by Daryl Wurzbacher, CEO of ByDesign Technologies. Daryl began his career in the direct selling industry in 1999 as the Director of Information Technology for a direct sales start-up. That company was the first client of ByDesign Technologies, and Daryl was a critical liaison between ByDesign, the field leaders, and his corporate team.

In 2007, Daryl transitioned to the supplier side as the Director of Technology for ByDesign. His strategic contributions led to his appointment as President in 2015 and CEO in 2018.

Shopify Meets Direct Selling: Key Considerations for Success

We’re seeing a growing interest in implementing Shopify from both new and existing clients; ranging in size from start-up to $100M+ companies. The common theme is the desire to stay competitive in a rapidly changing eCommerce world, while still finding the right balance of traditional Direct Selling/MLM benefits.

From a short-term perspective, Shopify offers some compelling features and benefits from customer shopping, tools for companies to manage their shop, and simple ways to launch additional markets and products. Longer term, companies are planning for Shopify to stay at the forefront of eCommerce.

With all the benefits, the biggest trade-off is that Shopify isn’t designed as a Direct Selling/MLM solution, requiring gap-filling and shifting the way the model is set up to handle unique industry requirements.

Over the past five years, ByDesign, in collaboration with Shapetech, has launched over a dozen clients on Shopify. Throughout this experience, we’ve identified several key areas companies should consider when evaluating an implementation, as these can add complexity to the launch.

Promotions & Discounts

Shopify is designed to optimize retail shopping with a streamlined, friction-free experience focused on maximizing conversion rates.

This simplicity, while a strength, can also pose challenges for Direct Selling companies that rely on intricate promotions and discounts based on historical performance or relationships.

While Shopify handles the vast majority of customer related promotions, we generally see complexity around more unique rep-based promotions and pricing options.

Common scenarios we have seen that require either additional plugins, or custom development include:

• Complicated pricing based on rank/rep type/other variables
• Consultant/hostess reward redemptions
• Unique upgrade/downgrade flows

In working with clients launching Shopify, we’ve identified common patterns and ways these scenarios can be handled – but there is always a trade-off in some way.

Cash On Account:  Credits & Gift Certificates

Over the past several years, we’ve seen more companies adopt various forms of “cash on account” through unique credits or gift certificate configurations to enable robust rewards programs. These programs can range from the ability for reps to “spend back” commissions earnings on products, issuing “product credits” based on customer referrals or loyalty, or even limiting “product credits” to be applicable towards AutoShip orders. Companies commonly leverage “product credits” for only certain categories of items, or even drive unique volume/payout rules when using credits.

The mistake some make is attempting to combine existing back-end MLM systems with Shopify and then adding additional apps in Shopify to track loyalty/rewards (e.g.: Yotpo, Smile.io, etc). This ends up creating a very complex web of integrations/systems that need to communicate and stay in sync.

The way we’ve approached this is by extending the ByDesign/Shapetech connector to leverage our back-end credit wallets, allowing Shopify to leverage these on the checkout experience. This has enabled clients to build extremely robust loyalty programs – from cashback, customer referral, party rewards and even the ability for reps to “spend back” commissions on the Shopify site.

Leveraging a solution that is fully integrated into the back-end commissions and incentives platform allows for extensive flexibility, and reduces the complexity and costs associated with additional tools and plugins.

Subscriptions & AutoShip Processing

The majority of companies we work with leverage some form of subscription/AutoShip program as driving subscription growth is always a critical objective. Shopify offers a basic subscription program, but most companies we work with leverage other 3rd party apps to handle subscriptions – with the most popular being ReCharge and Awtomic.

Outside of the core subscription management, there are a few other considerations companies need to evaluate based on their existing rules:

• Credits & Cash on Account for AutoShips: Companies that allow customers/reps to leverage credits for AutoShip orders will need to evaluate how to approach this within Shopify.

• Promotions on AutoShips: The common subscription tools handle the basics, such as a discount on AutoShips – but if you’re looking to get more complex (e.g.: refer 3 and yours is free), you’ll need to evaluate customizing this.

• Rep Visibility: Many clients offer reps the ability to see their teams’ AutoShip/predicted volumes for their customers and teams, which isn’t naturally available and needs to be pulled into the Rep Back Office.

Other Considerations When Evaluating Shopify

When evaluating a Shopify implementation, there are a few other common considerations to evaluate:

• Handling “Rep Attribution” and Data Integrity for Customer Orders: This is generally a “given” in most Direct Selling companies, and ensuring this is appropriately handled within a Shopify implementation is critical. We’ve seen a lot of unique rules over the years in terms of customer ownership, and this is an area that needs to be carefully considered.

• Payment Processing & Enrollment Kits: Payment processing is more expensive with Shopify when not leveraging Shopify Payments. Historically, Shopify Payments has been more restrictive on Direct Selling and specific products such as starter kits. This seems to continually evolve, and recently has been less restrictive. Leveraging your existing merchant processing is possible, but depending on the Shopify subscription level, can add substantial costs to transaction processing.

• Unique Upgrade & Downgrade Flows: We’ve seen companies adopt unique ways for customers to become reps, along with different levels of sellers with unique discounts.

• Party Rewards Redemption: Some companies leverage the move to Shopify to allow hosts to redeem rewards within Shopify, while others have retained the party reward redemption within the rep ordering process.

Finding the Balance

For companies looking to leverage Shopify, the key is finding the right balance between simplifying areas of the business, while retaining what truly makes you unique.

We’ve begun seeing existing companies adopt Shopify specifically for replicated websites & customer ordering, while leveraging existing eCommerce systems for rep ordering. This has allowed for a more simplistic implementation focused on customer acquisition and retention, while not having to make extensive business model changes (or invest heavily in customizing to match your needs).

Whether you decide to simplify your processes to fit within Shopify’s framework or are prepared to customize and integrate, understanding these considerations upfront can help you make the best decision for your company’s long-term success.

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