With eCommerce evolving rapidly, many UK businesses are looking for integrated, efficient ways to manage both online and in-person sales. Shopify Point of Sale (POS) offers a seamless solution, blending both your digital store and bricks and mortar retail operation effortlessly. Whether you're running a retail store in London or managing pop-up shops across the UK, you need a Shopify POS system to accept payments and sell in person.

This article will walk you through everything there is to know about implementing and using Shopify POS in the UK.

What is Shopify POS?

Shopify Point of Sale (POS) is a Shopify solution that enables the merchant to sell goods, process payments, and manage the business both online and offline. It's a mobile-friendly, cloud-based system that syncs with your Shopify store, creating an integrated environment in managing inventory, sales, payments, and customer data in both online and offline format. The system is particularly valuable for UK businesses looking to maintain an efficient, all-in-one sales operation. Stores that use Shopify POS to combine in-store and online sales have seen a 30% increase in revenue year over year.

Key Features of Shopify POS

Shopify POS offers a wide range of features tailored to support modern retail business. Here are the key ones:

1. Unified Inventory Management: Your POS system should sync with your online and physical store inventory into one system so you can manage it all from one place thus avoiding stockouts or overstocking.
2. Integrated Payment Processing: The system permits consumers to pay through various payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, other gifts cards and even mobile money.
3. Mobile POS Solutions: You can set up a Shopify POS system on a tablet or mobile device into a checkout point, so you can process transactions from anywhere in your store or on the go.
4. Custom Reporting: Track detailed insights such as sales trends, customer behavior, and staff performance from one dashboard.
5. Omnichannel Selling: Shopify POS enables seamless integration between your online and offline channels, thus delivering your customers with a frictionless shopping experience.
6. Staff Management: Shopify POS assists your staff in building meaningful customer relationships, turning visitors into loyal customers. It tracks employee performance and set custom permissions for each team member from one place.

Benefits of Using Shopify POS in the UK

For UK businesses, adopting Shopify POS provides several advantages. Some of the coolest benefits are:

1. Increased Flexibility and Scalability: Whether you run a permanent storefront or pop-up shops, Shopify POS hardware offers flexibility and immense functionality with mobile and scalable options.
2. Seamless Integration: Sync all your sales and customer data across online and offline channels in real-time. This integration helps you maintain a complete overview of the activity within your business and hence manage it easily.
3. Efficient Payment Handling: The versatile payment options makes it easy to accept multiple payment methods in-store to keep the checkout process fast and safe for your customers.
4. Customer Insights: One of the standout benefits is the ability to gather customer data. The site management and administration options provided, as well as the fine-tuning of performance indicators and sales figures, offer a wealth of customer-related insights.

Steps to Set Up Shopify POS

Setting up Shopify POS for your UK-based store is simple and efficient. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Choose Your Hardware: Once you have successfully signed up for your Shopify account, you might need additional Shopify POS hardware, such as cash drawers, barcode scanners, and receipt printers to host your POS.
2. Log In: Once your account is set up, you can log in to your account, navigate to the Point of Sale section and configure your POS system.
3. Set Up Your Sales Channels & Locations: Once you are logged into your Shopify POS account, the first thing you want to do is set up your sales channels and physical store locations in the Shopify admin. This will allow you to manage inventory and sales across multiple UK locations, all from one place.
4. Add Your Inventory: Sync your sales channels from your online store or manually add products to the POS system. Shopify POS allows you to track inventory in real-time, helping you to view all the products you have in stock and add new ones.
5. Import Customers: Import customer data from your online store or add customers individually. In the Analytics section of your Shopify account, you can view customer reports to create targeted marketing campaigns or offer loyalty rewards.
6. Create Staff Profiles: Create a profile for each of your staff members assigning each employee a unique login. Add your staff to the POS system, assigning each employee a unique login. You can set access permissions for each staff member, helping you track individual and sales performance.
7. Configure Your Settings: Customise the POS settings such as checkout, shipping and delivery, and tax settings to suit your store's need.
8. Payment Processor Setup: Ensure your payment processor is supported with UK banking systems. Shopify Payments is a great option as it integrates directly with the POS system.

Pricing and Plans for Shopify POS

Its always essential to choose a plan that suits your business needs. Shopify POS offers two main POS plans for, Shopify Lite and Pro plans(selling in person and online).

Here is the pricing structure for selling in person and online:

Real-World Use Cases and Success Stories

Several UK brands have seen significant benefits from using Shopify Point of Sale.

Allbirds’ Increased Conversions with Shopify POS

Allbirds, the world's most comfortable footwear brand, leveraged Shopify POS to enhance its retail experience after launching in 2016. Now with more than 20 stores globally, the system enabled fast checkouts, smarter inventory management and increased conversions.

Astrid & Miyu humanised the in-store shopping experience with Shopify POS

Astrid & Miyu, a jewellery brand founded in 2012  leveraged Shopify POS to gain a unified view of their inventory, offer flexible order options and opened 23 stores globally, across the UK, EU, and US.

Shopify POS catapulted Kick Game from online to omnichannel success

Kick Game, which was an independent, online-only footwear retailer founded in 2013, has scaled up massively, by opening a new store location with Shopify POS and the ability to automatically track inventory levels has enabled Kick Game to expand at speed from £2 million to 50 million in annual revenue in a few short years.

Conclusion

In coming years, Shopify POS continues to provide a powerful, flexible solution for UK retailers looking manage their sales and operations across multiple channels. WIRO has helped many clients from updating stock information, Shopify payments set up to handling backorders and refunds, delivering end-to-end Shopify POS setup, integration and migration services.

Get in touch with us to learn how we can support your Shopify journey.