DEV Community: jurryi-tech

Automating B2B Company Assignment on Shopify Plus: The Complete Guide

jurryi-tech — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:32:36 +0000

If you sell wholesale on Shopify Plus B2B, you’ve probably hit this wall: every new business contact who signs up needs to be manually assigned to the right company. Approved by an admin. Given the right catalogue permissions. Connected to the right price list. At 10 new signups a week, it’s annoying. At 50 a week, it’s a full-time job for someone on your team.

This guide covers the three pillars of automating that workflow on Shopify Plus: admin-approved company registration, domain-based automated contact assignment, and granular access controls. It’s written for Australian wholesale merchants and B2B suppliers, but most of it applies anywhere.

Pillar 1: Admin-approved company registration

By default, anyone who signs up on your B2B portal gets the same generic experience. That’s wrong for two reasons: you don’t want random consumers seeing wholesale pricing, and you don’t want every new B2B applicant to immediately get full access without verification.

The right pattern is a two-stage registration:

Application stage. Prospective B2B customer fills in a form: business name, ABN, business email, expected order volume, who referred them. They get a confirmation: “Application received — we’ll review within 24 hours.”
Approval stage. Your team reviews. ABN gets validated against the ABR (Australian Business Register). Once approved, an account is created and the contact is automatically linked to the right company record.

This stage is implementable on Shopify Plus using the B2B Customer API and Shopify Functions. Validation against the ABR can be done via the free ABN Lookup API — a 30-second integration that filters out the obvious junk applications.

Pillar 2: Domain-based automated contact assignment

Once a company is approved, the next problem starts: other employees from that company also need accounts. Your sales rep signs up. Then their colleague does. Then a procurement person. Each one currently requires manual approval and manual linkage to the same company record.

The fix is domain mapping. When you approve a company, you store its verified business domain (e.g. verified-domain.com.au). Now any signup with an email matching that domain gets auto-assigned to that company with the right permissions. No manual approval needed.

The flow:

New user signs up with jess@verified-domain.com.au.
System checks the domain against approved companies.
Match found → user is auto-created, linked to that company, given the company’s catalogue access.
Welcome email sent. Sales rep notified.

For free-email domains like gmail.com or outlook.com, fall back to manual approval — you don’t want random Gmail users getting auto-approved into a company.

Pillar 3: Granular access controls

Not every B2B contact at a company should see the same thing. A purchasing officer might need ordering rights but shouldn’t see payment terms. An accounts payable contact might need to see invoices but not place orders. A director might need full visibility.

Shopify Plus B2B supports role-based permissions per company. Common roles to set up:

Buyer. Can browse catalogue, place orders, see assigned price list. Cannot see invoices or payment terms.
Accounts. Can see invoices, payment history, payment terms. Cannot place orders.
Administrator. Full access including managing other users at the company.

You can also use Shopify Functions to enforce catalogue-level visibility — wholesale pricing only visible to verified B2B contacts, public-facing pricing visible to anonymous browsers. This is enforced at the cart and checkout level, so a B2C customer can never accidentally see wholesale prices even if they somehow find the URL.

The Australian-specific bit

A few AU-specific considerations:

ABN validation. Hook up to ABR Lookup. Reject applications with invalid or cancelled ABNs at the form stage — saves your team review time. GST registration status is also returned by ABR Lookup, which is useful for setting whether the buyer gets GST-inclusive or GST-exclusive pricing.
Payment terms. Most AU B2B buyers expect Net 30 terms. Shopify Plus B2B supports payment terms, but you’ll need to integrate with Xero or MYOB for invoice generation and reconciliation. Don’t try to run B2B accounting inside Shopify alone — Xero is what your accountant uses, integrate with it from day one.
Freight. B2B freight is usually negotiated per company, not per order. Standard Shopify shipping rules don’t handle this well — you’ll need Shopify Functions for shipping to apply per-company freight rules at checkout.

What this looks like in practice

A Brisbane-based wholesale supplier I worked with had 50+ new B2B contact signups per month. Before automation, every signup required ~15 minutes of admin time — that’s 12+ hours per month, every month, on a task that adds zero business value.

After implementing the three pillars above, onboarding for verified domains became instant. New contacts from already-approved companies got auto-assigned in seconds. Manual review only kicked in for completely new companies or free-email signups. The admin team got 10 hours per month back, and B2B contact processing got 3× faster.

The build effort

This isn’t a $29 app. It’s a real B2B automation build — typically 3–5 weeks of work for a Shopify Plus merchant with existing company structures to migrate. The deliverables:

Custom application form with ABN validation
Admin approval dashboard (often built into the Shopify admin via embedded app UI)
Domain-mapping logic running on signup events
Role-based permission setup
Catalogue and price list visibility enforced via Shopify Functions
Xero/MYOB integration for invoicing
Documentation and training for your admin team

If you’re doing more than 20 B2B signups a month and your team is still manually processing them, the build pays for itself in under 12 months — usually less.

How Single Sign-On Solves the Multi-Store Login Nightmare for Shopify Merchants

jurryi-tech — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:52:25 +0000

If you’re running more than one Shopify storefront — a flagship Australian store, an NZ expansion store, a B2B portal, maybe a UK store — your customers are dealing with something quietly miserable: multiple logins. They sign up on one. They get a password reset email from another. They forget which email they used where. Eventually they stop coming back.

Single Sign-On (SSO) fixes this. One login. One identity. Every store you own recognises the same customer. This article walks through what SSO is on Shopify, which protocol to choose, and how to implement it without breaking your existing customer base.

The actual problem you’re solving

Shopify treats every storefront as a separate customer database by default. A customer of yourbrand.com.au has zero relationship with a customer of yourbrand.co.nz, even if it’s the same person. They’ll need to register twice. Receive marketing emails twice (or worse — only on one). Earn loyalty points twice. Get two different order histories.

For an AU brand scaling into NZ, UK, or US markets, this means your loyalty programme breaks at the border. A customer who spent $2,000 on your AU store and then visits your UK store is treated as a stranger.

What SSO actually does

SSO introduces a single identity provider that sits between your customer and all your storefronts. When the customer logs in once, every Shopify storefront you own trusts that authentication. Three protocols are commonly used:

SAML 2.0 — Enterprise standard. Most identity providers (Okta, Azure AD, Auth0) speak it natively. Best for B2B portals where your wholesale buyers might be tied to corporate identity systems.
OAuth 2.0 — Lighter, web-friendly, used by “Sign in with Google/Apple/Facebook” flows. Good for B2C storefronts where you want frictionless social login.
OpenID Connect (OIDC) — Built on top of OAuth 2.0, adds standardised user info. The default choice for new builds in 2026 — broad support, strong ecosystem.

How it works on Shopify

Shopify Plus supports Customer Account API with SSO integration through Shopify’s new customer accounts framework. For Shopify (non-Plus) merchants, SSO requires a custom build using Shopify’s headless storefront architecture or a private app that handles the authentication handshake.

The flow looks like this:

Customer clicks “Sign In” on any of your storefronts.
They’re redirected to your identity provider (your SSO server, Okta, Auth0, etc.).
They log in once. The IdP issues a signed token.
Storefront verifies the token, fetches or creates the Shopify customer, and starts the session.
Next time they visit any of your stores, they’re already authenticated.

The Australian-specific bit

If you’re an AU merchant expanding into NZ or UK, you have two options for storefront architecture:

Shopify Markets — One store, multiple regions. Currency switching and language switching handled by Shopify. SSO isn’t really needed here because there’s only one customer database.
Expansion Stores on Shopify Plus — Separate Shopify stores per region. Better for differentiated pricing, region-specific catalogues, and isolated payment processing. This is where SSO becomes essential.

For brands selling fashion or wellness products with significantly different pricing between AU and NZ (after GST, shipping, and FX), expansion stores are usually the right call — and SSO is what makes that architecture not feel broken to your customers.

Implementation gotchas

A few things that catch people out when implementing SSO on Shopify:

Existing customer migration. Your existing Shopify customers don’t have IdP accounts. You’ll need a one-time migration flow — usually a “claim your account” email sent to all existing customers asking them to set up their unified login.
Checkout sessions. Shopify’s checkout runs on Shopify’s domain, not yours. The SSO token needs to be passed through correctly, or customers get logged out at checkout — the worst possible UX.
Marketing consent. Australian Spam Act compliance requires explicit consent. If you’re unifying customer profiles across stores, you need to handle consent state per-region carefully — a customer who opted in for AU marketing didn’t automatically opt in for NZ.

When it’s worth doing

SSO is a real engineering project — not a $29 app. It’s worth the investment when:

You operate three or more Shopify storefronts and they share customers.
You run a loyalty programme and want it to work across regions.
You sell B2B and your wholesale buyers expect corporate identity integration.
Your customer support team is burning hours on “I can’t log in” tickets across stores.

For a single Shopify store with no expansion plans, SSO is overkill. For a Plus merchant with three regional stores and a B2B portal, it’s the difference between feeling like one brand and feeling like four disconnected websites.

39 Beautiful Shopify Stores Worth Stealing Ideas From

jurryi-tech — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 22:52:23 +0000

Spinning up a Shopify store takes an afternoon. Building one that actually converts — that people remember, come back to, and tell their friends about — is a different craft entirely. The best stores aren’t the ones with the most products; they’re the ones that get the fundamentals right: a landing page that earns attention, photography that sells, navigation that gets out of the way, and social proof placed exactly where doubt creeps in.

Below are 39 of our favourite Shopify stores across four categories — clothing and jewellery, health and cosmetics, home and pets, and electronics and toys. For each one, we’ve noted roughly how much traffic it pulls and the specific design or UX move that makes it work. Steal liberally.

Best Shopify Stores: Clothing & Jewellery

ModCloth

Vintage-inspired fashion · ~236k monthly visitors

ModCloth built a following on quirky, vintage-inspired clothing that's genuinely size-inclusive — every style runs XS to 4XL. The storefront leans into personality: playful product names, editorial photography, and a clear size-positive message that turns browsers into a community.

Regalrose

Alternative jewellery · ~76k monthly visitors

A London label selling gothic and alternative jewellery and accessories. Regalrose pairs moody product shots with a live-chat widget and a shoppable Instagram feed, so social discovery flows straight into the cart without friction.

Gymshark

Activewear · ~2.5M monthly visitors

The British activewear giant is the textbook case for community-led growth. Gymshark stacks social proof, athlete stories, and case studies throughout the site to build loyalty — proof that a Shopify store can scale to hundreds of millions in revenue.

Allbirds

Sustainable footwear · ~675k monthly visitors

Allbirds makes eco-friendly shoes from materials like eucalyptus fibre and merino wool, and the store puts sustainability front and centre. Clean layouts and a tight, transparent product story do the heavy lifting.

Victoria Beckham

Designer fashion · ~82k monthly visitors

The designer label, founded in 2008, trades on modern minimalism — and the storefront mirrors it. Generous whitespace, sophisticated typography, and restrained imagery make the products feel premium before you read a single price.

Lazy Oaf

Streetwear · ~131k monthly visitors

London streetwear brand (est. 2001) whose whole ethos is "keep it weird." Bold graphics, an embedded Instagram feed, and a strong house style turn the catalogue into something closer to a zine than a product grid.

SIR.

Ethical fashion · ~12k monthly visitors

Short for Separates, Intimates, and Ready-to-wear, SIR. builds its identity around integrity, transparency, and sustainability. A discreet ecommerce chatbot handles questions so the editorial design stays uncluttered.

Adored Vintage

Vintage clothing · ~16k monthly visitors

Curated vintage clothing and accessories with a soft, romantic, retro aesthetic. Adored Vintage uses social-proof popups to nudge first-time buyers, reinforcing that one-of-a-kind pieces sell out fast.

Pura Vida

Bracelets & accessories · ~396k monthly visitors

Started by two friends after a trip to Costa Rica, Pura Vida turned handmade bracelets into a 2M+ Facebook following. The store leans hard on "shop the look" Instagram integration to convert its huge social audience.

American Giant

American-made apparel · ~52k monthly visitors

Known for heavyweight, American-manufactured basics, American Giant pairs a quality-first story with practical conversion levers: free shipping over $100, a loyalty program, and reviews surfaced throughout the product pages.

Best Shopify Stores: Health & Cosmetics

Kylie Cosmetics

Beauty & cosmetics · ~669k monthly visitors

Founded by Kylie Jenner and famous as a Shopify case study, the store keeps things effortless: intuitive category navigation, big product imagery, and a checkout that holds up under celebrity-launch traffic spikes.

Pixi

Skincare & makeup · ~58k monthly visitors

Pixi sells makeup and skincare built around enhancing natural beauty. A transparent loyalty program and well-timed newsletter popups keep customers coming back without feeling pushy.

Meow Meow Tweet

Vegan skincare · ~2.5k monthly visitors

A Brooklyn-born vegan, cruelty-free, low-waste skincare brand. Its hand-drawn packaging illustrations carry straight into the site design, giving a small catalogue an outsized, memorable identity.

Malea

Wellness & spa · ~1.5k monthly visitors

Malea sells massage tables and spa accessories aimed at professionals. With a considered-purchase product, live chat does real work — answering specification questions in real time before a buyer commits.

Superbon

Natural hair care · ~1.3k monthly visitors

A French brand selling solid shampoo made with natural ingredients. Minimalist design and subtle animations give the small range a premium, considered feel that matches the sustainability pitch.

ColourPop

Budget cosmetics · ~929k monthly visitors

ColourPop proves affordable doesn't have to look cheap. A full range from eyeshadows to blushes is merchandised with bright, social-first imagery and heavy Instagram integration to drive impulse buys.

Hey Silky Skin

Hair removal · ~1.7k monthly visitors

Hey Silky Skin sells at-home laser hair-removal systems — a higher-trust purchase — so the store puts consumer reviews and before/after testimonials front and centre to do the convincing.

Huel

Meal replacement · ~355k monthly visitors

Huel's nutritionally complete powders need explaining, and the store handles it well: an integrated chatbot plus a deep knowledge base answer the dosage, nutrition, and how-to questions that would otherwise stall a sale.

Dr. Squatch

Men's personal care · ~532k monthly visitors

Natural soap built specifically for men, with a brand voice as bold as its marketing. Licensed Star Wars and DC Comics collaborations keep the catalogue fresh and give fans a reason to keep checking back.

Best Shopify Stores: Home, Art & Pets

Forza10

Specialist pet food · ~900 monthly visitors

Forza10 makes pet food for sensitive digestion using natural ingredients and sustainable protein sources. With a niche, advice-heavy product, live chat helps owners pick the right formula for their animal.

Penguin Books

Books & merchandise · ~10k monthly visitors

Beyond books, Penguin's Shopify store sells framed cover art, posters, and home accessories — turning a legacy publisher's iconic design archive into a merchandise business with broad appeal.

Boll & Branch

Organic bedding · ~80k monthly visitors

Premium organic-cotton bedding sourced from sustainable farms, extended into towels and robes. The store's strength is a clean, well-organised checkout that keeps a high-consideration purchase feeling simple.

Hunting Pony

Pet accessories · ~300 monthly visitors

Handmade pet accessories in natural materials, with adjustable and customisable options. A chatbot builder handles sizing and personalisation questions, which matters a lot for made-to-order goods.

Burke Decor

Home decor & furniture · ~186k monthly visitors

Modern home decor and furniture spanning every room. Burke Decor combines free shipping and a loyalty program with automated cart-abandonment emails — recovering revenue that high-ticket home shoppers often leave behind.

Hasbro Pulse

Toys & collectibles · ~394k monthly visitors

The official Hasbro store goes beyond product listings with creator interviews and exclusive content, treating fans like a community. Multiple payment methods keep checkout frictionless for collectors worldwide.

Mociun

Artisan jewellery · ~10k monthly visitors

A Brooklyn jeweller known for delicate pieces in gold, silver, and precious stones. The minimalist aesthetic carries into the storefront, and a lead-generation popup quietly grows the list between purchases.

Twisted

Yarn & crafts · ~4.5k monthly visitors

Knitting accessories and yarns — from merino wool to hemp — alongside needles, hooks, and a knitting blog. The content angle builds authority and keeps a hobbyist audience engaged between orders.

Cymatics FM

Music production · ~115k monthly visitors

Sample packs and virtual-instrument plugins sourced from top musicians and studios. Free sample downloads act as the top of the funnel, pulling producers in before they upgrade to paid packs.

Lay Lo

Dog beds & pet goods · ~400 monthly visitors

Lay Lo focuses on quality dog beds and pet accessories across a range of sizes and styles. Adding live chat gave a small catalogue a personal touch that helps close considered pet purchases.

Best Shopify Stores: Electronics & Toys

Mattel

Toys & major brands · ~340k monthly visitors

The toy multinational behind Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Fisher-Price runs dedicated SEO landing pages per brand, capturing search demand for each franchise and funnelling it into one well-structured store.

Arduino

Open-source electronics · ~55k monthly visitors

The open-source electronics platform sells boards, sensors, and modules to a global maker audience, with personalised regional versions of the store handling local pricing and availability.

Keychron

Keyboards & peripherals · ~378k monthly visitors

Keychron's mechanical keyboards and combos come in countless colours and layouts. A buyer's guide plus a money-back guarantee reduce the choice paralysis that comes with a deep, customisable product range.

Naked Body Scanner

Fitness tech · ~1.3k monthly visitors

A 3D body-scanning device pitched as the smarter alternative to bathroom scales. Animations and product videos demonstrate progress tracking — essential for a novel product people haven't seen before.

Staples

Office & tech supplies · ~3.5M monthly visitors

The office-supply heavyweight runs tech deals on laptops, tablets, and phones at serious scale. Free-delivery messaging and a strong service reputation keep a vast catalogue feeling trustworthy.

Bebemoss

Handmade toys · ~100 monthly visitors

Handmade crochet dolls in organic cotton, wool, and hemp — hypoallergenic and eco-friendly, with a social mission behind every piece. Discount-code popups give first-time gift buyers a reason to commit.

boAt

Wireless audio · ~2.3M monthly visitors

The Indian wireless-audio brand built a massive following on a tight, minimalist palette of red, black, and white and a wave of influencer collaborations — a masterclass in lifestyle-led electronics branding.

BlendJet

Portable blenders · ~117k monthly visitors

BlendJet's portable blenders are sold through motion: action videos show the product in use, the XXL model gets hero treatment, and multilanguage functionality opens the store to international buyers.

Beach Camera

Cameras & electronics · ~12k monthly visitors

Cameras, instruments, and fitness gear under one roof, from DSLRs to digital compacts. Clear navigation and a mobile-optimised layout keep a broad electronics catalogue easy to shop on any device.

DesignSkinz

Device skins & cases · ~4.5k monthly visitors

Skins and cases for iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks, with custom design options. A chatbot handles lead generation and personalisation queries, turning a configurable product into a guided experience.

What actually makes these stores work

Look across all 39 and the same handful of moves keep showing up. None of them are expensive. All of them are deliberate:

Landing pages with a point of view. The strongest stores lead with a clear story or promise, not a wall of products.
Product photography that does the selling. High-quality, consistent imagery is the single biggest visual lever — and the one shoppers judge fastest.
Navigation that gets out of the way. Intuitive categories and search let people find what they came for without thinking about it.
Social proof, placed where doubt lives. Reviews, testimonials, follower counts, and shoppable social feeds — positioned right at the moment of hesitation.
The right conversational layer. Live chat and chatbots earn their place on considered-purchase products, answering the questions that would otherwise kill a sale.

One more thing worth knowing: you can tell almost any Shopify store at a glance. View the page source and search for shopify, or check whether image URLs point at cdn.shopify.com. You’ll spot the platform behind brands you’d never expect — from major publishers to global consumer names.