The Top 10 Best Shopify Apps to Increase Sales
You’ve set up your Shopify store and now you’re ready to grow your business, and that means increasing sales. Shopify’s App Store is full of free and paid plugins you can easily integrate and use to your advantage.
Too much choice, though, makes it hard to know where to invest your time – and sometimes money. So, we’ve done the research for you, compiling a list of the top ten apps you need to grow your turnover and revenue.
We’ve divided the apps, so you’ll know which ones to use for what:
- Marketing your store
- Selling more product
- Rewarding your customers
- Automating back-office admin tasks
Marketing
1. Kit: [free to install] Kit uses artificial intelligence to recommend the marketing activities most likely to drive sales in your store. It uses your product, visitor and customer data to recommend online strategies you could use to increase sales.
It’s great for those ecommerce sellers who don’t have the time to learn about and execute marketing strategies, can’t afford to hire a marketing expert, or have no experience in online advertising.
Examples of what Kit could do for you:
- Create Facebook and Instagram ads that drive sales
- Create and promote discount codes as a sales and retention tactic
- Send personalised emails to generate repeat purchases
- Generate quick reports to provide insights on sales and marketing performance
Play Way Harder – the T-shirt Geek left this review on Shopify on July 12, 2019:
“This app saves my time and it’s easy to use. I had an issue to set it up so I asked Kit Support. Their response was very quick and helpful to resolve the issue. If you are thinking of using this, it’s worth a shot.”
2. Plugin SEO: [free plan available] Optimizing and growing your SEO ranking goes a long way towards improving the sales growth of your business. In fact, search engine optimisation arguably provides the best return on investment for ecommerce sellers.
Plugin SEO offers a super easy way to manage and optimise your SEO according to Google best practice, helping you to improve rankings and increase organic traffic.
Using their advanced templates, you’ll have help with the following:
- Meta Titles
- Meta Descriptions
- Advanced Structured Data
- Blogging
- 404 Broken Links
- Keywords
- Multilingual SEO
The Crescent Boutique had this to say about Plugin SEO:
“Their support is very attentive. The app showed me where I needed improvements, and helped me improve my SEO. I’m a novice in the online business industry so this was definitely a necessity for me.”
3. OptinMonster: [paid] Often topping best app lists for increasing sales, OptinMonster primarily focuses on growing your email list with pop-ups. It then helps increase conversions by showing customers personalized messages based on their buying behavior.
It’s an essential app for those who want to rapidly grow their email list, reduce cart abandonment, increase sales conversion, display targeted website messages and increase page-views and average order value.
You can also deliver targeted messages when customers go to exit, or are inactive for a period, based on geographic location and specific products or pages.
“OptinMonster is the no.1 tool that I use to increase my email list & webinar attendees, which leads to thousands of dollars for me each month! With their easy to use templates, analytics and support, it is a must have app for any online business.”
- a review from MyExcelOnline.
Sales channels
1. FOMO Social Proof: [paid] Increase conversions by creating FOMO or ‘fear of missing out’ with your brand and products.
The app works by displaying recent orders and product reviews as your customers browse your store. It’s a great way of showing prospective customers the social proof they’re looking for, to buy from you instead of someone else.
Ideas on how you could use the app to increase your sales:
- Show live traffic, i.e. ‘50 other people are looking at this product right now.’
- Suggest similar products based on what your customer has been browsing, with a direct link.
- Enable location-based or just-purchased messages, i.e. ‘10 people bought this in the last 24 hours.’
Bau Tran from SureMeal Nutrition reviewed the app, saying it did exactly as advertised:
“It has assisted in sales improvement, as we have tested the store with & without the app. Given the crowded space for many consumer products nowadays, social proof is becoming ever important. We are glad we have utilized FOMO as a tool to assist us in helping craft the social proof.”
2. StoreYa Facebook: [free plan available] Social media channels like Facebook can be great platforms for ecommerce sellers to promote their products, drive traffic to their store and ultimately convert sales.
StoreYa requires a one-click integration – it uses your store’s most updated catalogue and automatically imports it to your Facebook store, so you don’t have to manually upload your products.
CEO of One Piece Thomas Adams says the app fulfilled their aspirations in a matter of hours:
“We launched a Group Deal on our Facebook shop and within the first 3 hours the Facebook store has gained over 600 fans joining the group deal that was advertised on the store’s homepage.”
Is Instagram a better sales channel for your business? Look at Showcase – a highly-rated shop Instagram app on Shopify.
3. Free Shipping Bar: [free plan available] Motivate your customers to boost cart values and sales by promoting free shipping offers.
The app will let you:
- Display free shipping offers in a slide-out and customizable bar.
- Tell your customers know how far away they are from an offer when they add items to their carts.
- Congratulate customers when they’ve received a free shipping offer.
- Track performance of each bar so you know which goals generate the most sales.
- Geotargeting – set different offers to display to customers from different countries.
Ecommerce seller Urban Charbella said:
“Great – it’s really easy to install and even the free version has a lot of options. Try it - I love it!”
Rewarding your customers
1. Referral Candy: [paid] Track referrals and reward your referrers; a great way to increase sales with both prospective and return customers.
Word-of-mouth is still one of the most powerful sales tools in any merchant’s belt. Referral Candy lets you reward your customers for referrals through pop-ups, referral offer pages and emails.
Referral Candy has 561 five-star reviews on Shopify, with one user saying:
“This app and the support team are OUTSTANDING!!! Tippy, who helped me set up my account, was not only patient, but also knew the app well.”
– The Goat’s Field.
2. Yotpo Loyalty & Rewards (formerly Swell): [free plan available] Increasing sales isn’t always about attracting new customers. Dramatically increase sales from existing customers by supercharging your business with a rewards/referral programme and email acquisition tool.
There are several ways you can reward your customers through Yotpo including:
- Refer a friend.
- Spend and save.
- Spend and reward.
- Rewards for product reviews.
With an overall rating of 4.7 on Shopify, this reviewer gave Yotpo (Swell) a 5/5:
“This app is helpful in managing emails for cart abandonment. It also keeps your customers engaged because they can earn coupon codes and points etc. It is easy to use, and I definitely recommend them. There are several plans including a free one for businesses that just started up.”
Back-office admin
1. Aftership: [free plan available] Improve your customer service by keeping your customers updated on where their order is, and use your tracking page as an opportunity to increase sales.
- Engage customers with your branded tracking page.
- Improve SEO ranking and website traffic.
- Eliminate customer frustration and notify customers before they ask.
- Monitor all shipments in one go.
- Reduce customer inquiries and complaints.
Customer review:
“This is what I call real pain free automation app. So simple and does the job which we want. Love it and I am sure going to upgrade once my sales plunge up.”
– MishBaby
2. A2X for Shopify: [free to install, scalable plans available] When it comes to increasing sales, back-office automation apps are often overlooked. But, the more you automate your back office, the more time you’ll have to concentrate on increasing your sales.
A2X automates accounting for Shopify stores worldwide using Xero or QuickBooks Online. The accounting connector posts Shopify store sales automatically to Xero or QuickBooks Online, and reconciles your payouts so that you know everything has been accounted for correctly.
Never waste another minute manually reconciling your Shopify payouts and figuring out fees, refunds or adjustments. A2X automates that manual process, transforming what took hours into a few seconds.
Peter Richardson runs an ecommerce business and says A2X has been essential to his store’s growth. Read more in the full case study, and try A2X out for free here.
Get plugged in for sales success
No matter if you’ve been in the ecommerce game for one year or ten, there are always things you can do to increase sales.
Shopify’s App Marketplace is a great first place to look, with hundreds of free and paid integrations available to help you automate your marketing and sales processes, implement better customer service and reward programmes, and streamline back-office admin tasks – so you can focus on growing your business.
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