Summary (TL;DR): In this article, we are going to discuss Shopify — a powerful website builder and offer you a selection of more than 11 of the best Shopify apps, that will help you improve your Shopify store. The apps or for various different uses, and will certainly be of great help to you.
Today, there are between 12 and 24 million active eCommerce sites on the web. While not all eCommerce businesses use the same marketing strategies, they all trust the power of Shopify plugins as a way to target, customize and optimize their businesses.
There are approximately 1,700,000 businesses that use Shopify add-ons to enforce their eCommerce stores. Shopify holds the third spot on the list of the largest e-commerce platforms in the world, all due to their diligent service and their plugins. They are far more functional, optimized, and suitable for meeting various requirements.
Without further ado, here are the best Shopify plugins that can boost the performance of eCommerce sites and ultimately increase customer loyalty, profits, and online presence.
Why Choose Shopify Plugins for Your eCommerce Site?
Many mogul eCommerce sites worldwide, like Kylie Cosmetics, have trusted Shopify’s assortment of plugins as useful business optimization tools. This is both due to their simplicity in use and their beneficial impact in boosting the performance of your eCommerce site.
Here are the main benefits of trusting Shopify plugins in fortifying your eCommerce site.
1. Simple Use and Setup
All Shopify plugins are super-simple to install and are suited even for plugin laymen. Shopify’s admin interface is sleek and elegant and showcases all its elements in a functional and organized manner. For inexperienced site users, Shopify offers tutorials and video guides.
2. Tech-optimized
With Shopify add-ons, technical expertise is not required, as the site provides all software and hosting you need. Shopify’s hosting is faster, manages traffic spikes that hurt your site speed, and takes care of annoying software updates that interfere with its functioning.
3. Safe & Secure
To protect the sensitive website and customer data, Shopify offers an array of plugins that will protect and encrypt all customer information, including their location and credit card details. As a reliable provider, Shopify offers spotless server maintenance and uses SSL certificates to protect your and your customers’ data, whilst ensuring quicker site loading, and non-stop shopping cart availability.
4. Customer Support, 24/7
For its customers, Shopify ensures 24-7customer support, with almost instant response time. Customers can contact the platform via email, phone, or web chat, and use community forums and the Shopify Help Centre guides for additional help.
5. Mobile-friendly
Shopify’s plugins work on all mobile devices, which makes running your business anywhere and everywhere seamless. Shopify introduces many boosting plugins to help optimize your eCommerce site usability on all mobile devices. It also uses a free built-in mobile commerce shopping cart to optimize the customer experience.
6. It’s Customizable
Depending on your eCommerce site needs, Shopify has 160 themes to choose from, both free and premium. All themes are mobile-friendly and customizable – mainly done by editing the theme code – and ensure that your eCommerce shop is always unique.
7. The App
The Shopify App Store is an unexplored haven of product options and plugins that can increase the functionality of your eCommerce website. Some of the plugins and extensions you can use in the app include review adders, loyalty programs, customer wishlists, in-depth analytics, print labels, packing slips, accounting software integration, shipping programs, and social media accounts.
8. Marketing & SEO Tools
SEO is the life of any eCommerce site and Shopify is the key to unlocking all SEO-friendly plugins for business. Shopify’s SEO tools will boost the ranking of your site, present you with detailed analytics, send traffic data reports, and boost SEO extensions. As for marketing, the platform offers everything – from social media integration to email newsletter and product review marketing. Shopify also allows you to create gift vouchers, discount codes, and social media icons across all themes.
Digital marketing takes time to work, but Shopify simplifies this process by introducing a Shopify Kit, a virtual employee that manages executive marketing tasks based on your business needs, clientele, line of products, and performance goals.
9. Recover Abandoned Cart
One of the ways Shopify boosts the quality of your eCommerce site is by offering visitors the chance to recover their filled shopping carts. This happens in case users don’t log in to the page. Stats note that ⅔ of potential buyers will stack up on products but will leave the site before making a purchase. That way, they lose all contents of their shopping cart and you lose a customer.
With Shopify’s plugins, however, your potential customers can use the abandoned checkout cart option. It automatically tracks, detects, and emails phantom customers to remind them to complete their purchase and go back to their preselected items.
10. Payment Method
Although Shopify allows a variety of payment options, it also introduces its own gateway, powered by Stripe. If you select their payment method, Shopify will not charge you any transaction fee and will reduce your credit card fees as well. Nifty.
The Best Shopify Plugins for Your eCommerce Site
The range of Shopify plugins at your disposal is overwhelming.
According to customer reviews, we have prepared a list of the best Shopify apps that will serve you the best in optimizing your eCommerce site.
1. Free Shipping Bar by Hextom
Free shipping hooks buyers into eCommerce the fastest, which is why it’s considered among the best Shopify apps. The plugin increases the number of business orders and organizes them in a way that keeps your customers engaged. Thanks to this Shopify extension, you will practically compel your customers into buying more products from your site, and will ultimately track their orders far more easily.
Plus, the Shopify widget comes with embedded analytics and lets you see the shipping approach that drives the most sales. Besides, The Free Shipping Bar is also considered among the finest Shopify add-ons as it boasts a customizable display that lets you organize your orders simultaneously to users adding new items to their shopping carts.
2. Returnly: Returns and Exchanges
One of the things eCommerce doesn’t have over physical stores is returns. Returns are so common these days that customers made it a habit of returning purchased items on a whim. Oftentimes the return factors vary, from the item not meeting the buyer’s requirements, to arriving damaged.
Managing all this hassle for you is the Returnly Shopify plugin. It irons out the return process wrinkles and allows customers to purchase another product using their store credit. This way, the client gets to leave the site with their desired item and you get to boost your loyalty.
One of the things eCommerce doesn’t have over physical stores is returns. Returns are so common these days that customers made it a habit of returning purchased items on a whim. Oftentimes the return factors vary, from the item not meeting the buyer’s requirements, to arriving damaged.
Managing all this hassle for you is the Returnly Shopify plugin. It irons out the return process wrinkles and allows customers to purchase another product using their store credit. This way, the client gets to leave the site with their desired item and you get to boost your loyalty.
The plugin can also be used if you want to build completely personalized Return Centers and clear up the daily return mess. Returnly Shopify is among the best Shopify plugins because it has embedded analytics that collects information regarding the customer’s purchasing behavior.
3. Wishlist Plus
One of the best Shopify plugins for eCommerce ventures is surely Wishlist Plus.
This designated tool is recommended for any virtual store that displays its products on the site. With it, customers can bookmark the items they like to purchase and create shopping lists without scrolling endlessly.
The reason why it’s considered among the best Shopify add-ons is that it works seamlessly with any eCommerce site. Also, it is quite practical for buyers. It offers customers the option to save their favorite products. Instead of redirecting them to the front page, users can pick up where they left off right after adding a product to their list. Once a product is saved, customers can continue to checkout to complete their purchase. The plugin allows customers to create wish lists of products without having to sign in to the site. Moreover, they can connect their current list to any former wish list they made, thus making more collective purchases.
The most convenient feature of the plugin is its ability to indicate the times a certain product has been saved to a wish list. This way, retailers can monitor the products that buyers chose as favorites.
4. One Click Social Log In
Customers will often derail from online shopping because of tedious logins and the requirement to create multiple accounts or emails just to get registered. If you want to open the road for your customers, consider using the One Click Social login.
It is counted among the best Shopify plugins because, well – it takes a click to register.
One Click Social Log In allows customers to sign up via Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, and Twitter, instead of having to create separate accounts from scratch. With it, customers can sign in to an eCommerce site via social network accounts, and proceed to shop seamlessly. The plugin is customizable and helps eCommerce sites to appeal to a range of potential customers, who would, otherwise, refuse to sign up traditionally.
5. Upsell and Cross-Sell Products
For those interested in increasing sales, Upsell and Cross-Sell Products is one dandy plugin to look at. Two of the most common sale-boosting strategies on the market are cross-selling and upselling. The Upsell and Cross-Sell Products Shopify plugin does both on your behalf and seamlessly. With this Shopify plugin, you can use a simple association link between your customers and your products. By doing so, your buyers will be presented with suggested products similar to those they purchased and it will all be based on their past shopping behavior.
The plugin is also interesting to use because, if a user wants a currently out-of-stock product, the app will automatically display related products that could be of their interest.
6. Page Speed Monitor
The imperative for successful eCommerce is site loading speed. Ideally, the recommended loading shouldn’t take longer than 3 seconds. When the site loads for too long, buyers will lose interest in waiting and leave the site for a better option.
One of the best Shopify plugins to help you avoid that is Page Speed Monitor.
This Shopify extension is singled out as the best alternative to boosting your site loading speed and avoiding losing buyers. Ranked among the best Shopify extensions, Page Speed Monitor scans your Google page speed, estimates potential problems, and notifies you to fix them in case there are any.
You can also use it to track main competitors and see how your site compares to theirs, which gives you the upper hand in your line of business.
7. Plug in SEO
Plug in SEO is the kind of plugin that will help your eCommerce site remain visible in search engines. As the majority of users don’t bother to open page two of Google results, this plugin ensures you are always in the spotlight and at the top of the game. The Shopify widget provides you with quality SEO management and brings you a step closer to a top-rank position. Plug in SEO helps users manage a variety of SEO-essential tasks, such as meta titles, headlines, meta descriptions, keywords, and dysfunctional links. The plugin is especially favorable for blog and eCommerce sites and boosts the efficiency of the content provided, which then leads to juicier profits.
8. Bulk Image Edit, Image SEO
Undoubtedly, one of the best Shopify plugins for managing eCommerce sites is Bulk Image Edit. This plugin helps deal with a major SEO aspect – image sizing. By reducing the size of images used, Bulk Image Edit accelerates your site’s loading time. The prime features of the free version of Bulk Image Edit include automatic image editing, customizable templates, watermarks, and the option to update images in bulk.
9. Face Trust Badge
Ecommerce sites are no strangers to fraudulent behavior, which can expose buyers’ personal information and jeopardize the proper functioning of your site. Coming to your rescue is one of the best Shopify plugins for eCommerce platforms – Face Trust Badge. The free plugin enables customers a trusted site usage and ensures them that no frauds or scams are taking place. The plugin offers over a hundred badges for customers to choose from, including those from reputable companies. Moreover, it presents customers with achromatic and chromatic logos – and all they have to do is pick one and use it!
It is recommended for eCommerce sites to place these logos near the check-out or product purchase section, so buyers can validate the safety of their purchase.
10. Social Photos
Aside from mouth-to-mouth marketing, eCommerce sites are largely dependent on social media promotion. Nothing testifies to a brand’s quality like visuals. In essence, the Social Photos plugin enables eCommerce site owners to post social media photos of happy buyers and their chosen products or services. With this move, the store can appeal to a wide clientele and verify its success more easily. As one of the best Shopify plugins for eCommerce, Social Photos uses a simple and easy-to-manage scheme.
It detects photos from social media channels, like Instagram and Facebook, and chooses all that depict customers using your eCommerce products.
Once recognized, the plugin collects the photos and automatically uploads them into an album on your site, thus optimizing your marketing strategy and customer engagement.
11. Swell Loyalty & Rewards
Loyalty programs, discounts, and rewards are essential to an eCommerce business.
To get up to speed with the latest loyalty trends, consider using one of the best Shopify plugins for eCommerce – Swell Loyalty & Rewards. The plugin is super-practical for eCommerce sites and helps improve shopping experiences for new customers, all the while retaining and engaging your existing clientele. Swell Loyalty & Rewards offers a few essential management tools that fortify your site and loyalty program’s quality. Such include referring customers to your shop, offering them better shopping deals and purchase benefits, sharing reviews and ratings from existing clients, analyzing targeted content, and using social media to get customers to interact with your brand.
The Best Free Apps for Shopify: 3 Bonus Recommendations
Aside from the aforementioned, there are also a few other Shopify extensions to ensure the longevity and prosperity of your eCommerce site.
Shopify’s Floating Widgets
Floating widgets make an unbreakable part of eCommerce sites and are one of the best Shopify widgets for optimizing virtual stores. These are a collection of tiny widgets that are attached to your eCommerce site. They include videos, banners, offers, surveys, and announcements. These come in a self-installing application that offers a variety of customizable widgets that help strengthen your communication with customers and engage them to use your page more frequently.
Ultimate Sales Boost
This is one of the best Shopify widgets for boosting eCommerce sales. Ultimate Sales Boost is a self-installing app that adds a countdown to your eCommerce store along with a social security widget featured on the product pages. This way, the extension motivates your potential buyers to purchase more products, mostly as the countdown leaves them in a now or never situation – and typically encourages them to shop on.
Instagram Shop by SNPT
The Instagram Shop Shopify widget is a two-in-one package deal. The tool basically connects your Instagram account to your eCommerce store and allows customers to learn all about your latest products, discounts, and offers – via Instagram. If a customer is interested in one of your products, the plugin will enable them to open the product and read its specifications on the spot.
