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There's a ton to choose from, but which Shopify apps are the best?
We often speak about the total technical debt of your eCommerce store. When installing a new app, not only do you have to think about how it will work within the complex wireframe of apps and integrations within your site already, but as eCommerce programs and plugins evolve, they may add on new features that render others redundant anyway. This can both slow down your site and cause you to have additional monthly outgoings for app subscriptions completely unnecessarily.
As an example, Shopify is constantly expanding its offering. With new features being introduced to the out of the box plan with every passing month, new third party apps need to be truly innovative or fit a hyper specific vertical to be useful.
That’s not to say that there are no useful third party apps out there, far from it. In fact, here, we’re going to look at 10 Shopify Apps that not only build on Shopify’s out of the box functionalities, but provide new features to delight both business owners and customers alike.
Kicking us off with a business that actually has two Shopify apps. OrderlyPrint is an order management tool that allows merchants to tag, filter, and organise their orders, create custom pick lists, custom packing slips, and speed up fulfilment and invoicing. That’s all well and good, but it’s the other of the two apps that’s on this list.
To us, Orderly’s other app, OrderlyEmails, is a much more powerful and niche filling tool. It allows you to override the standard template of order confirmation and order update emails.
Unlike promotional emails, which are sent through your CRM of choice, order confirmation emails are sent directly by Shopify. So, just like there’s no way to adjust the checkout without being on Shopify Plus, there’s no way to adjust these emails straight out of the box.
Not only does this allow you to keep these emails on brand, but also introduce post purchase marketing through upsells and discounts. A unique offering that’s easy to manage? No wonder it’s on this list.
Maybe it’s just because we love a good automation, but we couldn’t leave this one off the list. The one app on this list that is actually developed by Shopify themselves, Shopify Flow allows merchants to build automations that integrate with a wide range of different applications, such as Google Sheets, Asana, Slack, and more.
On its own, it’s difficult to truly showcase the benefits of Shopify Flow, but pretty much any tedious, manual workflow can be sped up and even taken off your hands with it in place. It takes a bit of creativity and business acumen for its power to be maximised, but over time it’s become one of our most leaned on integrations.
The search bar is one of the most powerful tools your eCommerce store has when it comes to increasing your conversion rate. After all, it’s one of the main ways customers discover new products. Klevu is a dual product discovery and merchandising app for Shopify, that seeks to supercharge the way customers discover products on your website.
With Klevu, a customer doesn’t have to type in the exact name of your product in order for it to show up in the search bar. Rather, if they type “black shirt under £50” all relevant products will show up and Klevu will even suggest additional products that they believe will appeal to the customer making that specific search.
Direct search is super powerful both when a customer isn’t sure what they specifically want and when they know exactly what they want. It allows them to both find new products and get directly to the product category they’re looking for. Klevu seeks to make this process much more intuitive, and as a result boosts both brand and customer satisfaction.
Returns are a fact of life in eCommerce, but instead of just gritting your teeth and toughing through their impact, you can instead redirect the impact of returns into an opportunity for your business to thrive. Reveni is a Shopify plugin that seeks to optimise the experience after a customer has received their purchase.
Reveni makes returning a product as simple as possible for both the customer and business, allowing businesses to focus on providing excellent customer service and improving their overall operations. As a whopping 58% of customers say they would NEVER shop with a brand again if they’d had a bad returns experience, this is not one to be ignored.
We could write a whole piece on the power of customer reviews in optimising conversion rate on a product by product basis, in fact we already have. Your standard written reviews are great, but there’s opportunity to improve upon them and integrate them with your other channels.
Reviews.io fully understands the power of reviews, and not only takes all of the stress away from getting them with automated email invitations, but integrates with your other channels to turn them into marketing content too.
Taking it a step further, Reviews.io allows merchants to create UGC blocks on their site, ripe with photo and video reviews, which are shown to be 20% more effective than a simple write up.
Towards the end of 2024, we started to see many eCommerce businesses begin to introduce a subscription offering in addition to their standard portfolio of products. It made us take a second look at how subscriptions are powered. Turns out, there’s a whole economy of Shopify Subscription apps out there. In fact, Shopify even offers their own.
However, what Recharge subscriptions offers on top of the base subscription functionality is what truly separates it as our preferred subscription application.
With Recharge, you don’t just get access to subscriptions, but a full suite of features to prevent customer churn. All subscriptions have a timer attached to them, and customers will unsubscribe inevitably. Recharge keeps customers informed and happy about their subscription, giving them the option to gift a subscription and more.
Oh look! We made that one.
Shameless plug, but if you want to get as much insight into your business’s performance and more, The CSI Predictor really is the Shopify app for you.
The Cake IP-powered algorithms calculate a store’s typical sales patterns by analysing recent trading data. The app then transforms your current daily sales into a forecast for the day.
What sets this tool apart is its dynamic forecast log, which visualises the changes in the forecast throughout the day using candlestick charts. Triggered alerts notify users of significant positive or negative shifts in the forecast.
Think of it as creating a “share price” to your daily sales with the tool actively tracking and alerting you to unexpected fluctuations in that price, letting you immediately get to work investigating the problem.
When some people go into a department store they may prefer to browse at their own pace or be guided by a sales representative. The exact same thing is true online. Live chat’s not for everyone, but for some, it can be absolutely crucial for helping to guide them through their entire purchase journey.
Whether they want to find out more about specific products, terms of service, returns policies, and more, having it all contained within a small tab means that a customer doesn't have to navigate through your entire site in order to find the information they need.
Taking it a step further, Gorgias can take some of the stress off your customer service team by integration with your social media channels. Messages such as “where’s my order?” can be given an automated stack of responses ultimately saving your team time.
Loyalty programs are one of the oldest and most effective ways to increase customer loyalty. The simple coupon dates back to 1887, and is the basis of the modern loyalty program for eCommerce merchants.
It costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. And research shows that a customer who signs up to a loyalty program is 47% more likely to buy from you again. Therefore, a loyalty program is not where you want to skimp out. Whilst Shopify’s Smile.io offers the basic loyalty program functionality, Loyalty Lion takes everything up a notch.
Be it customer analytics, customisation so that your loyalty program fits with your brand, integrations with your CRM and more, Loyalty Lion takes the cake.
It’s Shopify’s CRM of choice, if that isn’t enough of a selling point.
Klaviyo’s CRM enables more than just email marketing and SMS touch points, but complex analytical tools to fuel your entire business. Suitable for experienced marketers looking to send highly targeted campaigns.
Klaviyo goes beyond just email marketing and SMS, the platform's true power lies in its complex suite of analytical tools. Marketers can dive deep into customer data, crafting highly targeted campaigns that speak directly to specific audience segments. The platform's advanced segmentation tools allow businesses to move past generic marketing approaches, instead creating personalised experiences that resonate with individual customer preferences and behaviours.
Its ability to fuel entire marketing ecosystems makes it more than just a communication platform – it's a strategic business intelligence tool that can drive growth, increase customer loyalty, and ultimately boost revenue.
For eCommerce businesses looking to build on their marketing efforts, Klaviyo is more than a Shopify Plug in - it’s an essential tool for running your business.
Even as Shopify offers more and more with its base package, third party apps are always going to be a major part of your Shopify store. The apps featured here empower you with new processes, powerful analytics, and ultimately delight customers.
That being said, for smaller functionalities, custom development will always trump an integration, so if you need assistance building a new Shopify site without heavily relying on third party integrations, contact us.
