Running an eCommerce business involves multiple moving parts.
As well as fulfilling orders, tackling shipping issues, and keeping your stock levels at an optimum level, there are all the marketing activities to contend with as well; email marketing, search engine optimisation, and keeping customers happy with slick and easy support.
Running a business on Shopify takes the headache out of a lot of these activities thanks to the catalogue of apps that are available. There’s pretty much a plug-and-play app for every occasion, allowing you to create your own ecosystem of tools and applications that grow and enhance your business. We’ve listed out some of the best Shopify apps in 2021 for each category to get you started.
Recharge for billing
How it works: Recharge is all about making subscriptions easy. As the fastest growing area in eCommerce, subscriptions have a lot of value for brands, but setting them up and ensuring they create a seamless experience for shoppers is crucial. Recharge is one of the best Shopify plugins for establishing a subscription model for your audience, connecting up the signup stage with recurring payments that keep customers engaged.
How to integrate Recharge with Shopify: Go to the listing in Shopify’s App Store and click “add app”. Follow the installation instructions which will open Recharge in your Shopify store. Enter your store details to being the setup. Get the full integration instructions here.
The Benefits of Recharge for Shopify:
- Automatically track first-time payments and recurring transactions
- Track performance by subscription plan type or segment
- Get marketing attribution for subscription revenue
- Create and roll out subscriptions in minutes
- Increase lifetime value and customer engagement
Blueprint for SMS marketing
How it works: Blueprint creates powerful and personalised SMS marketing campaigns for each and every shopper. Merchants can set up sequences based on past shopping behaviour, product interests, and customer engagement levels and automatically send abandoned cart reminders, replenishment reminders, product upgrades, and seamless two-way conversations via text. The central dashboard makes it easy to offer support from one place.
How to integrate Blueprint with Shopify: Blueprint automatically synchronises with your Shopify store when you create an account. It pulls all your previous data into your Blueprint dashboard so you can see previous orders and key analytics like lifetime spend and average order value.
The Benefits of Blueprint for Shopify:
- Create seamless one-click order links
- Personalise SMS campaigns based on key customer analytics
- Pull all customer communication into one place
- Create automated flows that still have a personal touch
- Foster two-way conversations to increase customer engagement
Mailchimp for email marketing
How it Works: Email is one of the most popular ways of reaching customers and potential shoppers. Mailchimp provides a central platform where merchants can set and send automated email campaigns, segment their audience, and track engagement metrics.
How to integrate Mailchimp with Shopify: Navigate to the Mailchimp app on the Shopify App Store and install it. Follow the installation instructions to connect your Shopify store. From there, you can set up segments, choose the audiences you want to sync, tag shoppers, and create campaigns.
The Benefits of Mailchimp for Shopify:
- Manage and grow customers relationships via email
- Create highly-targeted audience segments based on key customer analytics
- Track customer engagement through email performance
- Create and send automated email campaigns
- Combine purchasing and email marketing data to target customers
Zendesk for customer support
How it Works: Decent customer support is crucial for ecommerce brands that want to keep satisfaction levels high. Zendesk allows support staff to access, work with, and respond to tickets from multiple sources, including Help Centre requests, emails, text messages, chatbots, and even social media.
How to integrate Zendesk with Shopify: Navigate to Shopify for Zendesk in the Zendesk Marketplace and install the app. Choose the account you want to install with the integration and you’ll be redirected to the Shopify integration setup page where you can enter your storefront subdomain name. You’ll be directed to your Shopify storefront where you can install the Zendesk app. Read the full integration instructions here.
The Benefits of Zendesk for Shopify:
- Collect all customer questions and queries in one central place (no logging in and out of each platform)
- Track and analyse customer data from various different channels
- Increase customer engagement levels
- Provide a personalised support experience for customers based on their preferred channels
- Boost customer satisfaction
Plugin SEO for search optimisation
How it Works: SEO helps increase brand awareness by pushing your store up the search results. Plugin SEO lets you add keywords and optimise the meta information on your Shopify storefront to maximise your chance of ranking for relevant keywords.
How to Integrate Plugin SEO with Shopify: Navigate to the Plugin SEO listing on the Shopify App Store and install it. Once installed, you can connect it to your Shopify account and start using the available features.
The Benefits of Plugin SEO for Shopify:
- Library of metadata templates you can bulk edit
- Powerful keyword tool and suggestions
- Implement a keyword strategy to boost search engine rankings
- Periodic SEO health check report to monitor your status
- Easily add rich snippets to product pages
Smile for loyalty programs
How it Works: Customer loyalty is integral to the success of a business. Smile makes it easy for merchants to create loyalty and referral programs for shoppers that reward customers that come back. You can create a pop-up to promote your loyalty program and set up rewards within the app itself to start treating your best customers right away.
How to Integrate Smile with Shopify: Navigate to the Smile listing on the Shopify App Store and install it. Follow the installation instructions to connect up your Shopify storefront. From there, you’ll be able to set up and create multiple rewards programs and point systems.
The Benefits of Smile for Shopify:
- Create urgency with bonus points and time-sensitive offers
- Increase customer loyalty with personalised and powerful reward programs
- Create social proof through word-of-mouth marketing
- Monitor referral traffic and sales with in-app analytics
- Encourage upsells and strengthen customer retention
Reveal for customer value optimization
How it Works: Reveal by Omniconvert helps retailers and merchants improve customer lifetime value by analyzing their customers’ behavior and predicting their buying patterns. It then segments the customers into different groups based on these patterns, which you can use to create personalized offers and campaigns for each customer group.
How to Integrate Reveal with Shopify: Navigate to the Reveal app on the Shopify App Store and click “add app.” Follow the installation instructions and create an account. Read the full integration instructions here.
The Benefits of Reveal for Shopify:
- Advanced customer buying behavior segmentation (RFM).
- Enhanced email marketing using customer segmentation with Klaviyo integration.
- Predict customers’ future actions by analyzing and stimulating repeat buying behavior.
- Reduced ad spend by using existing customer data for marketing and retargeting.
- Real-time product performance report to help improve product assortment.
Get started with the best Shopify apps 2021
These are just a few of the best paid Shopify apps that will help you establish and grow your eCommerce business this year and beyond.
Having access to multiple powerful tools at your fingertips takes the hard work out of running a store so you can sit back and enjoy the sales and happy customers. These are some of the best Shopify apps for clothing stores, but they can be used for any vertical, whether that’s food and drink, homeware, health and beauty, or cars. With easy integrations and tons of benefits, it’s a no-brainer to install these Shopify apps today.
Blueprint connects to your Shopify store in 2-mins to supercharge customer retention via SMS & WhatsApp. To find out more, book a demo today.
