Top 10 apps for improving your Shopify site

Shopify has a lot of features right from the start - there’s a lot of great performance features, content editing features and payment options built in. But usually you’ll want to do a little more and fortunately there’s a whole host of apps available.

1 Product Bundles

One thing we’re regularly asked about is enabling bundles of some sort. Being able to sell a group of products within certain choices, often for a reduced price - that sort of thing. It seems everyone handles their bundles slightly differently, but the range of options available in Bold’s Product Bundles app covers most requirements.

2 Tiered and Wholesale Pricing

Another one we’re asked about a lot is offering price reductions for certain groups of customers and offering price reductions based on the quantity ordered. Both of these features are often required for sites selling B2B. Another Bold app, the Custom Pricing app, handles these features nicely and has some useful additions like bulk updating from a spreadsheet and automated pricing rules as customers spend more.

3 Store pickup

Shopify does now have a local pickup option built in, but it’s not as fully featured as you might need. You might want to restrict the days available for local pickup, or require a lead time before it’s available for example. Zapiet’s Store Pickup and Delivery app gives you a lot of features to fully control pickup and delivery options. You can give your customers the ability to choose a date and time for their pickup (or delivery) as part of placing their order for example.

4 Subscriptions

Shopify launched subscriptions a while back but you’ll still need an additional app to configure each subscription option that you offer to your customers. You can set up your products as normal, and then additionally offer them as part of a repeat subscription. Subscriptions can also be configured so the customer can get a discounted price to incentivise them to sign up. There are a few good options out there, but we like Recharge’s subscription app. One thing to watch out for depending on your sales volumes and pricing are apps that take a transaction fee - we can help you make the best decision based on your requirements though.

5 Google Shopping

Automatically syncing your products to Google’s Merchant Center and flagging any issues with that feed is a really useful feature. And having that for free? No brainer. This can be added as a Sale channel rather than app, and once the accounts are synced up, you’ll be away. Shopify also offers sales channels to Facebook, eBay, and Pinterest which can all be added directly in your Shopify admin.

6 Instagram feed

You’ve lovingly curated a beautiful instagram feed, so why not show it off on your website as well? Some apps will let you tag products in your photos and create a full shoppable Instagram feed, but if you just want to simply show the latest from your feed, then Mintt’s Instafeed app will do exactly that with their free plan.

7 TikTok

Not just for dance challenges or the latest memes, it's an opportunity to reach new customers. TikTok’s official Shopify app lets you promote your products directly on TikTok and track their performance. If you’re ready for a brave new world, then give this one a go.

8 Stockists locator

If you have a number of retailers around the country (or around the world) it’s nice to let your customers know where they can visit a brick and mortar shop and buy your goods. Having a map and a postcode search feature, and even filtering by certain product categories makes this really easy for them. Another Bold app - their Store Locator app does all this nicely.

9 Email marketing

Shopify has recently launched their email marketing app, and with 10,000 emails free each month, it’s going to give Mailchimp and Klaviyo a run for their money. It means not having to go somewhere else to send your campaigns, it’s all from your Shopify admin, and has the personalisation, segmentation, tracking and scheduling that you’d expect. If you are already on Mailchimp or Klaviyo though, don’t worry. There are apps for both of those and they sync with Shopify’s mailing list perfectly.

10 Hotjar

As we mentioned in our Top 10 modules for Magento 2, being able to actually see where customers are clicking or getting stuck and having difficulty makes it so much easier to take any little frustrations away and help your customers have the smoothest purchasing experience possible.

11 Something more unusual?

As a cheeky bonus, don’t think that if it’s not in the app store you can’t have it. We’d be delighted to talk to you about creating a fully bespoke app to do whatever you need it to do, whether that’s to make your life easier in the admin, making your customer’s lives easier - or both.