How Big Is Shopify?
Shopify is the third top eCommerce platform today. It builds the future of eCommerce. It’s the leading multi-channel, cloud-based platform whose goal is to enable and boost eCommerce for merchants all over the world. At its core, the platform enables users to divert operational, technical, and financial constraints via providing merchants, customers, SMEs, as well and big organizations an intuitive and easy way of establishing online brands.
Shopify developers are among the talented and skilled workforce whose services are highly in demand. Being at the forefront of eCommerce, Shopify could revolutionize the retail space.
Shopping Experience Digitization
The current business model of the platform is supported by a couple of main revenue streams, namely, the subscription and merchant solutions. Subscription solution revenues mainly are comprise of monthly fees for the core offering of the platform, such as an easy-to-use digital store management platform and online storefront. Features sales, including apps, themes and registrations of domain names contribute to the revenues as well. It has historically enabled Shopify to enjoy high margin gross of around 80 percent.
The merchant solutions are supplementary solutions that provide more value to the core experience of merchants. Possible add-ons are shipping and financing services, transaction fees, as well as point-of-sale hardware. Shopify Payments, the payment gateway of the platform is responsible for a considerable portion of the costs and revenues.
Businesses opt for the simplicity of the platform’s setting, and also for its wide array of capabilities and lesser cost. With a range of content and marketing tools, support, and payment gateways among others, it’s no wonder why a Shopify development company is in demand. The huge Shopify developers community is there, ready to help issues and concerns come up.
20 Free Shopify Apps to Extend and Boost your Store
With hundreds of thousands of applications in the Shopify App Store, there are so many options in terms of extending and boosting the functionality of an online shop. Whether you want to boost email marketing, add customer reviews, publish products on Facebook or get in-depth analytics, there is an app for all of that, and more.
However, with so much options to choose from, let’s highlight twenty of the best free apps to add to your eCommerce store. For startups, or even those who have been around for some time but looking to boost their current site, this list is definitely for you.
1. Kit
After launching a Shopify store, the next step to driving traffic is via digital marketing. Kit is a great tool since it could be a virtual employee to help you in running your FB ads, get updates on performance, and email marketing campaigns. AI-powered, it helps find prospective customers on both Instagram and Facebook, sending them targeted offers and messaging at the right time.
2. Oberlo
Looking for a small business idea or want your product to sell? Then Oberlo could help source a supplier. The app could help look for a marketplace of products to directly import on your store. When you get an order, you could fulfill it via the dropshipping supplier through the app. They then would ship the product to customers for you.
3. Product Reviews
The app lets you add customer reviews to products. This is a way for customers to give you feedback, encourage others to purchase from you. Reviews are very important when it comes to eCommerce, most of all when you take into account that only a small 2 percent of consumers do not look at them at all during buying. Moreover, the content published in reviews is a great help when it comes to SEO.
4. Free Shipping Bar
Most consumers make online purchases only if there is free shipping. The Free Shipping Bar application lets you display free shipping offers in a slide-out bar, revealing progressive messages to entice shoppers to reach the free shipping doorstep.
5. Order Printer
The apps lets you easily and quickly print labels, receipts, invoices and packing slips. Hasten the shipping process via building templates that suit your need or pint in bulk. Moreover, you could also customize branding on printed materials, creating a consistent and a coherent customer experience.
6. Printful
The app syncs with the Shopify store, letting you sell print-on-demand products, including mugs, shirts, and posters among others. When an order is made, it is sent automatically to Printful, which prints and ships to the customer for you. No minimum orders are required or even upfront costs, thus services are great to get started fast.
7. PushOwl
If you are having a problem with little sales and plenty of traffic because of cart abandonment, PushOwl could be the answer. Automated push notifications of abandoned carts could help boost sales as well as re-engage your visitors who have left your site.
8. Klaviyo
Automation software that connects to your site. The app helps you create automated email sequences, acquire and reach customer and target campaigns based on the behavior of the buyer to feed the overall strategy. The best thing is that it is built with eCommerce in mind and free to up to 200 subscribers and 500 email sends. For startups, it’s a great app to build email lists.
9. SEO Site Audit, Benchmark Hero
The app provides a detailed website analysis to inform you of what works and what doesn’t since it relates to the search and performance of the store. Also, it helps you find out why some pages are not converting as much as you would like them to.
10. Digital Downloads
One of the best free apps around. It’s easy-to-use, letting you sell digital products on your store. Customers could instantly get access to content. Updates on products are forwarded to customers automatically. You also could mix and match to include tangible and digital products in one order.
11. Shopcodes
QR codes are making a comeback and you could generate your own within seconds with the application. It’s easier for customers to scan code using their mobile devices and buy. The QR codes could be featured in pop-up shops, packaging inserts, in the brick-and-mortar displays and marketing materials.
12. Improved Contact Form
A wonderful way to make your brand accessible to customers is the Contact Us page. Also, it provides a channel that invites them to make inquiries. The app builds a pop-up contract form for the store so that users could contact you, no matter what page you are on. Furthermore, it tells you the location of a user and the pages they looked at before contacting you.
13. Form Builder
The app to choose if you need a form to gather leads, let customers submit orders or other stuff. Form Builder also helps you create and customize, contact, order and inquiry among others in your site. Also, you can set up an automated thank-you or message confirmation replies.
14. Rewards and Referrals app
The app is great if you’re considering your own loyalty-based or referral customer rewards program. It accommodates customer referrals and loyalty in one place and has a free plan for stores lesser than 100 orders a month.
15. Bulk Image Edit – Image SEO app
Big-sized images that are not user-friendly and not tagged with the right keywords could create havoc on SEO. This is where the app comes in. It helps make images across the store smaller to minimize load time and adjust file names and alt tags for better search optimization. It also resizes images for social media.
16. Infinite Options
Customers get a chance to be part of the product design process through product personalization. They could customize the next purchase by adding text, numbers, and many more. Provide buyers a more hands-on and creative experience by selling monogrammed, custom printed, and engraved items.
17. Compass app
The app helps analyze over 30 eCommerce metrics to judge the site’s performance. Then it will benchmark the analytics versus the competition, so you see how to stack up. The app also provides personalized recommendations on how to improve your shop further.
18. UserGems
A great way to create social proof and brand awareness is through influencer marketing. The app makes it easy to look for influencers among your clientele. The app notifies you about influential customers sharing your brand.
19. Sales Notification app by MPS
Showcases to users the products that others have purchased through social proof. This is a great way of building trust with the brand to inspire sales by showing your prospective customers what customers in the past have bought.
20. Upsell and Cross-sell products application
Cross-selling and upselling to customers is great to boost the size of the cart and average order value. Setting up automated product recommendations based on relationships between various SKUs is possible with the app.
The different Shopify applications could unlock new functionalities that will optimize your website for a better experience to customers and drive more sales. Along with the free apps above, there are also product upsell, email marketing and time management applications to leverage your unique business. The key is to find the right app for your needs.
Author Bio:
Leave a Reply