Starting an e-commerce store requires a crazy amount of thought and planning for a successful launch. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already embarked on the scariest part: taking that first leap to launch your own business. Congrats!
It’s crucial to have a solid tech stack that integrates well with one another, allows you to create a cohesive customer experience, and doesn’t slow down your site. There are over SIX THOUSAND apps on the Shopify app store. With all of these choices comes an avalanche of information and “Ultimate Shopify App” lists, so it can be overwhelming trying to figure out which ones to choose.
Well, there’s good news and bad news… the bad news is that here’s another Shopify App list. The good news is that I’ve helped architect the e-commerce experience for over 100 Shopify and Shopify Plus stores. After many starts and stops with various tools, this is what I’ve aligned on as the apps I would use to launch a store in 2022.
Now, this list is not exhaustive. You may need to add in some apps here and there based on your specific needs, but these 15 apps should be the foundation for your store. These suggestions are rooted in our best-in-class understanding and hands-on experience with every application through our work at electrIQ.
If you don’t want to read through the full list, here are some quick links to each tool:
What is it: Transactional Touchpoints out of Klaviyo and Branded Order Tracking Pages
Differentiator: Malomo moves away from Shopify's default order confirmation and shipping/tracking pages to create a branded experience with upsells, education, and community building. From there you are able to create specific pages based on key personalization criteria: i.e. a landing page for one-shot customer versus subscription customers, new vs returning, VIP customer, and more.
Price: Based on # orders per month (Plans as low as $.02/shipment)
How we use it:
What is it: Personalized Recommendations, Upsells, Cross-Sells, AI, Frictionless Re-ordering, and more
Differentiator: Rebuy is a powerhouse when it comes to increasing AOV, personalizing merchandising, and improving retention. With Rebuy, you can pre-populate checkouts based on a customer's last order, add in a free shipping threshold in your slideout cart, surface limited-time discounts, and much more!
Starting Price: FREE up to 50 orders per month
How we use it: Since there are so many different use cases, I summed it all up in this YouTube video, which includes live examples from our current clients.
What is it: Subscription Commerce Platform
Differentiator: There are some startups to watch in 2022, but Recharge is THE subscription platform for Shopify merchants. Recharge not only is a strong subscription platform, but it has numerous integrations with other best-in-class apps in the Shopify ecosystem.
Starting Price: No Monthly Fee (1% + 10¢ per transaction) or $299/mo (1% + 19¢ per transaction)
How we use it: All things subscription!
What is it: Email/SMS Marketing
Differentiator: Email has been the foundation for DTC companies for as long as we can remember. SMS, on the other hand, has recently exploded in popularity. Today, for the highest level of return on your marketing (apart from having a specialist behind these), you need to make sure that your email and SMS marketing are working together. Klaviyo allows for both, providing a cohesive view of all your communication touchpoints and streamlined data analysis. You are also able to create sophisticated flows across both channels. Klaviyo also has more app integrations, I’d argue, than anyone else in the ecommerce space, ensuring that you can pass data from other platforms to enhance your email/SMS marketing.
Price: Based on # of contacts (Use their Price calculator)
How we use it: For everything related to email & SMS marketing and as an aggregator of all data we have on a customer. I put together a video of the flows you absolutely need to have.
What is it: SMS Marketing
Differentiator: Attentive offers A/B testing, segmentation, journey creations, conversational flows, compliance and deliverability, numerous Shopify app integrations, and so much more! Attentive currently holds some of the strongest platform capabilities for SMS Marketing and boasts an easy-to-use platform with 5-star customer service and support. Email is great, but you can't forget about this booming channel!
Starting Price: Free trial then variable based on subscriber count, term commitment, etc.
How we use it: Everything SMS marketing!
What is it: Referral/Loyalty Platform
Differentiator: Superfiliate can be deployed as a referral + loyalty platform through its on-site, post-purchase and portal commerce experiences, while also allowing customers to create their own unique headless storefronts to refer their friends with. Through deep integrations with Klaviyo, Attentive, and Postscript, Superfiliate automate SMS/email communication while integrating with Shopify and Recharge to handle payments.
Price: $599/month + 5% of Superfiliate revenue (flexible flat-rate pricing for some brands)
How we use it:
What is it: Quiz Builder
Differentiator: Octane is a must-have in the age of ever-changing privacy policies. A quiz allows site visitors to share zero-party data, get funneled into your communications, and be guided through the buying-decision process based on personalized recommendations. This journey creates the foundation for personalization from the moment the site visitors take the quiz all the way through to your first order retention efforts and beyond.
Starting Price: $49/month
How we use it:
What is it: Post Purchase Offers as they aptly call out in their name :)
Differentiator: CartHook allows you to increase AOV without risking a conversion by creating post-purchase 1-click upsells. Their easy drag n’ drop editor allows you to build custom upsell offers, as well as implement conditional logic based on whether the custom converts on the upsell or doesn’t (i.e. showing 3 upsells in a row but only showing certain offers depending on whether the customer says yes or no to the former). The best part is that you can run A/B tests to see what performs the best.
Starting Price: $50/mo (plus 1% of post-purchase revenue)
How we use it: For 1-click upsells. Make a purchase on Disco to see the experience
What is it: Review Platform
Differentiator: Compared to many other review platforms, Okendo provides the fairest price in the market considering what it offers. You’re able to ask questions based on customer demographics and product-specific attributes during the review request process. It’s also a developer’s dream for customizing styling on-site, has strong filtering capabilities, and much more! Okendo also offers best-in-class integrations with Klaviyo, Attentive, Rebuy, Gorgias, and others.
Starting Price: $29/month
How we use it: For all of our client’s product reviews (including florence by mills)
What is it: Customer Service Platform
Differentiator: Gorgias is a customer service platform that allows you to automate frequent tickets, drive sales through the chat functionality, and unify all customer communications. With the many Shopify app integrations available, it allows for a 360-degree view of the customer needing support.
Starting Price: $60/month
How we use it: For Customer Service
What is it: Offset Order Carbon Emissions
Differentiator: Ecocart offers your customers the option to offset their order’s carbon footprint in both the cart and at checkout. Consumers are becoming more and more eco-conscious, with their purchasing behavior aligning with brands that emulate their values. By utilizing Ecocart, it showcases your brand's commitment to sustainability.
Price: FREE
How we use it: In cart option to make your order carbon neutral
What is it: Post-purchase survey
Differentiator: Enquire Labs allows you to specify whether you only want to ask the question to new or repeat customers, as well as build out question streams and logic. Their simple 1-click integration with Shopify and Recharge allows you to easily tailor questions in your post-purchase (order confirmation) area to better understand how your customers found you and more! As you gain zero-party data, you are able to pass that information through to other apps to enhance personalization efforts.
Starting Price: $49/mo
How we use it: To gather customer feedback as well as segmentable data points. I like to think about it from an email and SMS personalization standpoint. What would I like to be able to know about a customer to tailor and personalize our communications to them? From there, I can figure out which questions I need to ask in the post-purchase survey in order to get the required data to execute against my personalization strategy.
What is it: Lifetime Value and Profit Analytics
Differentiator: Lifetimely allows you to look at the lifetime value and behaviors of your customers. Their array of in-depth features, functionalities, and data allows you to make better-informed decisions across your business.
Starting Price: $19/month
How we use it: For cohort, retention, and LTV analysis. I put together a video that walks through how we use it at electrIQ and what sort of actionable takeaways you can glean from the data.
What is it: Influencer Marketing
Differentiator: Gatsby integrates into your current communication funnels to make influencer marketing easier. Collect Instagram/Tiktok handles from your lead capture, post-purchase confirmation page, or even unique landing pages, and Gatsby takes care of the rest. Gaining your site visitors’ Instagram handles allows you to assess the potential reach of your customers as micro-influencers, get insights everytime your brand is mentioned, and even automate your communication and triggers with their Klaviyo integration.
Starting Price: $80/month
How we use it: To build loyalty programs that incentivize social selling and to also gain insights into our customer’s social reach.
What is it: Drag n’ drop app builder
Differentiator: Create a lightning-fast shopping experience with your very own mobile app! Create and grow a new owned marketing channel with push notifications to subscribers, and integrate it with Klaviyo to send your push notifications right alongside your email and SMS communications.
Starting Price: $250/mo
How we use it: To create iOS and Android apps for our clients
What is it: Loyalty Program
Differentiator: I’m a strong believer that points-based loyalty programs just don’t work. Historically, we’ve seen low adoption rates caused by confusing customer journeys, complicated tiered reward structures, and an overall mediocre customer experience. Instead, why not build out a manual loyalty program that surprises and delights your customer? For example: for every customer who places their 5th order with you, include a free piece of merch in their order! You can expand on it from there.
Starting Price: FREE
How we use it: Through Klaviyo flows, we can set up a manual loyalty program. For our Shopify Plus clients, we’ll use Shopify Flow to automatically add rewards to a customer’s order based on what order # it is with the brand.
At the end of the day, how you set up your Shopify store and utilize supporting apps is up to you. However, you should look to maximize the efficiency and capabilities of all platforms.
Ensure you are doing research on your apps, especially into the integrations they offer. You want to ensure that the new apps you add to your store will work with all of the other apps you have. You will be able to maximize an app far beyond its current capabilities if you have a secondary app that takes information from app A and enhances your capabilities with app B. This allows you to create a cohesive customer journey across all touchpoints, while also making your app investment more efficient.
You should have a clear goal and purpose for each app you decide to use, as well as KPIs and an ROI you’re looking to achieve when assessing whether the tool is successful or not.
First Tip: Make sure you know the attribution method and window for each of the tools you’re using. If the tool you’re using has a 30-day view attribution window, then it’s going to generate a massive ROI.
Second Tip: Most of these tools require some sort of setup process and support to ensure they’re successful. Just because you drop a referral program on your site doesn’t mean customers will use it unless you include it in your marketing materials, customer journeys, etc. That’s why you hire electrIQ :)
The e-commerce space is growing at an unprecedented rate. There has never been more competition and ad costs are going through the roof. However personalization and understanding your customers, has continuously been able to withstand the test of time. All the apps recommended in this article are focused on increasing LTV by creating a best-in-class customer experience.
It's a beautiful thing when your entire app ecosystem works cohesively to create a strong customer experience. The sooner you’re able to implement some of these best practices, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits!
Stop sending 20% of your website traffic to boring carrier tracking pages and start sending them to a branded order tracking page that displays your branding, upsells, social media, blog posts, loyalty programs, and more. Your CX team will thank you.Malomo helps you get ahead of shipping issues, brand your order tracking experience, and reconvert shoppers while they wait for their package to arrive.
Rebuy is the ultimate personalization platform for Shopify brands. Rebuy provides AI-powered tools to enhance customer experiences through personalized product recommendations, smart search functions, dynamic bundling, and automated marketing strategies like upselling and cross-selling. Rebuy's suite of fully-integrated tools increases revenue, average order value, and customer retention for D2C brands.
Octane AI is a suite of tool for Shopify brands to increase revenue through engaging quizzes and learn more about their customers through AI-driven research. Octane helps D2C brands create quizzes that recommend products, collect zero party data, grow subscriber lists and drive ROI. Their Voice of Customer tool, Insights AI, allows D2C brands to upload their reviews and enable Octane’s AI to uncover insights, sentiments, research and more into their customers.
Turn customers into Superfans with Okendo, the unified customer marketing platform for reviews, referrals, loyalty, quizzes, and surveys, making it easy to cultivate advocacy, scale word-of-mouth, and maximize lifetime value. 8,000+ Shopify brands use Okendo to mobilize their customers for faster and more efficient growth, including SKIMS, Liquid Death, and Oh Polly.
Gorgias is of the most popular helpdesks for D2C brands. It centralizes all your support tickets in one place and enriches them with lots of extra context about a buyer's profile. Through Gorgias, you can connect directly to your eCommerce store and edit orders, modify subscriptions, and refund payments without leaving your helpdesk.
A free plugin that offsets your carbon footprint at checkout. Their algorithm determines the exact cost of offsetting the emissions from manufacturing & shipping of each order - and customers have the option to check a box to make their order carbon neutral, usually adding 1-2% to their total.
Fairing is a post-purchase survey tool that gets category-leading response rates. With Fairing's Question Stream, over 3,000 DTC brands and 2,000 Shopify Plus brands are getting 40-80% response rates on their post-purchase survey, leading to better data about their sources of growth, their customers, and the potential for future improvements.
Lifetimely is a robust analytics tool designed for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands using Shopify. It provides detailed insights into customer lifetime value (LTV), profit and loss tracking, and predictive analytics. The platform allows businesses to integrate various data sources, customize dashboards, and benchmark performance against industry standards. With Lifetimely, brands can make data-driven decisions to enhance profitability and customer retention.
Tapcart has been called the "Shopify for mobile apps" and it's drag-and-drop platform let brands customize their mobile app including layout, product detail pages, integrate checkout options, include product reviews, and even add other branded content (i.e., blogs, lookbooks, videos, live video, and more). Tapcart also lets merchants sync directly from Shopify in realtime so inventory, products, and collection are all up-to-date.
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