26 Best Shopify Apps To Increase Sales

Image of online storefront

One of the reasons I love working with Shopify is its ecosystem of supporting apps. 

Apps add extra functionalities to your website, usually without coding or complex integrations.

Here’s a list of the best Shopify apps I’ve seen in use.

Best Shopify Apps For Tracking

Good data is the backbone of your marketing. So it’s essential that you track as much data as possible and do it accurately.

However, with the increasing privacy concerns and restrictions of recent years, tracking has never been harder. 

That’s why the current trend is shifting from client-side tracking (browser-based), to server-side tracking. 

This architecture should ensure compliance with GDPR while allowing merchants to collect the information they need to optimize their business.

These are the top tracking Shopify apps:

  1. Elevar: GTM data layer with server-side tracking. Integrated with Facebook’s CPAI, Google Ads, GA4, TikTok, Klaviyo and more. Price: Free to install, up to $750/month depending on order volume.
  2. Stape Server GTM: Offer server-side GTM and Meta CAPI connectors. Price: $20-$100/month for the server-side GTM, plus $10 for a Meta CAPI gateway.
  3. TAGGRS: Similar to Stape. Price: $25-$65/month, depending on traffic volume.

Merchant can also invest in building their own server-side infrastructure (i.e. server GT container and buying server space). 

The advantage is not being dependent on a 3rd party. However, this also means they’ll have to take care of system maintenance and syncing with all channels. 

Best Shopify Apps For GDPR

If your store has visitors from the EU, your online store MUST show a cookie-banner that complies with GDPR, i.e. the EU’s privacy regulations. 

It’s even more important that the cookie banner blocks non-mandatory cookies when users reject them.

I’m based in Germany, and these are my 2 go-to GDPR Shopify apps:

  1. CookieBot: A solid tool to customize the cookie-banner, manage cookies (which one are mandatory and which ones aren’t), and manage user consent, in the case a user asks to delete their data. No native Shopify app. Price: From 7€/month.
  2. Pandectes GDPR Compliance: Streamlined cookie consent by integrating Google, Facebook, TikTok, Klaviyo etc. Price: From $9/month.

Example of a cookie banner

Example of a cookie banner on Liquid Death’s online store

Best Shopify Apps For FulFillment

Fulfillment apps connect your Shopify’s backend with the warehouse where you store your products. 

When an order comes in, these apps will pass that information to the warehouse and ship your products to the customers. 

Most fulfillment apps also help to automate returns and restock the returned items.

When selecting your fulfillment app, it’s important to ensure your warehouse and fulfillment partners (e.g. DHL, FedEx, USPS) are perfectly synced with it.

These are the most popular Shopify fulfillment apps:

  1. ShipBob
  2. ShipMonk
  3. SendCloud

Note that different solutions may be more relevant in different countries. Some warehouses also offer their custom apps.

The cost of fulfillment apps varies depending on your order volume and the complexity of your setup (e.g. how many connectors, how many add-on services).

Best Shopify Apps For Recommendations & Cross-Selling

Cross-selling is a great way to increase your store’s AOV (average order value).

This can be done by a recommendation carousel (‘you may also like’ / ‘our bestsellers’), which encourages customers to explore your store and reduce bounce rates. 

Or by offering product bundles or add-ons at a discount.

Here are some great Shopify apps for recommendations & cross-selling:

  1. Frequently bought together: As the name suggests, it allows customers to add more relevant items to their cart. However, it doesn’t include carousels. This app is ‘built for Shopify’ and FREE.
  2. GLO Related Products, Upsell: Create product bundles, add-ons, and recommendation carousels. SKUs can be picked manually, or based on tags or collections. Price: $9.90/month.
  3. UpCart—Cart Drawer Cart Upsell: This app focuses on the cart drawer. Merchants can add cross-selling items and messages to increase AOV (‘add $20 to get free shipping’). This app is also ‘built for Shopify’. Price: Depends on order volume – $30/month for 0-200 orders, $55/month for 501-1000.

Example of a cross-selling carousel

Cross-selling carousel on Brooklinen’s online store

Best Shopify Apps To Increase CVR

Many variables affect your store’s conversion rate: The quality of your products, their images, pricing, and landing page UX, just to name a few.

While a single app can’t fix fundamental issues, many apps can improve your CVR by adding urgency or highlighting your offers.

Here are some apps I’ve worked with:

  1. Free Shipping Bar By Hextom: This free app allows you to add marketing messages to the top of your website, highlighting promotions and USPs. Price: FREE.
  2. Urgency Bear Countdown Timer: Another free app that also includes a scarcity element (‘only 4 left in stock’). Price: FREE
  3. Proof Bear – Sales Popup: Also free, this app shows a little popup whenever a customer completes an order. Of course, the popup can also be set to pop regardless of real orders. Just make sure it doesn’t show to often. Price: FREE

This brings us to the next topic – Shopify apps for reviews and social proof 

Best Review Apps For Shopify

Reviews are probably the most common feature to display social proof on your store. Review apps will send an automated Email to customers a week or two after they’ve ordered asking them to rate their experience. 

Most of them will also allow uploading pictures and videos of the product, which adds to the authenticity of their reviews.

A high number of positive reviews signals to visitors that your store is popular, and helps to increase CVR.

Here are some of the most popular review apps:

  1. Judge.Me: Cheap, simple, and includes all the features you’ll need including Email requests and UGCs. The most popular reviews app on the Shopify store. Price: $15/month.
  2. Loox: Also very popular on the app store. Similar features and integrations to Judge.Me’s but also offers referrals at a small additional price. Price: $35/month
  3. Yotpo Product Reviews & UGC: Yotpo started as one of the first players in the UGC area, when the trend only started. Today, they combine UGC with reviews. Price: From $15/month.
  4. Reviews.io: If you’re selling in the EU, using many Shopify apps won’t be GDPR-compliant (app developers outside the EU don’t store the data on EU servers). The company behind Reviews.io is based in Europe, and that’s the main reason why many EU merchants use it in their stores. Price: $89/month, significantly more expensive than the others.

Tip: Most review apps have a feature to share reviews in Facebook ads. You can also send the reviews from the app to Google Merchant Center, to feature them in Google shopping ads.

Example of reviews section on an online store

The reviews section on Threadheads’ online store

Best Email Marketing Apps For Shopify

When I started working with Shopify back in 2017, the most popular Email marketing tool was Mailchimp. 

But unlike Mailchimp which could be integrated to any website, Klaviyo’s bosses created an app that was focused solely on Shopify. 

Klaviyo integrates seamlessly with Shopify’s backend, and many of the most popular apps today (e.g. Judge.Me). This means store owners can save expensive developer time on these often overlooked integrations.

Price: Klaviyo isn’t the cheapest Email and SMS marketing app, but it has a flexible pricing model that grows with your business, and how many Email subscribers you have.  Plans start at $20/month.

Shopify launched its own FREE Email marketing app in 2020. I haven’t worked with it, but it has good reviews in the app store. However, it’s not clear how it integrates with other popular apps.

Best Shopify Landing Page Apps

Landing page builder apps are a great way to show your products and promotions in a unique way that’s independent of Shopify’s PDP templates. 

For example, you can create a ‘5 reasons’ page to highlight the 5 main USPs customers should buy your best seller; Test adding elements to your PDPs without code; Or, create a landing page for your summer sale.

All page builder apps come with templates for a quick start, and state that they’re SEO-friendly.

Here are some great landing page builders for Shopify:

  1. PageFly Landing Page Builder: The most popular app. Includes built-in sales boosters such as countdown times, and upsell & cross-sell product lists. Integrates with 170 apps. Price: From $24/month for 5 pages.
  2. GemPages Landing Page Builder: Includes built-in sales boosters such as countdown times, stock counter, and bundles. Integrates with dozens of apps. Price: $29/month
  3. Replo: What sets this Replo apart from the other apps is its built-in Experiments feature (A/B testing). This tool alone often costs hundreds of dollars a month. Price: From $99/month for 10 pages.

Best SEO Shopify Apps

Solid SEO-fundamentals will help you acquire free organic traffic that can boost your business results. 

SEO apps help automate the optimization of your store’s SEO elements: Meta titles and descriptions, image alt-tags and compression, redirect broken links, etc.

These apps will do everything except write SEO-optimized articles for you.

Here are some apps I’ve worked with:

  1. Smart SEO: ‘Built for Shopify’, includes the main SEO tasks and monitoring dashboards for speed, rankings and more. Integrates with many popular apps. Price: From 10$/month.
  2. Booster SEO & Image Optimizer: Includes more features and reports than Smart SEO. From my experience, easier to work with (more automation). Price: From $39/month.

Shopify's App Store: Booster SEO App

Shopify’s App Store: Booster SEO App

Best Shopify Apps For Product Catalogs & Feed

Product feeds are a must in order to sell your products on Google and Meta. 

Shopify’s Meta channel creates a decent feed you can use in your Facebook and Instagram catalog ads.

However, Shopify’s Google & YouTube channel creates a very limited feed, with a very poor UX and no way to optimize or organize the feed.

Feed apps create editable product feeds you can use to optimize your Google shopping and Facebook catalog ads. 

I’d recommend these apps:

  1. Simprosys Google Shopping Feed: If you have a small number of SKUs and basic needs, this app should do the trick. The app generates feeds for Google and Meta, with basic editing options, e.g. editing product titles and adding custom labels. XML feed is also available upon request. Price: From 5$/month.
  2. Channable: Product Data Feeds: An advanced feeds app. Much more convenient for bulk, rule-based editing. Also allows creating search ads per SKU, with boilerplates. Price: From $49/month.

How To Choose The Right Shopify App

Choosing the right app should consider the following:

  1. The functions you’re looking for
  2. The features included in the app
  3. Integrations with other apps you’re already using
  4. Ease of use
  5. Ease of integration
  6. Price

Conclusion

Apps add extra functionalities to your Shopify store, usually without coding or complex integrations.

Adding the right apps to your Shopify store can help increase sales and improve operations such as fulfillment, returns, and customer support.

Make sure to test different apps until you find the ones that work best for your business. 

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