Lori Dinh January 26, 2018
Not only does Shopify make it easy to sell online, it also provides what online stores need the most to achieve eCommerce success. The Shopify app store is a valuable resource for you if you are looking for a solution to boost up your sales, and we know you always are.
You might find it a bit overwhelming to navigate the enormous app store and test over 2,000 apps to find the best ones for your online store, that’s why we’ve separated the gold from the dross for you to find 15 best free Shopify apps. They are your efficient choices to lift up your leads or conversions without having to spend a penny.
Here is the list of 16 best Shopify apps which will keep your store up and grow, at no cost.
#1 Recover Cart Pusher — Recover abandoned cart with targeted push notifications
Web push notifications — the messages sent through a web browser — are turning websites into even more powerful sales and marketing channel for online store owners. The unique advantage of this channel is that it builds real-time connections with your prospects and customers. No need to wait for the customers to check emails or even be on your website, they’re delivered right on their desktops. It eliminates the spam filter or never-read email risk and has a much higher click-through rate.
If you haven’t used push notifications before, get excited about Recover Cart Pusher — the Shopify app that automates abandoned cart notifications. By doing this, it saves your time and improves the chances of recovering the lost sales from abandoned carts.
The app can literally be up and work in minutes — for free.
#2 KIT — Run your Shopify store better
Kit is the extra set of hands you’ve been looking for to help with marketing your store. As your FREE virtual employee, Kit will automatically recommend the marketing activities that are most likely to drive sales.
With a few quick messages to Kit over SMS or Facebook Messenger, you can create a discount code and promote it, start a retargeting campaign to bring visitors back to your store, send thank you emails to customers, and much more!
Kit helps you manage your Instagram and Facebook ads, email marketing, and social posts to drive sales and grow your business — all for free. The return on investment you get from Kit will be in the sales you make and the time you save by having Kit handle your marketing.
#3 Countdown Cart — Best Shopify app to create urgency
When a person thinks that something is running out, they want it more. It’s all about the human inner psychology. If you know how to create a strong sense of urgency and scarcity for your Shopify store, you are making big money.
Have no idea how to achieve that just yet? Countdown Cart is the perfect tool for you! Immediately adds a countdown timer, a stock countdown, and a social proof widget to your product pages after being installed, provides a nice prompt to nudge shoppers towards a purchase, the app can remarkably increase your conversions.
#4 Sales Pop — Boost conversions by recent sale popups
As one of the most trending apps in 2017, it’d be a big mistake if Sales Pop is not included in the list of the best Shopify apps. First launched in January 2017, Sales Pop has been one of the most popular Shopify free apps, with 60,000 active users and more than 8,000 reviews, moving to the top as the №1 Sales app after just 1 week.
Displaying live and dynamically updating notifications that show what products other users have recently purchased, the app creates credibility, motivate purchasing and boost up the conversion rate for your Shopify store.
Once installed, the app automatically syncs with store’s data to retrieve your latest orders and turn them into notification popups, like this:
#5 Smile.io — Loyalty points, VIP, Referral program made easy
Smile.io allows you to quickly set up and run your own rewards program that is equally engaging, fun, and motivating for your customers whether they are on both mobile or desktop. When you reward your customers they are more loyal, more likely to return, and more likely to make repeat purchases.
You can easily create a reward program for purchases, customer referrals, account registrations, social shares/follows and birthday rewards in just a few clicks.
#6 Quick Facebook Chat — Live chat with customers via Facebook Messenger
Approximately half of the world’s online users are on Facebook. If only there were a free messaging service, that everyone already knows how to use, powered by one of the world’s biggest tech company, isn’t it Facebook Messenger?
Born with the idea to leverage Facebook Messenger to create a friendly and instant communication with your customers and prospects, Quick Facebook Chat is your key to customer satisfaction. Whether your customers have a pre-sales question or need to resolve an issue, they can initiate a conversation through Quick Facebook Chat widget on your websites directly and seamlessly without losing the conversation’s history and context.
This enables Shopify store owner to have a continuous chat session, regardless of whether a customer is on Facebook Messenger or the store’s website. It works across devices — something key since so many customers do everything on mobile these days.
#7 Instagram shop — Make your Instagram feed shoppable
Snapppt is designed to help you better utilize your Instagram account to get more sales. It bridges the gap between your Instagram account and your store, via your Snapppt profile page, which displays your curated Instagram images, and allows the customer to go directly to where the product can be purchased. This means the service allows you to import images from your Instagram account into your Snapppt profile, and then specify where the image should then lead the customer to.
Also, Snapppt offers an embed which allows you to place your Snapppt profile into any page of your store or website — creating a more seamless experience.
With Snapppt, you can make Instagram become your next customer acquisition, make it easy for your followers to buy the product they see in your Instagram posts.
#8 Mobile Converter — Boost mobile conversions and revenue
Mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic years ago but sadly the conversion rates for mobile still lag way behind desktop conversions. It’s simple that shopping on desktop brings a much better experience than on the small screen devices. So how to improve mobile conversion rate? Just by making the product pages easier to navigate, and more clear, you will be able to significantly boost conversions and revenue from your mobile customers.
Searching for a solution? Mobile Converter is strongly recommended! The app eliminates the disadvantages, satisfies your customers and drives their actions while they are browsing your online stores on the smartphones. Free, simple but unexpectedly effective: these are the accurate words to describe Mobile Converter.
#9 Auto Currency Switcher — Increase international sales
If your business is spread across multiple countries, you would always want the visitor to be able to see the displayed price in their home currency. Seeing displayed prices in one’s home currency save your foreign customers from Pain of mathematical gymnastics. The customer can also change the currency from the currency selection box. The checkout remains in the shop currency.
The app increases the comfort level of a foreign customer and increases your global sales.
#10 Personalized Recommendation — Boost cart value and grow sales
Analyzing the unique preference of every visitor to your store based on their browsing behavior and sales history, this app displays the most relevant product recommendations across your site and creates more personal and more inspiring shopping experiences for your customers.
Personalized Recommendation app builds 5 types of widgets and gives you the options to set up appropriate types of recommendation on each page:
- Customers who bought this also bought
- Bestsellers of the store
- Recently viewed & featured recommendation
- Recommendation based on cart
- Smart upsell popup to lift up your add-to-cart rate and boost more sales. When customers add an item from recommendations widget, a nice & clean upsell popup will come up to suggest them more related items they most likely want to buy.
Besides, if you are interested in upselling and cross-selling, you can take a look at Boost Sales, a marketing app that focuses on building advanced upsell and cross-sell offers. See Boost Sales review.
#11 Facebook Shop — Sell products directly on Facebook
With Facebook Shop you can sell products directly on your Facebook Page. When you activate the Facebook sales channel on your Shopify store, a Shop tab will be added to your Facebook page that displays your Shopify products. The great thing is customers can checkout quickly without leaving Facebook on desktop or mobile. Product, inventory and order management can be done in Shopify.
This app lets you grow your reach on a channel where your customers already are and only takes a few clicks to get started with.
#12 Happy Email — Make your customers happy
Not a full email marketing solution, this super simple but awesome app helps you send customers welcome email after the first purchase order of signing-up. What’s special is, the emails are sent out from the Founder’s email (or anybody’s email you’d like to set up), automatically after 30 minutes. The engagement between the customers and your online store will be uplift by initiating such a personal connection at the beginning.
Here’s how an example email looks like:
#13 Bulk Image Edit — Save time to manage images and boost up your SEO
Image optimization is an essential part of any online business. Bulk Image Edit set meaningful Alt Text and optimize sizes to product and theme assets images; Increase your website rank in Google search, and generate more traffic and sales.
#14 Better Coupon Box — Grow email/follower list and boost up your sales
This is an efficient app for you if you want to build up your email/follower list and boost up your sales at the same time. Basically, Better Coupon Box helps you offer a special discount in exchange for new followers or subscribers. The discount incentive helps encourage a purchase which helps convert customers who were only on your site to browse while the emails/subscribers collected can be used to build a highly targeted sales funnel.
The greater the value you give your customers, the more they will trust you when they give you their email address or subscribe to your social pages and the more likely they can be converted to customers.
#15 Custom options — Create unlimited product options
If you are frustrated by the limited amount of 3 customizations on each product page, then this free app is definitely for you. To give you customers more product choices and increase the chance of selling successfully, this app helps you add unlimited personalizations to any product for any reason, thus create unlimited product options for customers to choose from.
#16 Easyship — Easiest way to ship worldwide
The last one in the list of the best Shopify apps 2018 is Easyship. The app helps eCommerce sellers ship internationally like a pro. One Easyship account gives your Shopify store access to 100+ worldwide couriers, rates discounted by up to 70%, and complete visibility on international shipping regulations, taxes and duties, available couriers, and rates. Connect your store, download your orders, and print labels and other required paperwork in minutes. The app is free; you only need to pay for your shipping costs.
Conclusion
Shopify stores of all scales can take advantage of these apps, as long as you use and implement them appropriately, they will get your stores up and grow. Spending $0 and get an immediate boost in sales, what stop you from installing the apps right now?
That’s our list of the best Shopify apps for 2018. Drop us a line in the comment if we missed any great ones. This post will be updated periodically, so your suggestions might be included in the next update.
Originally published at beeketing.com on January 26, 2018.