There are more than 15 billion mobile devices being operated worldwide. That’s because mobiles have become an integral part of our lives; from attending lectures while sitting in another part of the world to ordering groceries online, fulfilling our daily chores without these powerful devices seems impossible. This is one of the main reasons businesses have started exploring the eCommerce world.
The eCommerce world is growing by the hour as more and more businesses are making an online presence, even brick-and-mortar stores. The highest number of online sales were recorded during COVID-19, of up to $26.7 trillion, as everyone was locked indoors and online shopping was the only way out. While people are now resorting back to traditional shopping, from time to time, they still prefer online shopping as the pandemic hooked users to it.
Numerous studies suggest that eCommerce will soon take over and replace traditional shopping; people are still determining when, but soon. This has opened many new avenues for building eCommerce stores swiftly and effortlessly. One of the most popular platforms is Shopify.
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What is Shopify?
Shopify is an ultimate subscription-based eCommerce building platform that offers everything one might need to create an eCommerce store or website. You can build a Shopify store using any of their four different subscription plans, with the basic plan starting from $29/month, with different support options.
They also offer a “lite” plan that costs just $9/month and only includes POS sales and a buy button for items listed on the website, not an online store. You can also contact a Shopify store development company, such as Trango Tech, to make your life easy.
How Does Shopify Work?
Shopify works by unifying all your commerce onto one single platform. Shopify allows merchants to build and customize their online store and sell items in multiple places, such as mobile, web, physical stores, in-person, and pop-up shops.
Shopify is cloud-based and hosted, which means you can access your eCommerce store or website anywhere in the world as long as you use a compatible device and server. This helps eCommerce business owners to become completely flexible and run a store in the United States while they could actually be in Mexico.
How to Grow Your Shopify eCommerce Store?
Growing your eCommerce store built on Shopify is very easy. Shopify offers a wide range of apps that work just like plugins and extensions. Once downloaded and installed, they swiftly integrate with your eCommerce website, store, and perform their intended task.
While there are over 2,200 apps available on the Shopify store, not all of them are worth it; some can be quite a hit or miss. However, we have eight Shopify apps that are a MUST-HAVE for all eCommerce stores looking to expand.
1. Seguno – Email Marketing
Seguno is a great app to implement online marketing in your eCommerce store and turn all your buyers into regular customers. This app allows you to send all types of emails, such as welcome emails to new customers or new product alerts to all customers.
You can also generate thank you emails with this Shopify app to build customer trust. In the long run, this app can help ensure that your customers always remember you.
Top Features:
- Quick automated thank you and welcome emails
- Turns new buyers into long-term loyal customers
- Offers dynamic recommendations for abandoned carts
- Generates unique discount codes
Pricing: Free for up to 250 subscribers
2. Plug in SEO – Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This Shopify app allows you to keep an eye on the webshop and ensure your SEO is always intact. For those who don’t know the importance of SEO, it helps you rank on search engines and makes it easier for customers to find you.
Once downloaded and installed, the app automatically integrates with your eCommerce store and detects all the SEO aspects, such as speed, keywords, broken links, blog content, and so on. This can help you save a lot of time as you don’t have to inspect each page individually.
Top Features:
- Sends email alerts upon detecting an SEO problem
- Provides free instructions, such as code snippets to fix SEO
- Checks and improves SEO for increased organic traffic
Pricing: It offers free basic scanning; however, you must pay $20/month for premium features.
3. CJDropshipping – Dropshipping
If we have to pick one favorite Shopify app amongst all, it has to be CJDropshipping. This app offers dropshipping service that allows users to discover popular products online and start selling on their store immediately.
Top Features:
- Find trending products from all around the world for dropshipping
- Ship from the supplier to the customer directly, with no additional interference
- Track all orders with just a few clicks
Pricing: Initially, CJDropshipping is available for free for up to 90 days; after that, the warehousing fee is applicable based on the number of goods stored.
4. Smile – Referral Marketing
If you’re looking for handy tools to increase your sales, Smile is the perfect Shopify app. Smile is a referral marketing app that motivates your audience to make more purchases by spreading the word about your eCommerce store – and because it’s indirect marketing, it works like a charm!
Top Features:
- Allows you to design referrals, points, or VIP-based loyalty programs to increase sales
- Users can check results through Smile analytics
Pricing: Smile is also a freemium app, which means you can start for free but will eventually have to opt for the premium packages, starting at $49/month, as your business grows.
5. Outfy – Social Media Marketing
This is a marketing assisting Shopify app that allows businesses to market effortlessly by creating the posts for them, such as creating and managing social media ads and posts. Outfy also provides recommendations and insights to help make your marketing more effective and reach a larger audience.
Top Features:
- It helps search for the right target audience for your eCommerce store
- Runs ads on Facebook and Instagram using the easy Messenger interface
Pricing: This app offers a free 7-day trial period. Their packages start from $15/month.
6. AfterShip Returns Center – Managing Returns
No matter how well you’re managing your business, returns are inevitable. Somewhere, sometime, someone will return your product, and you’ll have to deal with it.
But AfterShip makes it easy for you to manage the return process effortlessly by automating cash and gift card refunds, generating and printing automatic refund labels, offering exchanges, and creating automation rules to personalize the customer experience.
Top Features:
- Create a customized branded return portal
- Offer cash refunds in exchange for the original payment methods
- Set up automated rules to control the return process
Pricing: Users can enjoy it for free for up to 3 months, after which they must choose a pricing plan, with the lowest starting at $11/month.
7. PushOwl – Push Notifications
One of the most significant areas where businesses lose sales is abandoned carts. According to a survey, eCommerce brands lose up to $18 billion every year in revenue due to abandoned carts – and the number continues to grow every year.
As a customer, there is nothing scarier than the “fear of missing out (FOMO).” PushOwl allows you to send web push notifications to “push” customers to complete their shopping process by checking out. This can be pretty enticing for customers since sometimes these messages include “almost sold out” or even “last few pieces remaining only.”
Top Features:
- Reminders and tailored campaigns for abandoned carts
- Updates through notifications regarding the items that are “back-in-stock” to boost sales
- Review notifications once the items are shipped
Pricing: You can enjoy the app for free for up to 500 impressions, after which you must enroll for plans starting at $19/month.
Conclusion
Shopify is a fantastic platform for building eCommerce websites and stores for a budget-friendly price. However, building a Shopify eCommerce store is not as easy as it seems since you don’t have the proper knowledge to use the tools well.
They’re a digital transformation company that offers a wide range of services, such as Shopify store and website development. If you need experts to help you build Shopify stores, contact them now. They also offer additional services, such as business process outsourcing, staff augmentation, mobile development, and much more.
