Shopify Video Series [Part 6]: Third-Party Applications

Welcome back to our latest installment in our 20 part Shopify video series targeted at helping our retail partners not only get their first sale online but as well much more! In this edition, we will examine the importance of 3rd party apps and how they can help you to not only acquire more customers but as well increase the conversion rates of your store/s. It hopefully is already becoming strikingly apparent in our earlier editions that in today’s highly competitive ecommerce ecosystem, it is not enough to simply stick a store up and pray for success.  A large part of increasing the odds of success lies in the supporting software and work surrounding your ecommerce platform, in this case most likely Shopify (sign up here for a trial if not!).  With that being said, let’s dig into a couple of the primary focuses we will review in the below video.
In the mind of our team at Trellis, there are a couple types of non-negotiable 3rd party apps that should either currently be on your ecommerce store or be very high on the business roadmap, these include:

1. Review Widget
2. Exit-Intent
3. Landing Page Builder
4. Cart Abandonment

Review Widget:   Shoppers highly value the opinions of others and adding a review widget(and other user generated content) with lead to a strong increase in conversion and help lessen the dependence of the strength of the store’s cart abandonment program.  Our top pick is Yotpo but if the cost is prohibitive, here are couple things we suggest are kept in mind in evaluating the right review app:

• Simple integration
• Mobile responsive
• Customizable styling
• Email settings
• Rich snippets
• User generated content
• Help desk integration
• Q&A Feature

Exit-Intent:  This is to not be confused with those insane pop-ups when you try to leave a site, I think we can all agree that often times does more brand equity harm than good.  This kind of app is focused on used an analytics/action based approach to engage site visitors at the opportune time to either capture customer info for future re-marketing and/or incentive them to buy now.  The top pick here is Optimonk but there are many other options out there in the market!
Landing Page Builder:  Do I even need to elaborate here…?  If you are planning to run Facebook marketing to drive traffic to your ecommerce store but don’t have unique landing pages to drive potential customers towards, then the process is being approached backward.  Landing pages on your Shopify store can be a very valuable tool to shorten the path to purchase and drive increased ROI on your digital marketing efforts.  A great tool for spinning up landing pages that easily integrate with Shopify is the Shogun Page Builder.
Cart Abandonment:  It’s a sad statement BUT most people that visit your online store will not end up making a purchase.  Let the tears flow…. but luckily there is a solution!  There are an absolute ton of cart abandonment tools that can help re-engage and convert these customers.  In our highly digital world, the reality is that people are stimulated by a number of different factors other than the product they crave sitting in their shopping cart and therefore there are more customers than we most would like to imagine that add products to their cart and then forget to check out.  This is where cart abandonment comes into play, it serves to engage lost customers through email, social retargeting, etc.  The easiest route is through providing an incentive for them to return to their cart and complete checkout with the products, the most straight forward being an offer for a discount if they take action immediately.
If you don’t enjoy reading, the good news is all of the above and more can be found in the below video:

Tune in next Tuesday for our next installation of the Shopify series: Third Party Apps.