Whether you’re launching or scaling an ecommerce business, Shopify is an ideal platform for growing an online store. Building a Shopify store gives you instant access to a robust, established ecommerce platform with hundreds of apps that can be easily integrated to add functionality to your store. While you’ll find apps to support all facets of your operations, from web design to customer support to order fulfillment, it’s always important to prioritize solutions and tactics that will help you grow your customer base and increase your conversion rate. In this article, we’ll cover: Apps to support your online marketing efforts How to optimize your sales process Turning new customers into loyal customers Apps to support your online marketing efforts When you’re trying to raise brand awareness of your online store, it’s important to leverage a variety of marketing strategies to help you reach your target audience. While digital advertising across Google, Facebook ads, and other ad platforms is one way to reach new customers, it’s also crucial to focus on building a sustainable marketing strategy that doesn’t depend on an ongoing advertising budget. By creating a robust content marketing and social media strategy, you can make it easy for your target audience to find your brand organically, through SEO searches and social shares across your social media platforms. It’s also important to prioritize marketing to existing customers, with email marketing, a loyalty program, and other initiatives that will help you build brand loyalty. Some Shopify apps that can help you improve your brand awareness and customer retention include: Facebook & InstagramThis app helps you effortlessly integrate your Shopify store across Facebook and Instagram, so that customers can purchase your products directly through your social media channels without needing to visit your homepage. Streamlining the shopping cart experience helps you reach more customers and sell more products. PageFly landing page builderThis app makes it easy to build new customized landing pages for your online store. Whether you want to launch a special offer or create a new product page, PageFly provides a wide variety of high-quality templates that can be easily customized with your brand colors and logos to help you boost your conversion rate. You can easily create different variations of your landing page and use A/B testing to optimize for the best performing variant. Shopify EmailMake email marketing simple with Shopify’s drag-and-drop email campaign builder, with a variety of pre-built templates for different types of email marketing campaigns. The app can optimize content for viewing on mobile devices, ensuring that your customer experience is seamless no matter how your customers access your content. Robust analytics give you the insights to understand which campaigns are the most successful and why, so that you can continually optimize to increase performance. How to optimize your sales process These apps can help you convert new customers or continue selling to existing customers — but it’s also important to look at ways to optimize your sales process. By putting strategies in place to reduce your cart abandonment rate, you’ll be able to generate more conversions — and by creating opportunities for upsells, you can increase your average order value. A few Shopify apps that can help include: PushOwlThis app provides web push notifications to shoppers who’ve opted in, enabling you to market to customers who haven’t signed up for your email list. PushOwl can be used to send notifications when a shopper has abandoned their shopping cart, or to alert them of new limited-time offers and promotions that are relevant to their browsing history. Because web push notifications are more engaging than email, you’re more likely to convert a shopper through push than through email marketing. Smart PopInstantly build pop-ups that you can use to opt shoppers in to your email lists, SMS campaigns, push notifications, and other marketing campaigns, or to offer promotional discounts. The pop-ups can be triggered by the shopper’s behavior, such as scrolling down or exit intent, to ensure that you’re targeting shoppers when they’re most likely to engage with your offer. Your pop-up windows can also incorporate A/B testing, so that you can optimize for the most effective version of your campaign. Turning new customers into loyal customers When you’re running an online store, it’s important to think beyond the next sale, and look for opportunities to turn new customers into loyal customers who’ll come back again and again. These apps can help: Smile: Loyalty & RewardsSmile enables your brand to convert new customers into brand advocates with loyalty programs, referral programs, and VIP rewards programs. Seamlessly let your shoppers collect rewards points for each purchase, and redeem them for store credit or special perks. They can also collect points for referrals to other shoppers, helping you lower your customer acquisition costs. LoopFinally, the post-purchase experience is another important avenue for focusing on customer retention. When shoppers decide to return a product, they’re often gone for good—resulting in churn and higher acquisition costs. By using a returns management solution like Loop, you’ll be able to incentivize your shoppers to swap their return for an exchange by offering bonus store credit and our “Shop Now” feature that enables them to choose from any product in your online store. Encouraging shoppers to choose an exchange over a refund helps you keep your profit margins higher, and leads to loyal customers who’ll keep coming back. With hundreds of apps to choose from, we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the Shopify apps that your online store can use to help you scale your business. Learn about Loop’s Shopify integration partners. Then get a demo of Loop to see how we can help you boost customer loyalty with a smooth returns process.
