Using the Shopify app store, you can optimize your ecommerce platform. How? By leveraging the best retailer tools and widgets for your ecommerce business.

Learn more about how having the right tools impacts your ecommerce store’s long-term growth in the Future of Merchant Growth

These apps can take your online store to the next level, whether they focus on marketing tools, drop shipping, product reviews, or customer support. They are some of the easiest ways to add automation to your business, because they plug in directly to your Shopify storefront for immediate impact.

In this blog, we will cover:

• How the right Shopify apps can boost sales, conversion rates, and customer experience
• Klaviyo, a top marketing app for both email marketing campaigns and SMS marketing
• Yotpo, for product reviews, user generated content, and loyalty programs
• ONE, to maximize upsells and take advantage of popups
• Veeqo, a popular choice for order management and fulfillment
• Loop, the best upgrade for returns management—and customer experience

Let’s start by looking at the potential impact of the right apps on store owners.

How the right Shopify apps impact ecommerce

Building a successful online store requires retailers to optimize their sales channels, workflows, and customer support. To win new shoppers and keep retention rates high, ecommerce businesses can’t just put their products up for sale. Instead, they need to make sure they’re reaching out to their shoppers on the channels that they prefer, utilizing cross-sell and upsell strategies to boost sales, and designing a good customer experience.

This is a lot to tackle, but the good news is that Shopify UK merchants don’t need to do this alone. Available through the Shopify app store are a range of automation tools to assist in all these areas. Shopify UK users can tap into readily available integrations—many with free plan options—and immediately deliver a customizable, next-level experience.

Here are some of our top recommended Shopify UK apps.

Klaviyo for marketing campaigns

Klaviyo is one of the most popular ecommerce marketing platforms out there, for good reason. With the support of a tool like Klaviyo, online stores can send out email campaigns to specific groups and tailor their messaging accordingly, thanks to segmentation insights. Marketing automation tools ensure that retailers are only contacting customers at the right time, so they’re not overwhelmed by excessive messaging.

It’s not just email, either. With Klaviyo’s suite of marketing tools, merchants can contact their shoppers over SMS or Messenger too. When fed with relevant insights from the ecommerce store, such as customer browsing history or purchase behavior, Klaviyo’s campaigns and templates can have great impact. Messages could be to remind potential new customers about abandoned carts or offer relevant cross-sell or upsell product recommendations.

Fortunately, Klaviyo easily integrates with other popular Shopify apps like Wishlist Plus, which lets shoppers bookmark products, and Okendo, which helps retailers capture product reviews.

Yotpo for UGC and product reviews

Turn to Yotpo for all your user generated content (UGC) needs, as well as powerful rewards and referral programs. In today’s competitive environment, shoppers are increasingly looking to find out what influencers and other customers think about products before they buy them. These customer reviews could be posted on social media sites, like an Instagram feed, or shared directly on the brand’s product pages. With Yotpo, online stores can get involved in the process and share their reviews on their profile, for increased social proof.

Yotpo also offers complimentary services like loyalty programs and referral programs. Returning customers are important for overall customer lifetime value and more loyal customers tend to make purchases with higher average order value. Through their loyalty platform, Yotpo makes it easy to launch a rewards program with clear incentives and rewards for repeat customers. By showing these shoppers that they are valued by your brand, you can further improve their customer experience.

ONE for upselling

ONE is a unified dashboard for upsells, cross-sells, popups and discount programs. Able to integrate with other valuable apps like Klaviyo, Mailchimp and SMS Bump by Yotpo, ONE makes it simpler to offer one-click upsell recommendations at checkout, which can increase your average order value. Through targeted email marketing campaigns and popup sales windows, the app also lets merchants use A/B tests to gauge the effectiveness of coupons and gift cards on boosting conversion rates.

Available to Shopify Plus users and regular Shopify UK ecommerce merchants, ONE is a useful tool to help make your communications more shoppable and reduce cart abandonment.

Veeqo for order management and fulfillment

Once you’ve got a shopper to make a purchase, there comes the order management and fulfillment aspect of the sale: the post-purchase experience. Veeqo is a popular inventory management app that enables online sellers to track their inventory and orders in real time, so that they can maintain appropriate stock levels at all times. Order tracking can be activated for both Shopify sales and sales through other major ecommerce platforms, like Amazon and eBay.

The solution also helps merchants handle all the picking and shipping of their orders, by partnering with over 20 carriers and offering discount shipping rates. The automation of fulfillment through the Veeqo platform reduces the risk of manual error, so that shoppers get the items they want—on time.

Loop for returns management

The final piece of the purchasing journey is addressing any refunds or returns that may be initiated. While merchants will want to avoid returns as much as possible, there is a way to conduct these experiences while still improving brand loyalty and customer retention. With best-in-class returns management solution Loop, Shopify UK merchants can equip their support teams with the tools they need for a positive post-purchase interaction.

Loop helps online stores offer exchanges and upsells within the returns workflow. This ensures the customer doesn’t have to wait too long to get what they wanted, while protecting the merchant’s bottom line. These returns workflows can also be used to solicit useful feedback, similar to product reviews, which can inform inventory management and future marketing campaigns.

Ready to drive more revenue from your returns? Try out a demo of Loop today.