Setting up a Shopify website can make it easy for you to sell products online – it’s great because it does not require technical knowledge your typical business owner does not know.
However, an e-commerce store requires certain specialized features to operate the store in the right way. The great thing about Shopify and it’s apps is that you will not have to worry about have to develop these features for your store. All you need to do is to opt for the right Shopify extensions, and you can easily enable and add that functionality to your store.
Given that we feel that such extensions are one of the strengths of this platform, what are some of the products which make sense for most online shops? Today, we will be looking at a number of products you can opt for.
When you start going through the marketplace of Shopify extensions, you will realize that there are hundreds of options available. For somebody who is still getting their feet on the ground, this can be a bit confusing.
Moreover, you shouldn’t just install extensions at random, because too many of them can slow down the loading time of your store. You have to be careful when choosing Shopify extensions. You need extensions which are not just bells and whistles but will actually boost your bottom line.
We will today share with you five essential extensions which can directly boost the revenue of your store.
1. Kit – Run Better Facebook Ads
Facebook ads have become a battleground for gaining traffic to your store. If you plan on setting up campaigns and ads on your own, it can get a bit overwhelming for small business owners who are doing it all alone.
A great solution is to use an extension like this one.
Kit is an extension which helps you market products from your Shopify store on Facebook. Facebook is a significant source of traffic for most of the Shopify stores. Some features of this extension:
- Targeting the right demographics on Facebook
- Launching retargeting campaigns
- Helping you discover Instagram audience
- Help you create Facebook dynamic ads
- Send thank you emails to customers on repeat purchases
- Enables you to create discount codes to increase your sales
- Generates reports to help you monitor the sales and conversion rate
As you can see, the extension can help you with most marketing activities related to Instagram and Facebook and can help you gain an edge over your competition, without requiring any digital marketing skills. Since all of these tasks can bring you more traffic and conversions, the impact of this extension on the bottom-line is significant.
2. Smile Rewards & Loyalty
How likely are you to order again from a store which provides you reward points? Most customers would surely prefer it. This is a great way to establish repeat customers.
With the Smile Rewards extension you can easily add loyalty and rewards functionality to your store. If you want to exponentially grow your Shopify store, it is essential to have consistent return customers. However, in today’s world, competition is so fierce that it is difficult to gain customer loyalty. Such a Shopify extension as Smile can help you with that. Here are some of the features which are available:
- Loyalty points program
- Referral program
- VIP program
The reward points are not just for purchases but also for various other activities like:
- Registrations
- Social shares
- Referrals, etc.
You can therefore quickly incentivize visitors to both share your store and come back to buy again from your site. This will help bring down your marketing expenses while also increasing your sales significantly.
3. Wishlist Plus
When visitors browse through your store for the first time, it is unlikely that you will get an order – your visitor still needs to fully trust your site. However, given that they have landed on your site, it is highly likely that they like at least some of the products in your store. And when they are still contemplating whether to get the product or not, with this extension, you can allow them to create a wishlist of stuff they’d eventually like to get.
The next time they visit (or when their paycheck has arrived) and they visit your store again, they won’t need to browse through the entire range of products again. They can now easily visit their Wish List to complete their purchase.
This extension provides a wide variety of features like:
- Allow visitors to create a wish list without logging in
- Allow them to share their wish list through social media and email
- Allows you to display the number of wishlists in which the product is present (for increased conversions and social proof)
- Providing you with complete analytics about the wish lists created (so you can learn which products to push more)
- Helps you send emails to registered users when products in their wish list are low in stock (to boost conversions through scarcity)
- Show an exit popup to visitors to save the Wish List to their email address
These features not only make the shopping experience easier for your potential customers but also help you increase your conversion rate with little effort.
That is why this is such an essential Shopify extension for your store.
4. Catalog Maker by Now In Store
Once again, small business owners might not have the budget, or possibly the time and know how to hire graphics designers to create a catalog of their products.
But of course, Shopify extensions provide us with a solution.
The Catalog Maker extension can help you achieve professional results with very little effort.
Besides presenting similar products together, you can showcase your products in a better way to your customers. If you want, you can also allow them to download the catalog and share it with their family and friends, to help generate more conversions for you.
The extension creates professional catalogs with just a few clicks, even in PDF format.
The types of product catalogs which it can create include:
- Detailed catalogs
- Wholesale catalogs
- Inventory tags
- Tear sheets
- Look books
The best feature about this extension is that it can create such catalogs just by dragging-and-dropping, with great looking results. It also creates printable product catalogs in PDF format, which are ready for download by your customers.
Some of the features of this extension which sets it apart include:
- Ability to create unlimited catalogs
- Ability to make catalogs at retail and wholesale prices (for both customers and resellers)
- 20+ templates available
- Support for QR and barcode
- Generating public/private catalogs
- Adjusting the font and colors of the text and other design tweaks
- Ability to create catalogs on personalized URLs
- Send the catalog for print directly from your website
5. Back In Stock: Customer Alerts
Out of stock products are a serious problem for any Shopify store owner – essentially, these are lost opportunities and lost revenue.
So what do we do to make the most of such opportunities? The Shopify extension here can help you deal with this problem.
The back in stock Shopify extension allows the users to submit their email to get notified once the product is back in stock. This means that you can quickly build a waiting list of customers for a particular product. It will allow you to retain customers even if the product goes out of stock.
The extension automatically pops up a ‘back in stock’ reminder box which allows the visitors to submit their email address for the specific variant of the product. Once the product is in stock, they will get an email reminder. Similarly, you can use the extension for:
- Coming soon products
- Pre-orders
- Flash sales
You can easily modify that email template for the reminders which are sent.
In general, the extension allows you to retain potentially lost customers and increase the conversion rate in general.
The extension is highly customizable and flexible which means that you will not have any trouble setting it up.
Once again, since it can help you recover sales when you restock a product, it can indeed boost your bottom line revenue.
Wrapping Up
It is now time to make your Shopify store more interactive and convenient for your customers. These extensions are the perfect way to do so. Once you opt for these five, you can witness a positive impact on the bottom-line in just a few weeks. It is time to get more sales and engage your visitors in a better fashion with the help of these Shopify extensions.
David is a digital consultant who frequently posts his latest thoughts on CollectiveRay and other influential websites and blogs. After he’s spent much of his time geeking out and growing his (too many) current projects, he can’t stop dreaming of what the next big thing will be.
