8 must have FREE Shopify apps that boost conversions
Table of contents:
- FREE Lead Capture Shopify Apps
- FREE Email Marketing Shopify Apps
- FREE Shopify Apps for Review Requests and Display
- FREE Upsell and Crosell Shopify Apps
Running a Shopify store is tough. A single person CAN do it, but it would take tens of hours of work per week to manage clients, orders, marketing and everything in between.
Moreover, traffic is not always converting. In fact traffic is almost never converting for some shops. I’ve put together a list of the top 8 must have FREE Shopify apps that can help you boost your conversion rate.
They are extremely easy to use so you won’t have to spend a day to understand how they work and how to set them up.
I’ve broken the apps on 4 categories. Each category addresses a different practice, but combined they can boost your conversion through the roof.
Capture new leads and win back old customers
Let’s begin with email marketing. The average open rate of emails is 22.86% and its click-through rate is 3.71%. Compare that to social media’s engagement rate of 0.6% (source) and you will understand why it is absolutely necessary to build your mailing list.
There are even more reasons for you to start your email marketing campaign right now. A study conducted in 2017 discovered that 99% of email users check their inbox EACH DAY. Two years have gone by since then, but even if this percentage dropped to 80%, email marketing would still be a conversion beast worth taming.
There are 2 parts of a good email marketing campaign:
- First, you need to get email addresses;
- Second, you have to send good looking emails in bulk.
FREE Lead Capture Shopify Apps
1. Sumo
Sumo is a free lead capture app that allows you to create pop ups or above the header bars. The app is widely used by Shopify store owners. They state that over 37,000 stores are actively collecting emails with their help.
Sumo is extremely easy to use because of their templates. You will just have to install the app, change some colors and text and you are on your way to increase your email list.
The best part is that you don’t need another email automation app. With Sumo, you will be able to send an auto-responder once your customers have signed up.
Their FREE plan comes with unlimited forms and subscribers and allows you to send up to 10.000 emails per month. You also have creative freedom to edit your popups and emails as you like.
You can get Sumo from here.
2. Privy
With Privy you have a full full CRM in place
- Set up pop ups to capture leads;
- Set up exit intent pop ups to reduce cart abandonment with discounts;
- Send emails to your new leads;
- Send emails to clients who abandoned their carts and much more.
Compared to Sumo, Privy’s free plan comes with 5000 average monthly page views. Once you get past this you will need to upgrade to the paid plan. It’s perfect to get a feel of it.
If you have a small store this would be more than enough to get things going, until the app pays for itself ????.
You can build unlimited pop ups, apply specific targeting rules and even run A/B tests to see which is working best for your customers.
You can get Privy from here.
Once you have a way to capture email addresses, you’ll need a way to contact them. The previous 2 apps have built in email marketing tools, but a dedicated app can help your store even more.
FREE Email Marketing Shopify Apps
3. Klaviyo
With an overall rating of 4.4 stars, Klaviyo certainly seems like it’s loved by shop owners. They state that “Shopify stores using Klaviyo make an average of $85 for every dollar they spend on Klaviyo.” You can beat that average because Klaviyo is FREE to use for up to 250 contacts.
They made it really easy to create extremely complex segmentation. Because of the seamless integration with Shopify, you can slice your mailing list and send emails based on behavioral data, customer data and integrated data (from other 3rd party tools including Shopify).
My recommendation is to set up as many flows as you can. Create a flow for users who have not purchased in the last 30 days to win them back. Send a special code to people who have left items in their carts.
But most importantly, create a welcome series to win your subscribers’ hearts.
You can get Klaviyo from here.
4. Smart Email Marketing – Rare.io
Although not as famous as the previous entry, Rare.io has built a great tool for email marketing.
It comes with the same segmentation features plus a great AI.
They claim that their smart timing feature will send emails when customers are more likely to open them, based on customer data.
Another great feature is the Recommended Product Engine. This feature will automatically add products that each customer is most likely to buy, based on their activity and past purchases.
Their free plan comes with unlimited email campaigns and automated emails. You will also have access to a simple drag and drop email builder, a “conversion tested template library” and email support.
Compared to Klaviyo, their free plan is available for your first 249 contacts, whereas Klaviyo allows for 1 more (maximum 250).
You can get Smart Email Marketing from here.
Reviews and upsells
Once you get everything set up your store will start receiving quality traffic from your email campaigns. Even the best product presented to the most interested audience might have problems selling.
You will need something more to close the deal and grow your conversion rate and revenue: Social Proof.
Reviews are the backbone of your social proof. If your store has reviews then it will most certainly seem a lot more trustworthy. In fact, a survey conducted by BrightLocal discovered that 91% of 18-34 year old consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
If your target audience is comprised of young people, you absolutely need reviews.
They might seem hard to get, but the same survey uncovered that 80% of 18-34 year olds have written online reviews. You just need to ask for them. These apps will simplify the process for you:
FREE Shopify Apps for Review Requests and Display
5. Yotpo
Yotpo focuses on only 1 thing: to get you as many reviews as possible. They do it in such a simple way that it’s mind blowing ????.
Just get the app, sign up, adjust a few things and you are ready to go. The whole onboarding process is designed in such a way that a 7 year old can get it working in no time.
With Yotpo you can display image reviews and star ratings (available for homepage, category page and product pages). It also sends automatic emails to your customers asking for their review. It can even boost your SEO, Google favors shops with reviews.
They have a free forever plan that includes 50 monthly orders. You get access to basic customization options and content management and moderation.
Get Yotpo from here.
6. Stamped.io
This one is extremely useful for dropshipping stores as it allows you to import reviews directly from AliExpress. It doesn’t matter what type of shop you got, since you can even import reviews from Facebook, Etsy or Amazon!
It has a 4.9 star rating from over 2000 stores (see how important reviews are now?).
Stamped.io has all the functionality of Yotpo, but is better on SEO. They create a rich snippet which can boost your Google organic ranking to the top of the page.
The free forever plan also covers 50 orders per month. You get access to the rich snippets, commenting, social sharing and smart reminders for your customers.
Get Stamped.io from here.
FREE Upsell and Crosell Shopify Apps
The last 2 apps on this list are focused on boosting your average order value by upselling products to your customers.
7. In Cart Upsell
The main feature of this app is that it does not display a pop up as an upsell. Instead, they take a more stealthy approach and add the upsell as a banner.
This will help you get rid of the insta-close pop up effect that a lot of us have developed in recent years. The free plan allows you to place only 1 offer at a time and has a “Powered By In Cart Upsell” link. Even with these, it is still a good app that might increase your AOV.
Get In Cart Upsell from here.
8. Cart Convert
Cart Convert offers a unique feature amongst free apps: Spend threshold offers. If you have free shipping over a certain amount spent (and you should), then this app can help you make a lot more money.
It shows your customers what other items they should buy so that they can unlock free shipping. Since everyone likes free stuff, your customers can start buying more. The app can display the upsell as a popup as well as on page. With the free plan you get unlimited product recommendations, you can set up offers based on product type, collection or single product.
Get In Cart Upsell from here.
These are the 8 must have free Shopify apps that can boost conversions. Part 2 of this article series will be about apps that can help you make better business decisions based on data. Of course, in an easy way.
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