8 Shopify Apps We Can’t Live Without

8 Shopify Apps We Can’t Live Without

In Episode 10 of the Big Plans Podcast we talk all about the Shopify apps we can’t live without! One of the reasons why we love using Shopify is that there's an expansive marketplace full of free and paid apps with tons of features that you can add to your Shopify site. Here are just a few that we have either used in the past or currently use that have made our lives SO much easier and we think not only elevate our experience as business owners but also for our customers as well!

Here are 8 Shopify apps that we can’t live without as sticker shop / small business owners:

1. Acorn

Acorn is an influencer marketing app we use for PR team management. It can track when your PR members post to their feed and stories, mention your shop, share their own PR code, when they refer a customer, and Acorn rewards them accordingly.

2. Digital Downloads

Digital Downloads is a free app for selling printable PDF files. This allows people to download the file right away upon purchasing. If you sell art or any digital products, this would be useful for you!

3. Dynamic Banner Suite

This app allows you to display a banner at the top of your website where you can share announcements. It’s dynamic, which means that it can be personalized to the user (i.e. how much they have left to spend to get free shipping) to decrease abandonment and increase cart value.

4. Instafeed

You can use the Instafeed app to display your Instagram posts to your Shopify website. This encourages your site visitors to visit your Instagram account, see your feed with your products laid out and other photos that help build your brand. This is a free app, but you can use the paid version ($5/month) that helps to resize images to display optimally on mobile devices. 

5. Printful

This is a print-on-demand app. We use this for our apparel. It’s free to use the app and you pay a fee per product, but you don’t have to put any work into producing the apparel. You only need to upload the design and they produce the item and ship it for you.

6. Recharge

We use this app for our subscription boxes for “subscribe and save”. If you are interested in offering subscriptions or subscription boxes, we recommend this app over Cratejoy. Recharge is a paid app, they take 1% of your sales and 10% per transaction.

7. Replay Site Recorder

This is a free app that records the customer journey on your site and provides you with helpful information so you can see what the visitor looks at on your site and to make sure your site is working properly. 

8. Smile

The Smile app offers free plans for customer rewards and loyalty programs. It’s easy to set up and a great way to get returning customers. We recommend every sticker shop should use a rewards program. 

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE:

When I search for something on the app store, there are so many apps to choose from, how do you pick the right one?

There definitely are a lot of apps. We recommend that you read allll the reviews and perhaps steer clear of apps with less than 4 star ratings. We also test each app on their demo site first, and then we’ll download it to test out. Most apps have a free trial so you can try it first to see if you like it. If you have specific questions, you can always email the app developers first before you download.

How do you decide if an app is worth paying for?

There were times we needed some convincing to pay for apps. But now, we think of it as a business expense and an investment like marketing. Sure, it might end up being a waste of money, but you can test it out for a month or two to see if it’s worth it to you. A lot of the apps have a free tier that worked well for us for a long time until we were ready to invest in the next tier / paid plan. 

Be sure to listen to the full podcast episode for all the details! 

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Thank you SO much for being here. See you in the next episode!

xo, Lisa & Lucy