Shopify Set-Up Guide #6: Installing The Best Shopify Apps

• Week #1: Business Model
• Week #2: Target Audience & Products
• Week #3: DTC Branding
• Week #4: Import Products & Social Proof
• Week #5: Store Design
• Week #6: Best Shopify Apps (you are here now)
• Week #7: Coming Soon

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It’s no secret that you need more than Shopify to run a successful ecommerce business.

You need time, a bit of money, ambition, (a lack of real-life), and a lot of great software. And that’s what we’re going to cover today.

With Loox, DSers and PageFly already installed, I took it a bit further and installed all the apps that I want to work with. From email marketing to image optimization.

Love Letters to Your Customers

The CEO of Basecamp and Hey.com said the following about emails:

He’s right; email’s a treasure. For both the sender and the recipient.

It all comes down to how you do email marketing. Spamming customers is the last thing you want to do.

I knew straight from the beginning that I wanted to do email marketing.

And over the last 12 months, marketers across all industries have seen a 78% increase in email engagement. Email is far from dead. It’s an industry worth $7.5 billion. But it doesn’t stop here. Statista projects this number to increase to $17.9 billion by 2027. Isn’t this crazy? 

I want a piece of that cake!

The foundation of my email marketing is Omnisend. It was a no-brainer for me to install it in my store

The first thing I wanted to set up was an abandoned cart automation. It’s an easy way to increase sales.

To be honest, I didn’t do much here. I used the default setup and emails from Omnisend. 

To make sure I don’t spam my future customers, I deactivated the Shopify default abandoned checkout cart emails.

Bring it!

Sell More And Sell Faster

Amazon attributes 35% of their sales to upsell and cross-sells. Isn’t this stunning?

Not sure if I can achieve the same results but at least I want to give it a try.

So I installed Candy Rack; an upsell app for Shopify.

You might ask yourself “what does she want to upsell? There’s only one product in her store”. And that’s a good question.

Here’s my answer to this:

1. Maybe I will add more products.
2. I have that one product in different colors.

So I’m going to offer more of the same.

I activated the “Smart Auto Upsell”:

I used Candy Rack’s default copy, but set the product count to “2” and applied a 30% discount.

This is how it looks on my store:

Not bad, not bad.

Push it to The Limit (With This Shopify App)

Some people love push notifications and others hate ‘em. But no matter on which side of the fence you are; they are converting.

And that’s why I wanted to have them in my store. 

It’s an easy way to engage with visitors:

• Offer discounts.
• Ask for product reviews.
• Recover abandoned carts.

And many more cool things.

I looked up a few apps in the Shopify app store and found PushOwl to be the one that seems to work very well. With more than 2,000 five-star reviews I felt in a good place.

And so I installed it.

Because I don’t want to spend endless hours on manual work, I went to the “Automation” section first.

Just like in Omnisend, the first thing I set up was the abandoned cart automation. And again, I didn’t edit the texts and used the default ones:

What a lazy entrepreneur I am. Tim Ferriss would be proud.

Onward!

One (Facebook) Messenger App to Rule Them All 

With emails and web push notifications for abandoned checkout recovery set up, I felt I needed one more app. One more app that helps recovering lost sales.

(I really hate the thought of losing out on sales.)

So I installed Recart; an app that allows me to engage with customers through Facebook messenger and SMS. 

First things first: connecting my Facebook page. I didn’t have one at that point so I created a new one in a few seconds.

And guess what my next step was? That’s right: turn on the abandoned checkout flow.

I know what you’re thinking: looks complicated. But it’s actually super simple and super beginner friendly.

Next step: activating the automated photo review generation flow. The more channels I use to ask for photo reviews, the more social proof I can build.

And so I connected Recart with Loox with just 1 click.

This flow is super simple. Just one effective message.

And again, I used the default settings and copy. Loox (and all the other ones) spent years optimizing the messages and flows. As long as I don’t know what I’m actually doing, I won’t make any changes.

How to Make Google Fall in Love With Your Shopify Store

What’s the MOST annoying thing on websites? (aside from auto-play videos)

Yep, slow-loading images. Not sure about you, but things like that make me shake.

But there’s a solution:

Meet TinyIMG. A Shopify app that optimizes all images on your store for you:

• Reducing image size.
• Setting global ALT tag rules.

Both points are not just great for the user experience, but also for search engine optimization. Google and Co. LOVE fast loading images with ALT tags.

Don’t believe me? This is what Google officially says about optimizing for speed:

And here’s their take on ALT tags:

If Google officially speaks about it, you should listen. At least I decided to.

What about you?

With six weeks now in, I felt I was making solid progress. I didn’t cut sleep or family time and am still building a great online store.

What an exciting journey so far!

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