When starting an e-commerce store, you probably have a limited budget, so do not want to waste money on unnecessary applications. Definitely, depending on the type and specifics of the store, the installed apps may vary. We have prepared a compilation of useful apps for your Shopify store which will simplify your online dropshipping business.
In case you need to extend the logic of existing dropshipping Shopify apps or develop a custom app that meets your unique business needs, be sure to contact a professional Shopify development company that ensures fast and smooth implementation of this logic.
1. Products Import
Let’s start with applications that help to automate order processing. It makes no sense to process orders on your own i.e. manually send information about customers to suppliers. There are many free and paid Shopify apps that offer to fill in all required information about the customer and their order in one click. In this case, you just have to pay for the order.
Oberlo
This is an app that has been specially developed for the Shopify platform to help easily import products to an online store from AliExpress.
Since Oberlo integrates directly with Shopify, the entire process of importing products, placing, and paying for orders is automated and requires no effort on your side.
DSers
DSers is the official AliExpress dropshipping app. Unlike Oberlo, it is free and provides the following features:
- enables products import from AliExpress
- allows placing bulk orders
- permits automatic ordering
- has an unlimited number of orders per month
- allows to set up delivery methods
- automates the synchronization of tracking numbers
- enables shipping tracking
- allows managing stock and prices
- has an option to manage multiple stores from one DSers account
As a merchant, you can try both Oberlo and DSers apps to check which one is more convenient for you and your business.
Fulfillbot
Fulfillbot is a dropshipping agent, Just like its name Fulfillbot is a one-stop dropshipping solution site from china. They take care of product sourcing in China, quality control, order fulfillment, warehousing, packing, and shipping to your buyer.
Pros
- Automated: Fulfillbot’s users a feature that lets them fulfill orders in bulk. all orders will be automated. Not only that but the tracking numbers and order statuses will be synced to your store automatically!
- Branding: Fulfillbot can help store owners to brand their store. Things like a custom label, hangtag, packing back, or a gift card are all available with no minimum order quantity!
- Exclusive customer service: As long as you register an account, you will be assigned to a customer service who will help you solve all the problems you encounter.
- Global Warehouse: If you have a very large order or Need even faster shipping times then you can use their global warehouse. They have warehouses in the USA, AU, UK, and so on.
- Product Sourcing Agent: if you can not find your products in fulfillbot, you just contact your support, they will purchase goods for you according to your needs.
- Multiple payment methods: support Payoneer,veem, credit cards and Bank Transfer.
- Fast global shipping: average delivery time of 6-13 days to the US/UK, 9-20 days to other countries.
2. Reviews
Product reviews help to increase sales and conversions in your store. Customer feedback along with real product photos allow potential customers to make a purchase decision faster.
Imagine you choose the product you like, and there are no reviews and ratings on it. At the same time in another store you see the same product, but with many positive reviews and photos. We are sure everyone will prefer the second store.
Loox
This application makes it very easy and convenient to add reviews with photos to your product pages. You just need to select the most suitable reviews on AliExpress – the rest of the application will do for you.
Moreover, Loox allows you to send automated emails asking a customer to write a review for a product. You can offer discounts to your customers for submitting reviews with photos. In addition, Loox offers you to moderate the reviews received, so only you decide which ones will be published. You can also create a separate page where you add all reviews for products you sell.
Another important advantage of the app is the possibility to translate reviews into different languages, such as French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and others.
Ali Reviews
Ali Reviews is another useful app for anyone doing dropshipping from AliExpress. It allows you to easily import product reviews from AliExpress into your store.
The functionality is about the same offered by the Loox app. There is just another design of the widgets.
3. Upselling
Upselling nowadays is not an additional activity, but a necessity. Utilizing this sales strategy in your store, you can dramatically increase the store’s ROI, average order value, and total turnover. There are 4 main types of upselling:
- upselling on the product page before the purchase
- offering upsells when adding a product to the cart
- upselling after placing the order
- post-purchase upselling via email marketing and retargeting
Upselling on the product page
In this case, a customer will see an immediate offer to buy several units of one product or an additional product directly on the product page. In both variants, it gives customers a discount. This option can be implemented using the Discounted Pricing, Vitals (Volume Discounts and Product Bundles functions), Frequently Bought Together applications.
Upselling when adding a product to the cart
To implement an upsell when adding an item to the cart, you can use the Discounted Upsells application. When a website visitor clicks the Add To Cart button, a window pops up with an offer to buy a similar or complementary product at a discount.
It enables merchants to manually customize the application settings and the design of a pop-up window. This is an efficient way to increase an average order value, especially in a niche store.
Upselling after placing the order
After the customer has paid for the order, they get to the Thank You Page. On this page the client can also be offered to buy additional goods at a discounted price.
You can offer the same product that the customer has already bought or any other complementary product at a discount. When considering a discount value, it is important to take into account the purchase cost of a product and a shipping price, so that the upsell brings you profits. A merchant can implement this with Zipify OneClickUpsell or ReConvert apps. We suggest you to try ReConvert as it has a free plan.
Post-purchase upselling using email marketing and retargeting
Post-purchase marketing campaigns are sent to a customer when they have already made a purchase. We offer merchants to use this technique to stay engaged with customers and tempt them back to your store. It motivates customers to make the next purchases and improves your store conversion rate.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is an essential tool for every Shopify store owner. Email marketing campaigns cover a lot of tasks for e-commerce merchants, these are:
- transformation of website visitors, who left their contact details, into customers
- stimulation of existing customers to make repeat purchases
- increasing confidence in the company
- provision of information about the products
In most cases, depending on the settings of your Shopify store, the customer leaves their email address during the purchase. This email address can be used not only to send notifications about the status of the order but also to send emails aimed to attract a customer to make a new purchase. Using this feature, you can divide your contact list into segments and send letters with additional products and promotional codes at different intervals, for example, 1 hour after ordering, after 1-2 days, or after product delivery.
Detailed statistics are available for each campaign sent – delivery tracking, speed of delivery, spam reports, clicks on the links, opening rate, unsubscribe, and much more. Applications such as NotifyVisitors, Omnisend, Klaviyo, SmartrMail, and Seguno can be used to automate email campaigns.
Return Customers Who Have Abandoned Their Carts
Not everyone who adds an item to the cart completes their order. This can happen because of various reasons:
- they do not trust the store
- the store offers high priced or long delivery terms
customers face bugs on the website, etc.
Sending emails to those who have abandoned their carts is easy and simple using the Abandonment Protector app. The application offers a wide range of functions, but the most important one is that it returns customers. In order to get positive results, we recommend sending a chain of 3 letters:
- 1. Send a reminder about an abandoned cart in 5 minutes.
- 2. Remind about an abandoned cart and give a 10% promo code in 6 hours.
- 3. Send an abandoned cart reminder and give a 15% discount in 19 hours.
You can find letter templates in the user’s account when you register with the Abandonment Protector app.
Try to keep promo codes simple and letters easily read.
Using this application, you can return up to 25% of customers, depending on the flow of your email messages, the letter subject, and its content.
Conversion Optimization
The conversion of an online store depends on multiple factors, such as the quality of photos, descriptions, prices, cost and time of delivery, design, etc. With the Vitals and Sales Rocket applications, you can improve the performance of your online store. These apps offer over 40 different functions. You can find the following features among them:
- import of reviews
- currency converter
- lucky wheel
- volume discounts
- product bundles
- trust badges
- sticky Add to Cart, and more.
5. Image Optimization
High-quality images are essential to make your Shopify store visually appealing. However, if they are not optimized, it can negatively impact page load times and dramatically influence many site performance metrics. Slow website loading inevitably increases cart abandonment rate, decreases conversions, and affects search engine rankings.
TinyIMG app optimizes page load times by compressing your images up to 70% without degrading their quality. In addition, the application increases organic traffic to your online store improving your website SEO.
Final Thoughts
Most apps offer a free trial, so try different Shopify apps before making a purchase, compare them and choose the ones that perfectly suit your business needs. Keep in mind that installing a large number of applications can slow down your website’s speed, so thoroughly consider if you need to install one.
If you decide to uninstall an application from your store, read the instructions for correct removal to get rid of unnecessary code on your site.
