Shopify plugins are nifty tools that you can install in your Shopify store not just to boost sales but also to improve its overall functionality.
So if you’re currently struggling to hit your ecommerce goals, these cheap (and sometimes free) and powerful tools will help you overcome this difficult – and honestly, extremely frustrating – situation.
Why Shopify Plugins Instead of Apps?
Launching a Shopify store to give your business a global platform is a great idea. However, having an online store does not automatically mean that you’ll be racking up sales and counting stacks of money any time soon.
You see, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Your Shopify store is just the beginning. And if you want to go further in your ecommerce journey, you need to learn how to use tools that will help improve your Shopify store and satisfy your customers to ultimately increase your bottom line.
You can find these tools in the Shopify App Store – and they come in the form of apps and plugins.
But what’s the distinction between the two? Here’s an explanation:
Shopify Apps
A Shopify app is a comprehensive and self-contained program that can be integrated into your online store to give it a broader range of functionality (depending on the type of app that you installed). Apps are typically more powerful than plugins.
Shopify Plugins
A Shopify plugin is an “extension” or an “add-on” to your Shopify store if you want a quick, simple, and inexpensive fix. But this does not mean that plugins are less capable than apps. It just means that plugins are more problem-focused.
To Answer The Question…
Shopify plugins could be better at solving specific problems. Sometimes, a simpler solution is better.
Besides, apps demand more from your store and if you install a bunch of these apps, you might end up with a beautiful but sluggish store – which does more harm than good.
09 Best Shopify Plugins In Our List
Here’s our list of the best Shopify plugins that you should install in your online store.
01. Smart SEO: Optimized Meta Descriptions & Alt Texts
Search engine optimization is one of the things that you should be doing right after launching your online store because this will help you gain more organic visibility to your target customers. And when optimizing your website, we’re not just talking about your home page.
We’re talking about every single page of your website – including your product pages. Smart SEO provides this essential SEO data to all search engines so they know about the products and services you offer and can rank your website higher. This also means that customers who are Google shopping will see your products on the results page.
Key Features
- Enables you to write optimized meta descriptions for your product pages
- Efficiently edit alt texts through its dashboard
- Optimize any image on your website with a single click
- Instant Page feature pre-loads a page before a customer clicks it to improve user experience
- Provides JSON-LD structured data to help search engines understand your website better
- Automatic detection of broken links in your website to avoid SEO penalties
Pricing
- Free
- Pro Plan: $9.99 per month
- Business: $19.99 per month
- Premium: $29.99 per month
Shopify Rating: 4.9 stars
💡 Quick read: A Complete Guide On Shopify SEO Checklist
02. Avada Trust Badges Sale Pop-up: Customer Sense Of Security
Sometimes, customers need visual cues to trust your store – and trust badges are the best visual elements to do that.
Avada Trust Badges & Sales Pop-Up is the Shopify plugin that you should use if you want your customers to trust that your store is 100% legitimate and that you mean serious business.
Aside from simply adding some trust badges, Avada upped its game by adding nifty features that can increase your sales conversion. Product pop-ups will help you promote your hot-selling items, Free Shipping and Announcement bars encourage your customers to buy more, and Countdowns create a sense of urgency.
Key Features
- Choose from different types of trust badges such as secure checkout, quality guarantee, secure payment methods, money-back guarantee, and more
- Customizable sales pop-ups to attract customers to a hot-selling item or a new launch
- Personalized Free Shipping bar and Announcement bar
- Inactive Tab text reminders
- Create a sense of urgency using countdown timers, stock countdown
- Sticky Add to cart so customers can just focus on shopping
Pricing
- With all those features, Avada is 100% FREE
Shopify Rating: 5 stars
03. Product Reviews: Increase Trust Through Social Proof
Sometimes, your words aren’t enough to convince customers to buy from you. After all, you’re trying to make a sale, and your customers know that.
That’s why they need other people’s words of affirmation about your products to help them gain a third-party perspective on how truly great your products are.
Shopify Product Reviews allows you to collect reviews from your existing customers and share them on your product pages so your web visitors can see social proof of your products. These reviews help your web visitors decide which product to buy from your store.
Key Features
- Shopify Product Reviews is theme-agnostic, which means that it can be integrated into your store regardless of your current theme and it won’t ruin your design
- Easy customization of layouts, texts, and colors
- Manage (publish, hide, filter) reviews in bulk
- Help improve your ecommerce SEO as these reviews will also appear in Google search results
- Since it is a native Shopify plugin, there are no complicated setups needed
Pricing
- Free
Shopify Rating: 3.6 stars
💡 Quick read: Best Shopify Apps: Ready To Power-Up Your Store
04. Booster Page Speed Optimizer: Keep Your Store In Optimal Speed
Did you know that your website’s speed has a significant effect on your conversion rates? Yes, it does. In fact, 63% of shoppers will bounce (or leave) when page load times exceed four seconds (Ecommerce Speed Hub).
Therefore, you want your website to be in its best shape every single day, or else, say “bye-bye” to those potential customers.
You don’t need to pay for expensive Shopify plugins just to speed up your store. Booster: Page Speed Optimizer is a free tool that you can use to make your ecommerce website load instantly so customers have a seamless shopping experience – so they’ll stay longer in your store, and probably shop more items.
What this Shopify plugin does is that it pre-loads all the links in your website so that when your visitors click any link, the page loads instantly – even if they have a slow internet connection
Key Features
- Make every page in your Shopify store load faster because they are pre-loaded while your customer is browsing your store
- Optimizes both desktop and mobile versions of your online store
- Benefits your target customers with slow internet connections
Pricing
- Free
Shopify Rating: 4.8 stars
05. Shopify Forms: Free Lead Capture
The majority of the people who come to your website won’t be buying from you. In fact, ecommerce stores only have an average conversion rate of 3%. That’s only 30 buyers out of 1000 page visits.
Be that as it may, you can get more value from these visitors if you have a lead capture plugin like Shopify Forms. Lead capture tools help you acquire your potential customers’ details so you can walk them through your sales funnel via email campaigns – making them consider your brand for future purchases.
Shopify Forms is a native Shopify plugin. This means that it integrates seamlessly with your online store without the need for a complicated setup. The plugin in itself is also extremely easy to use. You can create a lead capture form in just a few clicks or less than three minutes.
If you are a new ecommerce entrepreneur, this plugin is a great tool to prepare you for your future email campaigns.
Key Features
- Lightweight and easy to install
- Create customizable signup forms with conditional logic
- Incentivize customer signups with discount coupons after the process
- Track the app’s performance through your Shopify dashboard
Pricing
- Free
Shopify Rating: 3.1 stars
06. Shopify Email: Free Email Marketing
Of course, you need to make use of those email addresses that you got using your Shopify Forms plugin. Shopify Email is the partner of Shopify Forms as this plugin will be your tool to send tailored marketing campaigns to your target customers – especially on significant occasions, or when you have ongoing promos in your store.
Shopify Email lets you create customized email campaigns with more than 40 templates to choose from – be it announcements, holidays, newsletters, promos, and product highlights. If you want to create your unique template, you can do so within the plugin dashboard.
Furthermore, you can create email automation for abandoned carts, customer win-back, or when you simply want to welcome a new subscriber – and more.
Along with Shopify Forms, you now have an email campaign mechanism that will help boost your online sales.
Key Features
- More than 40 templates to choose from for different kinds of email campaigns
- Email automation for different purposes
- Basic reporting dashboard so you can track the effectiveness of your email campaign
Pricing
- Free
Shopify Rating: 3.9 stars
07. Infinite Options: Infinite Product Options For Increased Average Order Value
Did you know that you can increase sales by simply adding options to your products? These options can be a simple upsell like a personalized engraving, an add-on product that complements your customer’s order, or an option to customize your products. The bottom line is, that all these little upsells and cross-sells increase your customer’s average order value – which impacts your revenues.
Infinite Options is a Shopify plugin that lets you add a virtually unlimited amount of customization options to your products so you can squeeze more revenues out of every transaction that you make in your online store.
Key Features
- Include add-on purchases on top of your product listings to increase your customer's average order value
- Allows you to bundle your customer’s original purchase with other related products
- Different input types like numbers, radio buttons, dropdown menus, etc. to fit any customization that you want to add
- Apply conditional logic on your customer’s customization option to get a truly personalized experience
- Lightweight and very easy to use, no complicated processes to implement conditional logic
Pricing
- $12.99 per month
Shopify Rating: 4.8 stars
💡 Quick read: Landing Page Email Capture: 2024 Best Practices, Examples, & Step-By-Step Guide
08. Instagram Shop & Facebook Shop: Bring Your Online Store To Social Media
Increase sales by tapping into your social media’s ability to reach your potential customers – be it on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. This Shopify plugin allows you to easily add shoppable posts on your social media accounts by encouraging your followers to comment “Shop” (or any word of your choosing), and in response, the plugin will automatically send a product link to your follower’s inbox where they can directly purchase the product that they commented on.
Aside from that, you can use this Shopify plugin as a post scheduler as it allows you to plan future posts and set a specific time when you want them to appear on your social media pages.
Furthermore, you can add an Instagram widget bar right on your website so you can encourage your web visitors to take action on your social media account.
And the best thing about it is that it’s very easy to set all these up via the plugin's very comprehensive dashboard.
Key Features
- Shoppable posts allows for online selling from your social media accounts
- Your customers don’t have to leave their social media app to purchase from you, they can pay directly within IG, FB, or Twitter
- Post scheduler allows for easy social media management as well as saves valuable time
- Automated responses so you don’t have to worry about sending each one of your followers a direct message
Pricing
- $9.99 per month
Shopify Rating: 4.8 stars
09. Easy-Ship: Tailored Shipping Solutions According To Product Specs
One way to maximize your revenues is by reducing your operational expenses. And shipping is an operational expense that eats up a chunk of your revenues, but you can’t eliminate it from your daily operations. However, you can optimize it so you only pay for the type of shipping solution that is most appropriate to your product’s specification – making your operations more cost-efficient.
This is what this Shopify plugin is all about. By signing up to Easy Ship, your online store will get access to more than 200 pre-vetted global couriers so you always have the best shipping options whenever someone orders from you.
Additionally, your customers have the power to choose as regards their shipping method, be it an expedited or a regular one. Furthermore, Easy Ship adds a layer of protection to both you and your customer by adding a shipping protection option as an insurance for when irregularities happen.
Key Features
- Instant access to pre-vetted couriers and shipping discounts upon signing up
- Provides your customers shipping options so they can get have their packages delivered according to their preferences
- Streamlined tax and duties calculation, and customs documentation so there’s no shocking chargers upon border arrival
- Customizable invoices, tracking, and emails for a more consistent branding application
- Protect you and your customer from unnecessary expenses via Shipping Protection in case of loss
Pricing
- Free
- Plus: $29 per month
- Premier: $69 per month
- Scale: $99 per month
Shopify Rating: 4.2 stars
Bottom Line
With all the Shopify plugins mentioned in this blog, that sounds like a lot of things to install, right? But that doesn’t mean that you should go to the Shopify app store and install all these in your shop.
Instead, our best piece of advice to you is to look where your ecommerce store is hurting most. Thus, if you’re getting enough traffic but not conversion, perhaps you need to install Avada to give your customers a sense of security. It could also be that your website is lacking a social proof section that’s why your customers can’t take your word for it, thus, Product reviews can help you with that.
Furthermore, if you don’t have a mechanism to utilize your social media to generate sales for you, Instagram Shop & Facebook Shop is the Shopify plugin that you should consider.
Moreover, you can look into your competitors’ ecommerce platforms and see how your online store compares with it in terms of design. And if it needs improvement, Pagefly is the tool that can help you get your store up to speed with the current online store design trends.
The most important thing here is that you should know the roots of your problems. And after that, you can look into this list of Shopify plugins and implement incremental changes until you achieve your targets.
