What are the best essential apps for a diverse online store?

[quirkitrendz]

We are looking for the best essential apps to get the store up and running.  Also looking for best app for SEO Optimization of both products and images, and a shipping app that displays shipping for each product.  Our site has a variety of products from fashion to pets to gadgets to kitchen to fitness, etc..

We do not want to slow down our site with too many apps.  Therefore, we would like some combination apps.

Thank you in advance.

[PluginHive]

Hi @quirkitrendz,

For SEO optimization, you can look into some of these apps: 

• SEO Optimizer: All in one SEO
• Plug In SEO Optimizer
• SEO Booster: SEO Marketing

You can also check out other SEO apps here.

Regarding a shipping app that displays shipping for each product, I'm not sure what your exact requirement is. However, you can look into some of the shipping apps with most of the required features from this list: Shopify Shipping apps.

[JoesIdeas]

I've been a Shopify developer since 2012, and a store owner since 2015, have used lots of apps 🙂

I now own a Shopify development agency, and through our combined knowledge we share what we think are the best apps in each category here: speedboostr.com/best-shopify-apps.

I'll also share some tips about apps:

1) Any store facing app will likely slow down your site speed, but that's ok. Your main goal is get the most revenue, not have the fastest site. My recommendation is to try apps, and if they help make sales, keep them. And just optimize what you can with your theme and images (you can use the Shopify Analyzer to see if there are optimization issues, and get recommendations on how to fix them. That's a free tool my team built for the community).

2) It's good to try a lot of apps to see what works best for your store, but something you might not know is that Shopify restricts access to apps the second you delete the app from your store. For this reason, we often see stores with old app code still running on their site. You have to remove the app code manually. This only applies to apps that have modified your theme / added code to your theme files.

To know how to remove the code, after you uninstall the app, check for an uninstallation email. If you didn't get one, contact the app developer to see if there is old code that needs to be removed. Most of the time the code is in theme.liquid (your main theme file), but if it affects other pages (like product), then check those templates too. Always edit themes on a backup theme to prevent making a mistake that affects the live site.

3) For SEO, the best strategy is to hire an SEO expert. Apps can help, but SEO is half art half technical, so a human is the best resource to improve your SEO and tailor a strategy specifically for your brand / audience.

4) For image optimization, you'll need to use a combination of app + manual optimization, because Shopify does not allow access to all areas of your site to apps. Here's a guide on how to compress and optimize images: https://speedboostr.com/how-to-compress-images-on-shopify.

Good luck, I hope you find some cool apps that help your store make big gains this year ✊

[quirkitrendz]

Thank you so much for the recommendations!

[VitaF]

Hello!

I would recommend checking out HelpCenter App . With its FAQ Builder you will be ticking two boxes.

1. Creating a slick looking and easily navigable FAQ page on your store so the customers could easily find information they are looking for.
2. Contribute to SEO performance by thinking through both the questions and answers and using links to various pages on your store.

Additionally, HelpCenter comes with two other features. One of them is a helpdesk ticketing system, which lets you conveniently handle all your customer communications from one place - you can combine various email inboxes, Facebook Messenger and a Live Chat (which is the third functionality of the app).

Regarding a little boost in the shipping process, you could check out an app called Trackr. The app does not help with displaying shipping prices, yet contributes to another important part of the shipping - order tracking. 

What is special about the specific shipping app is that it lets you create a separate tracking page that matches with your store. Customers no longer need to search for a specific carrier to find information about their order status and will return to your store instead. 

And of course, one other essential thing while trying to get your business going is thinking about marketing. You could start creating a subscribers list from early on for conveniently staying in touch with customers interested in your product.

Senderium app - an SMS marketing app could come in handy. With it, you will be able to create a pop-up for collecting customers’ information and later on use it for personalized campaigns. 

I hope this information gives your store a little boost. Good luck! 

[MageNative]

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[t23pelletier]

Hey there- I am a dropshipper in a saturate niche (phone cases). Figuring things out has been TOUGH. 

I am an aliexpress or alibaba dropshipper 

The best app for me has been Fodane. It helped me increase my conversions with urgency creators, then drastically helped me increase AOV with frequently bought together and post purchase upsell functions. There are some other cool things that I use as well like the currency convertor to sell worldwide, and they have a cool announcement bar.