Shopify is one of the most famous eCommerce platforms today. It allows brands wanting to go Global to easily create branded cross-border eCommerce stores to enhance their reach into new markets, with a friendly enough interface for users without web development resources to set up professional online stores, and at the same time offers powerful features for more complex implementations.
As a Shopify Certified Partner, TMO Group launches the Shopify Cross-Border eCommerce Series to analyze the success factors and other practical tips for advanced Shopify eCommerce building, operation, marketing, and more.
Best Shopify Apps for Cross-Border eCommerce
One of the great advantages of using Shopify is that you have access to 8,000 paid and free extensions on the Shopify App Store that allow you to customize your store to best fit your needs. Be careful, though! because adding too many apps might impact the loading time of your store.
We previously wrote about Shopify’s localization features, costs, and ease in our Top 5 eCommerce Platform Comparison and in this article, we will cover 6 of the best Shopify Apps for effortless eCommerce localization. From expediting your eCommerce operation with fulfillment and inventory management to enhancing your store design with features that improve user experience and anything in between–you can bet that Shopify has at least one app for every need.
1. Product Search & Recommendations: Shopify Search & Discovery (FREE)
The free Search & Discovery app provides customized search, filtering and product recommendations to help customers find the right products. Shopify’s Search & Discovery app lets shoppers refine their searches through multiple categories with custom filters. Sellers can also use the product boost feature to highlight specific products in search results. In addition, sellers can use analytics data to understand how customers browse the store.
2. Product Reviews: Air: Product Reviews app & UGC (FREE)
This is a product review tool that supports images, ratings, and is SEO-friendly. Sellers and brands can customize the display of product reviews in a variety of styles (such as pop-up windows, etc.), and can also import past reviews locally or from other apps. The integrated data panel allows you to understand consumers’ real-time comments at a glance, and you can also easily manage comments through preview, approval, and other settings.
3. Customer Service: BestChat ‑ Live Chat & Chatbot (FREE)
Quickly solving consumer questions through online customer service will undoubtedly encourage them to convert. This is a convenient online chat tool for stores that supports both chatbots and canned answers. This App also supports multiple languages and multi-store integration, and you can also simply display your brand by uploading a logo and customizing avatars for each agent.
4. Affiliate Marketing: ReferrLy: Affiliate Marketing (FREE)
This is an affiliate marketing/referral program tool that provides commissions to your brand ambassadors for driving sales. Let social media KOL easily join your promotion plan and become a partner! Track sales with referral links and promo codes, and monitor partner marketing performance with a dedicated dashboard. Set commission rules by partner, product, collection, achievement, and more. Merchants can also display pop-ups on the order page to invite loyal customers to become promotional partners.
5. SEO Optimization: SEO.Bulk Image Optimizer (FREE)
Google’s SEO algorithm is different from other Asian search engines like Baidu, and SEO optimization is crucial for a site to achieve high rankings. This tool helps store owners perform SEO optimization in a fully automated and convenient way without knowing delving into code. It also covers common SEO such as alt text, meta tags, sitemaps, 404 error links, and more to improve site speed, provide customers with a better experience, and save the time and cost of website optimization to the greatest extent while optimizing under Google’s best practices.
6. Discounts: Heartcoding Sales & Discounts (US$9.99/mo)
This is the only paid application among the applications we introduce today. It helps merchants easily and quickly customize and schedule discounts, and promotions with the option to apply to the entire store, favorites, or just individual products. Merchants can customize promotion labels and countdown timers for the top, and bottom bars and product pages of independent sites to promote conversions. This app is simple and easy to use, with no redundant or confusing functions, helping stores conduct multiple promotions at the same time.
7. BONUS: Apps for Legal & Data Compliance
When it comes to eCommerce localization, Legal Compliance for different markets is a key issue that brands going overseas need to keep in mind, as countries or regions have differentiated policies and regulations. For example, in European and American markets with strict data security regulations, special attention needs to be paid to compliance with privacy regulations. In addition, financial and tax compliance, management compliance, etc. cannot be ignored. There are management tools in the Shopify store for market compliance in different countries. Feel free to contact the TMO team to learn about your target market’s legal and data compliance priorities and Shopify implementation!
Top Shopify Apps: Final Thoughts
The above are the basic and necessary types of Shopify Store apps you should consider for your overseas eCommerce, all of which TMO Group recommends from experience in past projects. Of course, in addition to these, the Shopify App Store also has applications that meet various needs, and generally paid applications can provide more comprehensive functions. If you have just started your overseas operation, you can first explore these basic apps for your branded cross-border store, and then move on to other premium applications as the scale of your eCommerce grows.
If you’re looking for a Shopify marketing agency to enhance your cross-border eCommerce growth, TMO Group has rich experience in eCommerce localization and digital marketing strategy for Shopify and other cross-border eCommerce platforms. Reach out to us to learn more about our advertising, search engine optimization, and other Marketing services for eCommerce.
