Omnisend
What It Does
Omnisend combines a ton of email and marketing automation tools in one platform, which makes life way easier. Use their app to get email signups through popups, a non-intrusive widget or the super cool wheel of fortune. Then segment your subscribers based on their characteristics or shopping behavior and create lists based on how people signed up.
When you’re ready to send emails, you can use Omnisend’s customizable templates and include interactive elements like scratch cards and gift boxes to increase click-thru rates. Plus, their Product Picker feature lets you instantly add product pictures, descriptions and pricing directly into your emails. So much quicker than pasting all that junk in.
You can also track your campaigns’ performance with the built-in analytics to see how much sales they’ve generated and which strategies lead to the highest growth.
What else does Omnisend do? Clean your house and make you dinner? No, it won’t do that. But it will let you automate tons of stuff so you actually have time to do that stuff yourself. Setup automated processes to welcome new subscribers, engage shoppers who abandoned their cart or left a specific page, confirm orders and shipping, and reconnect with customers after purchase in order to drive repeat sales. You can also use the live view feature to know what visitors are browsing in real time, then send them automated emails or text messages based on what they looked at.
Why You Need It
Email marketing is a HUGE driver of customer retention and sales. According to this study, for every $1 spent on email marketing, $44 is made in return. And Omnisend goes beyond basic email marketing by allowing you to laser target your campaigns and see in-depth results.
Price
14-day free trial, then plans that range from $0 to $199/month. The free plan includes all the core email features and 15,000 emails per month.
Get Omnisend from the BigCommerce Marketplace.
Magic Zoom Plus
What It Does
Magic Zoom Plus takes your images to the next level. Let customers zoom in, magnify and blow up your product shots to full-screen view. Hovering over an image instantly zooms in on it, and clicking the image instantly enlarges it.
Super easy to use, and super easy for you to set up on category pages as well as product pages. Plus, this app has been around for over a decade. So you know it’s legit.
Why You Need It
Studies show that bigger images lead to higher conversion rates. The better the images, the more likely users are to give you their money. So take their money! Top-selling online retailers like Amazon use the Magic Zoom effect, and so should you.
Price
30-day free trial, then a one-time payment of $69.
Get Magic Zoom Plus from the BigCommerce Marketplace.
Fomo
What It Does
Fomo displays recent orders, product reviews and other customer actions on your storefront in real time. You can integrate it with 100s of other apps, customize what information gets shown and easily design it to match your brand. Edit variables like time, product name or customer name and use their pre-built themes to get started in minutes. Or match your site’s fonts, colors and backgrounds, and even embed Fomo’s notification text within on-page elements.
You can also connect it with Google Analytics to track conversions and revenue earned through the app. Every notification view, engagement, and click is tracked, and when connected to Google Analytics (which takes just a click), Fomo also reports on conversions and earned revenue from notification clicks.
Why You Need It
Two words: social proof. Fomo gives you credibility and increases conversions by showing prospective customers how popular your products are. Remember that episode of The Office where they’re trying to make the new Sabre store look good by dressing like hipsters, flirting with customers and keeping all the old people out? That’s Fomo. Except Fomo actually works. And I’m sure Fomo doesn’t hate old people.
Price
7-day free trial, then $39/month.
Get Fomo from the BigCommerce Marketplace.
Re:amaze
What It Does
Re:amaze is a super powerful app that streamlines your customer support. Whether customers contact you via the built-in chat or your existing email addresses, social media accounts or phone numbers, it all gets organized on one platform. It’s packed with features like quick answer response templates, automated & targeted messages, customer satisfaction surveys, an FAQ content manager and built-in integrations with tons of other apps.
Two of the best things about Re:amaze: The Live Dashboard lets you see what customers are doing on your site, where they’re from and where they’ve been. You can see if they need help and send them a direct message to help convert them. You can also view insights on customer data and how they engage with you. The other great thing about Re:amaze is the shared inbox. Your team can manage messages from multiple channels in one place, add internal notes and tags, setup response templates and assign messages to other team members.
Why You Need It
To stand out in a crowded marketplace, you’ve got to have awesome customer service. You’ve also got to meet your customers where they are. The ability to be in so many places while managing everything from one location alone makes Re:amaze totally worth it. But the cherry on top is that you can actively interact with customers on your site, giving them the info they need to convert.
Price
14 day free trial, then $20/month.
Get Re:amaze from the BigCommerce Marketplace.
Lucky Orange
What It Does
Lucky Orange tells you exactly why your visitors don’t convert so you can optimize your site for more sales. You can totally spy on your visitors because Lucky Orange creates a video recording of all visits, which you can then filter and segment to see exactly what’s going on. It also creates dynamic heatmaps to show how people interact with your site, and it analyzes your site’s forms to see which fields are causing the most friction for your visitors.
But wait, there’s more! The Lucky Orange dashboard lets you see who is on your site in real time and how they found you. There’s also a built-in live chat function and customizable polls for your customers. And best of all, you can easily see where people abandon a process with Lucky Orange’s conversion funnels.
Why You Need It
You can get all the traffic in the world, but if your visitors aren’t converting, you’re losing money. Trying to guess why visitors leave your site without converting is a losing proposition without a tool like Lucky Orange.
Price
7-day free trial, then $10/month.
Get Lucky Orange from the BigCommerce Marketplace.
FavSEO
What It Does
FavSEO helps you get to the top of Google’s search page by improving your SEO. It analyzes your store to show you which products can be improved and how you can optimize them. There’s a built-in bulk editor so you can change all your titles and descriptions in a click.
You can also add your brand name or other important keywords to all of your products, categories or pages, and you can connect to Google Webmaster Tools to find new keyword opportunities and track your position in Google.
Why You Need It
What do you do when you’re looking for a particular product? You Google it. If you can get your store to the first page of Google results, you’ll not only see more visitors, but more buyers as well. Studies show that visitors who find your store through Google typically have higher conversion rates. So it’s vital to make sure your site is optimized.
Price
30-day free trial, then $9.95/month.
Get FavSEO from the BigCommerce Marketplace.
ByteStand
What It Does
ByteStand is for people looking to branch out from selling on Amazon. The app takes all of your product listings from Amazon – including high-res images, titles, descriptions, variations, inventory quantities, prices, EVERYTHING – and imports them into BigCommerce. Just click a button and your store is populated with all your products automagically.
You can then use the app to keep all your products in sync between Amazon and BigCommerce. So if you make a price change on Amazon, it will come through to BigCommerce. If you sell out of a product on Amazon, you won’t end up over-selling on BigCommerce. All changes made on Amazon will be imported into BigCommerce.
Why You Need It
Through our own trial and error, we’ve found that it takes about 10 minutes to copy a single listing from Amazon into BigCommerce – and that’s if you know what you’re doing. That might not be so bad if you’ve only got a few listings. But if you have hundreds, or even thousands of listings, it can take MONTHS to copy all that data over. And then even more time updating inventory quantities, price changes and all the other changes that happen on Amazon on a daily basis. Save yourself the headache.
Price
ByteStand is currently in beta mode, so it’s totally FREE if you enter a fake credit card number like 4242 4242 4242 4242. Then just enter an expiration date that’s in the future and you’ll be good to go!
Gennifer is the Customer Support Magician at ByteStand, where she lives and breathes customer service education while sipping coffee in her pajamas.
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