As an ecommerce professional, one of the first things you learn is that you're much better off trying to keep customers than finding new ones.
It costs five times as much to attract a new customer compared to retaining an old one, so it's certainly worthwhile to setup things like email newsletters, cart abandonment tools and loyalty programs. Those VIPs are the ones that are going to keep your business afloat.
And that's fine, but what about actually getting those customers in the first place? Then, what about when you hit a plateau where you need to once again establish your marketing strategies to accumulate more new customers?
Although I would always recommend you choose to go after current customers as opposed to completely new ones, most businesses find that it's more of a balancing act than anything.
Therefore, we wanted to explore the best Shopify apps for bringing in new traffic. These are the ones that'll present your business to fresh eyes. Apps for the folks that are far more inclined to laugh and walk away.
However, bringing in new traffic is an essential part of the ecommerce business, so keep reading to learn more about the top apps.
Rewards and Referrals by Swells
A standard rewards program serves as a way to get current customers to keep coming back to your shop. However, the Swells app also includes tools that prompt your customers to refer your products to other people. Therefore, you can specify how many rewards points a customer gets for referring a friend, and your customers feel appreciated when they do so.
Plugin SEO
A huge part of grabbing new customers is through organic and paid SEO. Since Shopify already helps you out with SEO from the start, you typically only need to go in there to customize meta data and walk through the problems you may have created while setting up. The Plugin SEO app identifies these problems and helps you make your SEO more useful.
Product Reviews
All ecommerce stores should have product reviews. Yes, they convince current customers to buy products, but they also play a role in pushing up your search engine rankings and making a more visual search experience for your customers. For example, this app will reveal the product star ratings when someone searches for the product in Google.
Facebook Shop
The Facebook Shop app syncs with your store, pulling all of the products you have and placing them in a nicely organized Facebook shop. Since this is almost like having a second store, new people might stumble upon your Facebook page, see that you have a shop there, then purchase items and become a customer.
Messenger
The Messenger app goes through Facebook, except it works as more of a customer service tool when you grab customers through your Facebook page. Both the Facebook Shop and Messenger tap into one of the social networks where people spend most of their time. And this app even lets users chat with you, see products and buy on Facebook.
Pinterest Buyable Pins
There's nothing crazy about this one, since it only adds Buy buttons to your Pinterest pins. You may not think that's a huge deal at first, but think about how people discover items on Pinterest. First of all. Pinterest pages are discoverable through Google. Not only that, but it's a completely new marketing outlet where people spend tons of time looking for new products.
Refersion Affiliate Tracking
This is somewhat similar to a referral program, but it actually ties into affiliate sales. Let's say you have an eBook or physical product you're selling through your store. What better way to get the word out than to get a bunch of bloggers to write reviews? With this app you're able to give a percentage of all sales to the folks who write about your products.
Btw, did you check my full Shopify review?
Referral Candy
The Referral Candy app is similar to the Swells app we covered above, except this is focused only on referrals, and it offers some interesting tools for convincing other people to join your website or buy products. For example, your customers can send out emails with coupons to friends, while also gaining points for the referrals.
Read our full review here.
Try Referral Candy now.
WhatsApp Share
This is one of the few apps that allows users to send your product links to people's phone numbers. Sure, it's only a WhatsApp number, but so many people treat WhatsApp as if it were their real messaging application. All you have to do is set up the app and they can start sharing through WhatsApp.
Google Shopping
The same goes for Google Shopping, since so many people are more likely to shop through the Google search than by clicking through the result links. Therefore, it's essential to get hooked up with Google Shopping to display your own products.
Ads by Varinode
Ever wonder how to get your ad posted on relevant websites? Why not trade ad placements with people in the same industry? Varinode introduces you to other companies that might want to trade ad space.
Instagram Shop by Snapppt
Let's say someone sees a pair of your boots on Instagram. They want to buy it, but they're not sure which product it is when they land on your site. This tags all of the photos on your Instagram feed so new customers know exactly what they were interested in initially.
Update: This is now an Official Shopify feature. Merchants can now tag products on Instagram that link directly to a Shopify product page.
Social Sharing Buttons
There's nothing more powerful than a recommendation from a friend. With these butt, ns all of your customers become brand ambassadors.
Outfy – Social Media Promotion
It's not that easy to customize your social sharing with this app, but it is pretty great for sharing new product pages. The app takes your products and desired social posts, then shares them to dozens of social media networks in one click.
Conclusion
As with all Shopify apps, the process for installation takes only a few minutes, if not seconds. The Shopify platform in general is one of your best bets for launching a store, and the apps are essential for making Shopify so versatile and powerful. That said, it's imperative to get the ball rolling with apps that bring in new traffic. And these should set you in the right direction.
If you have any other Shopify apps you like for this purpose, let us know in the comments.
Yroo – just another marketplace that seems to bring us consistent traffic directly to our site. Our sales have grown month over month with them, though not dramatically. We find the integration seem less and the cost affordable.