Pro Guide on How to Choose Shopify Apps for Your Store

Today Shopify, known for its flexibility and short time to market, has become a go-to e-commerce platform for small to medium-sized e-commerce businesses. Shopify makes it simple to launch an online business, providing a wide range of out-of-the-box functions. With the same simplicity and flexibility, it enables merchants to extend the functionality of their Shopify e-commerce stores by just installing ready apps from the Shopify apps store.

Here you will learn about pro tips on how to select top Shopify apps exactly for your e-commerce business that will duly save you time and effort.

What Are the Best Shopify Apps?

Here’s a list of the main points that we think apps should possess to be considered the best Shopify apps:

1. The best apps are those that completely meet the exclusive needs of your business.
2. These apps are usually developed by well-known and reputable companies.
3. The best Shopify apps have ratings of 4.5 stars and higher.
4. Top Shopify apps usually have several hundred reviews, minimum.

How to Choose the Best Apps for a Shopify E-commerce Store?

The search for an app for your store can be overwhelming. Here is a list of steps to choose the exact Shopify apps you need for your business:

Step 1: Define the functionality you need for the app

Every e-commerce business is aimed at increasing sales and maximizing revenue.

Write down the exact functionality you want to be able to add to the standard behavior of your Shopify store. Now start your research. For example, if you are focused on maximizing your sales volumes during the upcoming sales season, one way of achieving this is adding a sales countdown timer on your product pages. These work to influence your customers’ buying behavior by creating a feeling of urgency.

Step 2: Go deeper into the Shopify app store

The next step is to identify whether the Shopify apps store has the app that can meet the required functionality.

1. Use the search bar and type the keyword that reflects the functionality you need best. In the example below, we’ve searched for a ‘countdown timer’.

Taking this approach helps you find an app with the exact niche functionality you’re looking for.

2. Review the categories and choose the one you believe the required app can be located in.

However, you will see hundreds of available apps. With that in mind, the next thing we advise is that you sort listed apps. Sort by "Most relevant" or "Most installed" and then choose the pricing model, if cost is important to you.

Step 3: Pick a few apps and research them

You should use the following steps:

1. Read the description thoroughly to understand whether the app really offers the functionality you need.
2. Study the pricing models and features included.
3. View the demo store and check if the design and layout of the features provided by the app suits your store style.
4. Explore reviews to learn more about the support provided by app developers and any issues that other users may have faced.

Step 4: Analyze results and choose the most useful Shopify app for you

If you are looking for an app with narrow functionality and see one that offers a free plan, appears among the most popular and relevant apps and has great ratings and many reviews, just go for it and don’t worry about searching for anything else.

But if you’d like to get a multi-functional app that can more comprehensively fit your current business needs and offers additional related features, go through the results and choose the best option.

Final steps

After the app is successfully integrated into your e-commerce website, take your time to review all the functions and settings, and test it properly.

Don't forget that all external apps installed on your store will likely affect store performance. This is especially the case if you use several apps from a variety of different app developers. They may conflict with each other, slow down your store and impact conversions.

This is a brief summary of an article published on Whidegroup blog. If you want to know more details about how to choose Shopify apps for your store?—read the full article

I work at Whidegroup, an e-commerce development company, which specializes in providing feature-rich e-commerce solutions in web development, UI/UX and consulting.