Platforms like BigCommerce make it easy for eCommerce store owners to build their stores and make a profit faster. And, luckily, since BigCommerce can’t offer every feature, they integrate with many apps so your possibilities are truly endless.
In this article, we’ll go over the best (and most essential) BigCommerce apps to help boost your eCommerce earnings and convert more customers.
1. Constant Contact
Having an email list is crucial for any eCommerce store. At the core level, it lets you contact your customers (and potential customers) over and over again. You can send them information about new inventory, a big upcoming sale, or even blog posts and news articles about your company.
With Constant Contact, you can create any kind of email you wish with an easy drag and drop builder. They also have pre-made templates if you don’t have time to design the emails yourself. And, you can set up automated emails so you never forget to reach out.
Key Features:
- Award-winning customer support
- Tools, resources, and advice for beginners from real experts
- 100+ easily customizable email templates optimized for mobile
- Real-time reporting and analytics so you know what emails work best
- Collect email addresses from your store, Facebook, through mobile, or wherever you want
- An intuitive dashboard that makes it easy to organize your email list
The integration of Constant Contact with BigCommerce is free. However, Constant Contact offers 2 plans:
- Email: from $20/month
- Email Plus: from $45/month
Each of these plans offers a lot of features, however, as you can imagine the Email Plus plan offers the most. Extra features include A/B testing, automated messages by behavior, dynamic content, and more.
2. OptinMonster
If you want to get an email list going, you’re going to need a BigCommerce app to help you capture those emails in the first place.
Creating optins that both look nice and are high converting can take a ton of time. That’s where a tool like OptinMonster comes in.
Key Features:
- Easy to use drag and drop interface to create beautiful campaigns
- Reporting and statistics to keep your performance on-track
- Real-time event tracking for purchases, demo registrations, email signups, and more
- Exit-intent technology to trigger an optin when the customer is about to leave
- Variety of popups including fullscreen welcome mats and countdown timers
- A/B testing so you can use the best-performing campaign
OptinMonster’s features help eCommerce businesses reduce cart abandonment, grow their email lists, and help with onsite retargeting.
OptinMonster connects with all the best email marketing services and is the perfect combination for building a customer and pre-customer database.
Integration between OptinMonster and BigCommerce is free. OptinMonster has 4 plans to choose from. The Basic Plan costs $19/month, and the most advanced plan costs $99/month.
3. PushEngage
Want a way to reach your customers any time, anywhere? PushEngage is the easiest way to add browser push notifications for your BigCommerce store.
You can nudge customers to return to abandoned carts, announce new products, or even send a series of prescheduled messages to turn casual browsers into loyal customers.
Key Features:
- Customizable optin messages
- Flexible notification styling
- Personalization with location, language, time zone, and other details
- Segmentation based on browsing activity, device type, location, and more
- Advanced analytics for data-driven decision-making
PushEngage has a free plan for up to 30 campaigns with limited features. Paid plans with unlimited campaigns and full features start at just $9/month.
4. TrustPulse
Like Yotpo, TrustPulse is an app to implement social proof into your online store. Reviews are a great way to comfort the user and help with the buying decision, but sometimes it takes a little bit more to convince them. That’s where TrustPulse shines.
Key Features:
- Show a live stream of any real-time event
- Show how many people are taking action within a given period of time
- Advanced targeting rules and timing control to show notifications to the right people at the right time
- Analytics to see which page is doing best
Sometimes little things can create such a big difference. BigCommerce said adding small details like real-time site activity can boost conversions by 40%-80%.
Trustpulse definitely offers the details that go a long way in increasing sales.
Integrating TrustPulse with BigCommerce is free. TrustPulse plans are extremely affordable (starting at $4/month) and all offer 14-day free trials. They even have a free plan if you get 500 sessions per month or less.
5. LiveChat
How many times have you sent a message to a company’s support account only to never get a response? Frustrating, right? That’s why your site’s visitors will appreciate a live chat option to get their questions answered quickly.
LiveChat is not only a quick way to help customers on your website, but it also boosts conversion rates. In fact, visitors who engage in a live chat with you are 6.3 times more likely to finish their purchase.
Related Content: Live Chat Best Practices: How to Streamline Customer Service
Being instantly available to answer your customers’ questions is crucial, especially when it’s so easy to hit the back button and go to a competitor.
As an eCommerce site owner, the majority of questions you get will be questions shoppers are asking to help them decide if they want to buy from you. So, the sooner you can answer them, while they’re still in the buying stage, the more likely they’ll end up buying on the spot.
Key Features:
- See what customers are typing, even if they never click send
- Transfer chats between agents when necessary
- Block rude visitors with the visitor banning feature
- Be in the know with delivery statuses
- Filesharing
LiveChat has a recurring fee of $20/month and no upfront fees. You can also use the free trial to see if you like it before paying.
And, if you’re looking for a live chat solution that’s a bit simpler, Telegram Live Chat by Elfsight might do the trick. Or, check out our list of the best live chat tools.
6. Omnisend
If you’d like a one-stop shop to drive sales across channels, Omnisend is the solution for you. Customers are unlikely to only use one messaging channel, but Omnisend lets you combine email, SMS, and push notifications into a single workflow.
Omnisend comes with tons of pre-built omnichannel workflows for
- Welcoming new subscribers
- Abandoned products and carts
- Order and shipping confirmation
- Cross-sells
It also has a selection of built-in signup forms to collect contacts from your online store visitors. Of course, if you’re already using OptinMonster for list-building, you can connect that to Omnisend as well.
Key Features:
- Omnichannel automations using email, SMS, and web push
- Popups and signup forms
- Automatic audience sync
- eCommerce-tailored audience segmentation
- Revenue attribution and other advanced analytics
Omnisend integrates with BigCommerce for free, along with over 100 other apps. You can get started with their full-featured free plan and reach up to 250 contacts, or upgrade to a paid plan for more contacts starting at $16/month.
7. QuickBooks Online
QuickBooks Online is the preferred accounting software for most entrepreneurs and eCommerce site owners.
Bookkeeping is a task that either takes a tedious amount of time to do yourself or costs a lot of money to have someone do it for you.
Instead of hiring a daily or weekly bookkeeper, you can integrate the Quickbooks app with your BigCommerce store, let it run in the background, and send all the data to your accountant during tax season.
Key Features:
- Manage sales and income in QuickBooks by creating invoices to track sales by customer
- QuickBooks automatically keeps track of your bills and expenses by connecting your bank and credit card accounts
- Access to reports like profit and loss report, balance sheet report, and statement of cash flows
- QuickBooks has its own payroll function that can automatically calculate and run payroll as often as you need it
- Automatic tracking and updating of delivery as you enter transactions
- Management of accounting and taxes
- Take online payments
- Capture expense receipts with just a picture
Quickbooks Online is fast to install and set up. If you use QuickBooks Online with Quickbooks Payments, you’ll also be able to connect your business bank accounts and credit cards to sync up with the software.
The QuickBooks app is free to integrate. Quickbooks Online plans vary from $15/month for the Simple Start Plan up to $31/month for the Plus Plan.
8. Yotpo Reviews
Social proof is a hugely influential factor in buyer’s decisions. All businesses need to include some social proof tactics in their marketing strategy to build brand awareness, drive more traffic, and boost sales.
One of the best forms of social proof is customer reviews. Did you know that 92% of people look for recommendations from other customers before buying a product?
Key Features:
- Commenting to create an engaged community
- Community Q&A
- Reliable support system for those just starting out
- Marketing features including social media ads, review generation, retention, marketing, and SEO functionalities
- Customer reviews can be generated easily from any device using in-mail forms
- Algorithms to show the right products to the right people
Yotpo offers a free package, but the premium package includes a lot of essential features like user-generated photos, social curation, coupons, and community Q&A. Pricing is based on your monthly traffic volume, products, and domains.
9. ShipStation
It’s essential for eCommerce stores to have a sound shipping system to get orders out to customers as reliably and as quickly as possible.
ShipStation is a leading web-based shipping software that helps your eCommerce store do precisely that.
Key Features:
- Custom branding on packing slips, shipping labels, and shipping confirmation emails
- Discounted rates on couriers like USPS, FedEx, and DHL
- Features like automation, batch printing, cloud-based and mobile shipping, dashboards and interfaces
- Automatic order retrieval from multiple shipping channels
- Custom email confirmations and tracking information
And, exclusively for BigCommerce merchants, you’ll receive up to 50 shipments per month for free, which includes a free USPS postage account with hugely discounted rates. Any international users on this free account will have access to Royal Mail, Canada Post, Australia Post, and other couriers.
ShipStation plans start at $9/month.
10. Facebook Ads Extension
Advertising on Facebook opens your business up to a platform with billions of users and it’s one of the easiest ways to reach a large number of people almost instantly. Even if you’re not converting people right away, it’s a great way to create brand awareness.
Using the Facebook Ads Extension helps your business get existing customers to come back to your site, find new customers, and increase sales for your online store. If you set up the Facebook pixel, you can use Facebook retargeting to further optimize your ads, and really fine-tune your audience. In turn, you’ll see higher conversions and lower ad spend.
Key Features:
- Connect your product catalog to Facebook to create dynamic ads with product listings
- Extensive reporting feature for the full scope of sales and revenue from Facebook Ads
- Remarket your audience by showing them ads after they’ve visited your site
This BigCommerce App has no upfront costs.
11. Optimizely
Does changing the color of your “buy here” button make people click it more often? Will the new redesign make it easier for people to reach the checkout page? Should you change the call to action from “Buy Now” to “Finish Purchase” or leave it as is?
Without an A/B testing tool like Optimizely, any changes to your site are a shot in the dark.
Optimizely is a great BigCommerce app that lets eCommerce owners test out different hypotheses and make concrete conversion rate optimization decisions. When you implement different ideas, you’re able to see the results that the change brings.
But Optimizely is more than just a platform for experimentation. It’s also a user experience optimization tool.
Key Features:
- A/B testing
- Detailed analytics with performance and conversion metrics for each test
- Personalized campaigns
- Advanced program management
Testing out different ideas and seeing what works best is in your customers’ best interests. Nobody likes getting confused and frustrated about how to navigate a website.
Using Optimizely can help you discover the clearest and most straightforward path to get people from where they are to where they need to be.
Plans and pricing are customized to match your company’s needs. Contact them directly for a quote.
12. Price Lists Import & Export
Price Lists Import & Export lets you offer different pricing levels by customer type. For example, you might decide to show retail pricing to regular visitors but bulk pricing to larger vendors.
If you already use price lists, you’ll know that editing the entire file line by line can take a ton of time.
Key Features:
- Allows you to make bulk edits to your pricing lists
- Make new price lists quickly with a template download
Price Lists Import & Export is a simple tool that not everyone using BigCommerce needs. However, it’s a huge time saver for store owners offering variable pricing on their websites.
The app download is free.
Looking for other ideas to optimize your eCommerce site? We’ve created an ultimate eCommerce optimization guide just for you!
In the end, the apps you choose to use on your BigCommerce site depend on who your audience is, what kind of eCommerce business you have, and what kind of apps you’re already using.
These BigCommerce apps can be enormously helpful with converting more customers, saving you time, and possibly even saving you money (since you won’t be hiring outside developers).
Did you enjoy this article? You may also like this one on how to create a BigCommerce popup to boost sales.
Using OptinMonster on your BigCommerce store can help you jumpstart your business while you’re deciding what other apps and tools you want to use. Get started with OptinMonster today!
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