Although Shopify is an incredibly powerful platform with tons of tools for scaling e-commerce brands, there are still a lot of limitations with the themes that can limit the earning potential of your store.

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This is where Shopify apps come into play.

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By using 3rd party apps, you can take your Shopify store’s functionality to the next level which can lead to new data collection, user experiences, and most importantly, profitability.

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However, not all apps are created equally, and to make things worse, apps can lead to slow load times which can actually hurt your store more than help! After using hundreds of apps throughout the Shopify app store, we’ve used some of the best and worst apps that are available to store owners.

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To help you dial in your store, we put together a list of 253 Media's Approved Shopify Apps so you can rest assured that your store’s apps are only the best! 

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You’ll notice that there are seven categories outlined below with a few apps in each category. As you read each one, please note that some of the apps are complimentary (ex. JustUno and Klaviyo) whereas others are direct competitors (Bold Subscriptions and Recharge).

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Email

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Collecting data and owning your email list is one of the most important and valuable things that you can do for your store.

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JustUno - build custom popups that allow you to collect and organize more data about your customers.

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Attentive - easily (and legally!) sign your customers up for SMS marketing and take them through targeted text campaigns.

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Klaviyo - Perhaps the most popular email marketing platform, Klaviyo is the email marketing tool that you need to drive serious revenue through email!

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Subscriptions

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One of the biggest challenges of ecommerce is predicting revenue. An easy fit for a lot of brands is to add in a subscription! Below you will see two different apps that make it easy to build subscriptions that your customers can buy and modify on their own.

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Bold Subscriptions - A simple and easy way to add recurring subscriptions to your store that you can easily customize to match how your customers want to buy!

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Recharge - Perhaps the most customizable subscription app on the market, Recharge allows you to build subscriptions seamlessly into your store that your customers can easily manage themselves. Plus, REcharge offers a free version to help you get started!

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Growth

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Improving your conversion rate (CVR) is one of the most important things you can do for your store. Remember, a better conversion rate leads to more sales with the same traffic.

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Monk - This app has a few functions that will prove to be incredibly useful for your store. First off, Monk allows you to easily add upsells with specific products to boost your average order value (AOV). Next, Monk helps you build a completely customizable free shipping threshold to improve your average order value. Lastly, Monk’s built-in analytics help you have insights into exactly how it’s helping you improve your sales!

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Videowise - A very unique app, Videowise implements shoppable video that let’s users watch videos and actually buy them without having to click out and find a specific buy button. The experience is great for customers and you can control which videos they see. Plus, the analytics are excellent!

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Bold Upsell - From the same company that makes the Bold Subscription above, Bold offers an upsell app that allows you to create customized upsells throughout the buying journey. This tool helps you increase your AOV easily at nearly any step of the buying process.

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Social Snowball - We all know how important word of mouth marketing is. With Social Snowball, getting your customers talking about your products has never been easier. This simple affiliate platform helps streamline the process of adding new affiliates and actually helps sign up more affiliates!

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Smile.io - When it comes to building a powerful brand, one of the most important metrics we look at is your reorder rate and the lifetime value for your customers. This is where loyalty programs come into play! With Smile, your customers can earn loyalty points towards reorders, plus you can customize what these points go towards so it makes sense for how you sell your products.

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Reviews

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There are few things in your store that can have as much of an impact as having customer reviews, however, Shopify’s native reviews aren’t quite up to par compared to some of the other review apps on the market.

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Loox - Perhaps the prettiest and most modern review app on the market, Loox makes it easy to add reviews to your store in a number of ways from full page widgets to smaller carousels in the box box area.

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Stamped - Just like Loox, Stamped allows you to easily add nice looking review widgets throughout your store. The major difference that Stamped lets you do is add the reviews to the collection page. 

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Page Builders

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When it comes to building a unique store, Shopify’s themes can be pretty limited, especially if you’re still using an older OS1 theme (mid-2021 and older). Unless you’re a developer who can write custom theme sections, using a page builder is a great way to spruce up your store without getting too custom!

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At 253 Media, we’ve used pretty much every page builder on the market, however we typically focus on custom section and page development rather than using page builders. Because these apps are so buildable and have relatively similar features, we aren’t going to do a breakdown in this writeup, but here are three page builders that work well for most Shopify stores.

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Pagefly

Shogun

Gempages

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Misc

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Although these aren’t necessarily big growth drivers for your store, these apps can add functions to your store that are subtle but powerful!

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Give and Grow Donations - Everybody loves giving to a good cause, however the actual process of donating to these causes can be tough! With Give and Grow Donations, you can easily add custom donation entries to your checkout and you can easily give directly to the charity of your choice.

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Fraud Filter - Fraud can be an absolute killer for your store. Thankfully, Fraud Filter helps limit any fraudulent orders by actually blocking them altogether! If your store suffers from fraud, check out Fraud Filter.

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Easy Lockdown - Do you want some content to only be visible to certain customers? With Easy Lockdown, you can easily tag customer accounts and set up filters for certain products, collections, pages, etc… so they are only visible to certain groups of people.

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Booster Page Speed Optimizer - With page speed being such an important aspect to your store’s performance, speeding your load times up is crucial. Out of the box, most Shopify themes are incredibly slow. With Booster, you can speed up the second page with preloading. Although it doesn’t impact your initial load times, the second page load times will still help quite a bit.

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Analytics

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Ever since iOS 14 changed the attribution landscape, accurate analytics has been a challenge. Many brands will look at a combination of sources to get a general idea, however, there are a few apps that can make a big impact in your data acquisition and analysis.

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Triple Whale - Save time and make more informed decisions with Triple Whale! With this powerful tool, you can accurately monitor your analytics so you know exactly what impact your marketing efforts are having on your sales.

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HotJar - One of the most impactful aspects to profitability is improving your conversion rate. But how do you do that? With HotJar, you can easily see how your customers are navigating your site so you can understand what they are clicking on and what information they are actually digesting.

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When it comes to building a high performing Shopify store, apps will most likely be a major role in your success. After working with hundreds of apps across the Shopify app store, you can rest assured that these apps can have a positive impact on your store.

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