eCommerce websites should expect more traffic than ever before this holiday season. Black Friday alone yielded a 33% increase in online sales, or $7.4 billion — an all-time high. Though online holiday sales are projected to break all the records because of the COVID19 pandemic, this traffic is significantly less valuable if the eCommerce website is unprepared. Without the right plugins, holiday sales will simply slip through merchants’ fingers. Below are the five most important Shopify and WooCommerce plugins that the best web design experts say all merchants should consider installing this holiday season.
1) Stamped.Io
Customers always flock to reviews, especially when buying gifts they’re unfamiliar with for relatives. Extensions that nurture this part of the customer journey are a must for merchants.
What It Does
Stamped.io incentivizes customers to make real reviews.
How It Works
Reviews are a lot of work, but stamped.io makes them easy for merchants and customers.
How? By giving people lots of chances to leave reviews at every single step.
The improved stamped.io review process comes in three parts. First, Stamped.io asks customers for reviews at opportune times.
For instance, right after a customer makes a purchase, merchants may ask them why they bought the product.
This feature empowers merchants to capitalize on the same “aha moment” that got the customer to buy in the first place. It preserves that sudden emotional purchase response in a review that will convert other customers, too.
Stamped.io can also add incentives to make this process easier, such as coupons.
When customers feel rewarded for their review, they will be more likely to buy again. More importantly, merchants gain a means of testing how well the incentive worked (with coupon analytics).
Once stamped.io collects lots of reviews, it uses machine learning to rank them.
This data helps merchants decide which reviews are worth keeping and which should be scrapped. After a merchant selects reviews, they can feature the best ones on their eComemrce website.
The reviews will even show up when people search them on Google!
Adding this single plugin can transform any eCommerce store into a review powerhouse. What’s not to love?
Why It’s Special
The internet is full of review solitons, but Stamped.io employs user-friendly UX design to get results.
For instance, the plugin enables merchants to gather reviews via text.
The hyper-casual language drives results and emphasizes a low time commitment. As a result, targeted text-based revies reduce cart abandonment and make reviews more specific.
Another brilliant feature that streamlines the review process involves importing reviews. If a merchant gets lots of reviews on a third-party website, such as Amazon, Facebook, or Google, they can import the full review right into their website.
This feature makes synching reviews across platforms a breeze and provides customers with plenty of social proof.
Yet perhaps the best feature is form creation. Merchants can entirely customize review forms, yielding a better customer experience.
For instance, if customers tend to drop off after opening a form, merchants can tweak the interface for more interesting UX.
Instead of filling out four short answer questions, customers can drag sliders, click buttons, and engage in varied, engaging actions.
After the form fields have been customized, merchants can tweak colors, shapes, and fonts for better branding. If the editor isn’t good enough, merchants can edit the code directly.
This option is amazing. In the hands of a skilled developer, merchants can basically customize reviews to look however they want. The options are limitless and combined with the multi-channel prompts, review imports, and varied form fields, Stamped.io stands out as one of the best plugins available for reviews.
2) Klaviyo
Nobody likes spam, but every single eCommerce company sends countless emails during the holidays. Instead, merchants should engage customers with a few well-targeted emails, ads, and texts.
What It Does
Klaviyo segments text and email marketing to help merchants do more with less.
How It Works
The fundamental goal of Klaviyo is to make SMS and email marketing more effective. It accomplishes this goal with better segmentation.
Most email and text marketing tools are pretty basic. Klaviyo, however, lets merchants segment just about anything.
Instead of sending the same email to everyone, merchants can send an email to a hyper-specific audience. If it’s specific enough, people won’t ignore it.
Of course, merchants don’t have to segment customers alone. Klaviyo divides customers into categories and generates tips for optimizing emails for sales.
Sales never happen unprompted. Merchants can use these tools to give customers the exact nudge they need every time.
Once customers are segmented, Klaviyo empowers merchants to set up automated emails for each one.
The flow is simple, intuitive, and very powerful. More importantly, it supports A/B testing, letting merchants figure out what strategies work best for each group.
Why It’s Special
Most email plugins can segment, but Klaviyo can really segment.
If a merchant wants custom email copy based on a single item a customer put in their cart, they can build it in the flows.
In effect, the customer gets a perfectly-tailored experience. It’s the equivalent of a customer seeing a billboard with their full name on it: the hyper-specificity makes the email much more effective.
Even better, the setup and billing are seamless. Klaviyo is a pay-as-you-go service, meaning merchants are automatically billed up to a certain limit.
Not only is Klaviyo simple, but it lets you decide how much you want to pay based on your own budget. Payment is simple, and the results are well worth the money.
Even integration is easy. Klaviyo’s setup wizard gets it running in just a few clicks.
Klaviyo is easy to set up, use, and pay for. Its targeting is hyper-specific and refined, giving any eCommerce businesses that use it an edge over every other company sending holiday emails.
3) OptinMonster
Collecting emails isn’t easy, but it’s super important for eCommerce businesses that want to grow. More strategic email-collecting strategies are crucial, especially ones that don’t annoy customers.
What It Does
OptinMonster collects emails and retargets visitors without being annoying.
How It Works
OptinMonster collects user emails so merchants can stay in touch with customers.
If one only judges the plugin from its website, it may be a bit confusing. There are lots of options to choose from.
However, the features are pretty straightforward. Either they collect emails or they target them.
Email collection is the biggest reason merchants should install OptinMonster before the holidays. When someone lands on a page, visits the website, or hits some other trigger, a custom popup will ask for their email.
These popups are entirely customizable and may offer anything in return (such as coupons, ebook downloads, and more). But more importantly, merhcnats may run more than one version side-by-side and pick the one that makes the most money.
A/B testing is brilliant, and it’s used religiously by some of the biggest and most successful companies on the planet. Using it for email collection is genius!
Why It’s Special
OptinMonster in particular is great because it’s so customizable. Merchants can choose between several styles, triggers, and types of popups from the easy-to-use dashboard.
If a merchant wants something simple, they can opt for a template. Otherwise, they can make entirely-custom popups that fit the brand.
These popups work. With brilliant design, strategic triggers, and plenty of powerful testing options, merchants collect significantly more emails with OptinMonster.
4) Live Sales Popup
No one wants to eat at an empty restaurant or shop at an empty store. The same is true for the internet. eCommerce stores must generate social proof to succeed, especially during the holidays.
What It Does
Live sales popup plugins notify customers when someone buys a product to encourage them to make a purchase.
How It Works
These types of plugins are pretty straightforward. When someone buys a product, all the other visitors on the website get a small, unobtrusive notification.
This doesn’t seem that useful, but there’s a lot of complex UX psychology going on under the hood. Humans are social creatures, so when a customer sees someone else who really likes something, they, in turn, like it more. These popups generate just enough targeted social proof to get tons of purchases.
Why It’s Special
The concept is simple, so any plugin works, but Live Sales Notification is one of the best. Simply put, it has a few more features than the other options
For starters, Live Sales Notification has a very clean dashboard.
Notice that merchants can create several different types of popups for different products. This is killer for targeting certain sales.
The plugin is especially nice for the holidays because merchants can tweak the design for certain sales events. This feature is especially nice during a holiday-themed sale.
Live sales popups are uncommon, but they work, and eCommerce businesses that employ them benefit from better social proof and awesome sales.
5) Metorik
Managing an eCommerce store takes a lot of work, as one small decision can detriment a whole website. Especially during the holidays, merchants must make informed decisions using best-in-class analytics.
What It Does
Metorik provides detailed sales analytics.
How It Works
Analytics are everything. They should inform all major decisions. After all, there’s no better way to figure out how people use websites than looking directly at the data.
Metorik makes it easy with detailed analytics built right into the store. The key feature is the analytics report. Merchants can check reports on several stats, including revenue, profit, and more.
But it’s not just sales. Merchants can monitor email campaigns, too.
All this data gives sales, marketing, and even development teams a brilliant timeline view of how customers behave and how it impacts sales. This data can completely transform a team’s strategy.
Best of all, merchants can hyper-segment customers and target campaign and marketing material directly to the people that need the nudge.
It’s a wonderful analytics platform built for eCommerce, and no online store is complete without it.
Why It’s Special
It’s customizable! The dashboard is easy to rearrange for any business that wants to prioritize certain KPIs.
Merchants with multiple stores can even synch them up under one dashboard to view collective analytics.
Even better, one can create all sorts of different layouts for different teams. A marketing team can have easy access to data that’s useless to the developers, and vice versa.
These custom layouts give everyone on the backend a much better experience, making management much easier.
Overall, these tools are absolutely wonderful. Each one adds unique value to any business, especially with such high eCommerce traffic. With the right strategy, these plugins will make a significant impact on sales. However, plugins alone will not suffice. For help installing, designing, and optimizing all these features for your business, reach out to an expert Shopify developer or WooCommerce developer today.
Media Contact
Company Name: Fyresite
Contact Person: Jason Turnquist
Email: Send Email
City: Phoenix
State: Arizona
Country: United States
Website: https://www.fyresite.com/
