Some of our best-performing ads aren't visually impressive, so don't get too hung up on animation or polish, trust the data.

Running "ugly" ads (aka real, lo-fi, less polished) could seem counterintuitive, but if done right, it can help to bring in new customers at a low cost, help convert retargeting audiences, and bring in more traffic to your site.

Consumers trust brands that feel attainable, authentic or aren't big $$$ brands. Ads that are too polished blend in with large companies and often don't attract consumers. Think about the sort of images that you see naturally occurring from other users on your Facebook and Instagram feeds - that is what we’re going for.

If your brand is new, cottage/boutique size, organic, all-natural, "made by moms", etc. then running less-polished" ads could be for you!

Using assets like UGC won't be pixel-perfect but do prove to be very popular and ads consumers trust.

Here are some examples of ads that are producing our best results right now:  

Ideas to test "ugly" ads:

1. Encourage your customers to share photos using your products.
2. Use Canva to easily add minimal treatments to those simple product photos to make your ad stand out.
3. Add a headline or animations
4. Add borders, frames, etc.
5. Try some fun new fonts

1. Instead of putting together a highly produced photo shoot, consider running an influencer campaign to get UGC and third-party social proof.

Less production time helps you be faster to respond to trends, news, events, new stock, inventory issues, sales etc.

Flashy, polished ads don’t always mean great performance. So test out an “ugly” ad and see if it outperforms. You just might surprise yourself!

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In this post, you'll learn:

• The must-have Shopify apps for a high-performing store
• The best apps for boosting revenue
• Our top picks for apps that answer questions and gather reviews
• Landing page Shopify apps we love

Whether it’s a cart recovery system, upsells, a messenger bot, or a review platform, the right Shopify App can drive the conversation, streamline your workload, and boost revenue for your store in little more than a few clicks a week.

From improving conversion rates to bolstering consumer trust, you’d be hard-pressed not to find something a simple app can improve in your store.

But all that convenience comes at a cost. With over 1200 apps to choose from – many of which you’d need to pay for, right out of the gate – and no reliable way to test them, enterprising Shopify store owners can quickly find themselves overwhelmed and underwater

👋 This is exactly what we’re here for!

With decades of combined experience across hundreds of Shopify stores of every possible size and type, we’ve narrowed down the list of must-have apps to 26.

We’ve divvied these apps up into the must-have categories your store should cover, and further broken them down by cost and sophistication – so feel free to choose your own adventure with them at that point.

With this list in hand, you can’t go wrong wading into the Shopify App waters.

Top Shopify Apps You Need for Better Sales

If you’re a digital seller, these are non-negotiable.

Apps for Facebook Catalog Hookup

(Not to be confused with the Facebook Sales Channel)

If you want to advertise your products on Facebook (and you do), your best option is hands-down going to be Flexify.

1. Flexify (Free plan available. Additional charges may apply):

Sure, Shopify has the ability to add Facebook as a sales channel, which allows you to connect your product catalog to an ad account. But that will limit you (and any agency you might want to employ hint hint) in your product set creation and image-cropping options. Flexify’s free plan simplifies this whole process and does it very, very well. Flexify recently introduced its new superfeed which removes the need for pagination and can be used for Google, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Facebook.

Must Have Apps for Google Feed Hookup

(Not to be confused with the Google Sales Channel)

Same deal – if you’re into advertising on Google Shopping (and… you probably are), the Google Shopping Feed is your buddy.

2. Google Shopping Feed ($4.99/month. 21-day free trial.) Additional charges may apply):

Shopify has made an app to try to hook stores’ feeds into Google … but by all accounts (um, including ours), it’s awful. Do yourself a favor, skip the Shopify version and head straight to Google’s purpose-built feed app.

The Revenue Boosters

Repeat after us: Abandoned cart recovery = Revenue recovery

All stores need some sort of email marketing solution, which is how you’re going to at least start recovering these carts. Here are some of our favorite, low-risk options:

Best Apps for Shopify Email Marketing

3. Recart ($29/month. 28-day free trial. Additional charges may apply.)

Also includes Facebook Messenger Recovery, where we’ve seen messages getting upwards of 70% open rates.

4. ShopSync (Free.)

If you’ve already got MailChimp as your email provider, nab this app for recovery. Mailchimp removed its partnership with Shopify and the only way to sync the platforms is with this app.

5. Klaviyo (Free to install. Additional charges may apply.)

Robust email platform, works beautifully with equally sophisticated stores, tons of automation options.

Got another email provider in place? See if they have a Shopify app and give it a go. The above are our favorites, but that doesn’t mean an email platform you love won’t perform adequately in its Shopify implementation. We’re just a little more skeptical (and how much do you really love that email provider anyway? 😉).

Shopify Apps for Upsells & Cross-sells

6. OneClickUpsell ($24.99/month. 30-day free trial.)

Although this app can be quite expensive, we’ve seen the OneClickUpsell app pay for itself many times over if set up properly.

7. Product Upsell by Bold Apps (From $9.99/month. 14-day free trial.)

This app is an awesome way to increase your average order value.

8. Persistent Cart (Free.)

With this app, you can keep your users logged into their cart across devices.

Capturing Visitors Through Exit Intent Pop-ups

Capturing customers intent on leaving with some sort of promotion or discount can bump up store conversion rates, with less than 10 minutes of work.

9. Exit Offers ($9.99/month. 14-day free trial.)

10. Wheelio (From $14.92/month. 7-day free trial.)

11. Privy ( $10/month. 15-day free trial.)

The Conversation Drivers

When you’re good, you’re good. And you want everyone to know it.

The Best Shopify Apps for Reviews

We recommend most eCommerce stores have some sort of reviewing mechanism. They help build trust, build social reactions, and build your bottom line.

12. Product Reviews (Free):

Great for a simple review mechanism where you can manually upload reviews from other platforms, like Amazon.

13. Yotpo Reviews (Free to install. External Charges may apply.):

Perfect for a more complex reviewing mechanism –  it verifies reviews to give customers a sense of trust, outputs them to your marketing on a kind of modified Facebook Dynamic Product Ad system, and more.

14. Growave (Free plan available. 14-day free trial.)

This all-in-one platform helps small- and medium-sized Shopify stores gather reviews, wishlists, loyalty programs, referrals, social login, and UGC to improve sales.

Live Chat/Messenger Shopify Apps

There are a ton of live chat apps out there and many of them work just fine. Below, however, are a few that we particularly like. Use them to answer questions, bot together some FAQ responses, direct consumers to the appropriate sections of your site or (😱) chat directly to your customers … live.

15. Chatra Live Chat + Facebook (Free plan available)

16. Tidio Live Chat (Free plan available. Additional charges may apply.)

17. Zendesk Support (Free to install. Additional charges may apply.)

The Best Landing Page Apps on Shopify

18. Shogun (From $39/month. 10-day free trial.)

Custom landing page builder. Easy as pie, can fit your store theme almost out of the box.

19.Zipify (From $67/month. 14-day free trial.)

Smarter sales funnels & landing pages for your Shopify store.

20.PageFly Advanced Page Builder (Free plan available.)

Build landing pages, product pages, FAQ, home pages & funnels.

Shopify Apps That Solve Unique Challenges

Every store is unique, with unique challenges. If your special set of circumstances seems to warrant a little something extra, one of these just may hit the spot.

More apps does not equal better store. In fact, more apps can slow your site down, confuse the systems in place, mess with your site formatting and even drive away confused customers (especially on mobile …yikes!). Consider your needs before implementing and monitor your results after 👍

21. SyncTap (Free plan available. 14-day free trial.)

Target highly profitable audiences with your Facebook ads in seconds!

22. Free Shipping Bar by Hextom (Free plan available.)

Top-of-site announcement bar for free shipping or some other sort of promotion (many themes have this as a built-in feature, just by the way. Check yours for it, first!).

23. Back in Stock (From $19/month. 30-day free trial.)

Run out of inventory quickly and often? Capture that audience before they leave the site. A pre-order app can also work well here, but this one is simpler than most.

24. Product Discount by Bold Apps ($19.99/month. 14-day free trial.)

Storewide sales, flash-sales, & scheduled sales with a click. Boom.

25. Recurring Orders & Subscriptions by Bold Apps ($19.99/month. 90-day free trial.)

For shops with a recurring business model.

26. ShipperHQ (from $50/month. 30-day free trial.):

Create an Amazon-like checkout experience with shipping rates and options that make sense, and convenient delivery options your customers will love. Instantly pull delivery dates from carriers, calculate the most accurate rates possible, set up unique shipping rules and restrictions for any checkout scenario, apply dynamic shipping discounts and promotions, automate LTL freight quoting and box selection for orders, and much more.

👉 Pssst: If you choose to upgrade to the paid version of any of these apps, you’ll need to be logged into your Shopify store as an owner to do so.

If you're ready to level up your Shopify store with less hassle and more help, book a call with us.

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Most business owners running digital ads are trained early on to focus on ROAS. By definition, “return on ad spend” sounds like it MUST be the holy grail metric of digital marketing. You’ve spent money on advertising with the expectation that in return, you will receive revenue.

However, few words sum up the panic and despair you feel when, in the early days of your ad campaigns, you see $150 in Shopify revenue on one tab and $500 in ad spend on the other.

⬆️ Level up your ROAS with Snapchat ads. →

For most business owners, it’s impossible not to lose sight of the long-term goals.

In that moment, it’s important to take a step back and consider the bigger picture of what you’re trying to achieve, both as a company and in your digital campaigns.

Spoiler: The internet isn’t a money in, money out kind of place.

The digital marketplace is complex. There are countless variables that influence whether or not someone buys from you.

😱 Are your analytics lying to you? →

Ad creative, ad copy, price, promotions, free shipping, the purchase process, trust in the brand, trust in the website, customer service, other sites selling the same product, other sites selling similar products, people who sit on a cart to decide – and then forget.

Every one of these variables – and many more – have a direct impact on whether you will get a return on your ad spend. And whether your company will be around in 6 months.

However it’s impossible to know, much less get these critical factors, right if your sole mission statement is to increase ROAS month over month.

Knowing and understanding what creates a growing and sustainable buying process requires time, iterating, testing and repeating – all of which require some ad spend.

The ugly truth: You’re going to have to spend some money on knowing your market.

No one wants to hear this: investing money to know your buyers’ process and what will make your company successful will lower your ROAS, as some of your money is diverted to testing. But invest, you must.

Founders are engineered to trust their gut, sometimes to a fault. They don’t want to spend money – or time – on iterating and testing because they are sure their assumptions are correct.

💊 Hard to swallow pill: Facebook ads don't always work. Here's why. →

The unfortunate reality is that the longer you begrudge ad spend on testing, the more money you waste on less effective ads, the lower your ROAS, and the longer you’re wasting money and suffering a low ROAS.

For instance, you may have perfected a BBQ rub that you sell out of every weekend at the local farmer’s marketing. You’re positive that as soon as you get your online store up and some ads running, your greatest obstacle will be keeping up with inventory. I mean, people LOVE this stuff. 😋

You get a Shopify account and start to run some ads. The ads are driving a lot of traffic to your site – you may even be getting some adds to cart. Unfortunately, your orders are bumping around 3 a day.

You may have forgotten to account for some of those critical variables or external factors we mentioned – like trust-building elements, shopping flow, technical issues and shipping issues. No one is buying from you for one or many reasons.

This is a classic case of "You don’t know what you don’t know."

Credit: peerinsight.com

However, now that ads are driving traffic to the site, testing various usual suspects, you come to understand that people need some convincing with testimonials, BBQ awards logos, reviews, free samples – and they need free shipping to push past the finish line.

🍨 Get the scoop on conversion rate optimization. →

These external factors can be smoked out as quickly as possible (pun intended, see what we did there?), removing obstacles to people buying – and increasing that flow of ROAS back to you. But more importantly, you’re building a stronger company and a brand with staying power. You now know what’s important to your customers and are removing barriers that frustrate them. This is an exercise in growth marketing!

Beyond ROAS, though

Let’s say your investment in market research by way of ad traffic pays off, and you get to a comfortable ROAS. It’s tempting to assume you’re good to coast into retirement on the back of your world class BBQ blend.

You may have hit a ROAS that makes you happy, but it’s important to continue viewing that number as one indicator metric of many. Even when it’s trending upward, it cannot become the focal point of your business.

As a growing company, it’s important to turn your attention and an allotment of your ad spend to understanding bigger metric fish: like the lifetime value of each customer.

And what makes one customer more valuable than another, and how do you specifically target more valuable customers?

Which customers are more likely to advocate for your product, resulting in more customers and more sales?

Calculating Sustainable Growth Goals [Worksheet]

FEATURED RESOURCE: Use this spreadsheet to calculate critical KPIs like CPA, target ROAS, and gross profit.

Download

What this means for you starting out

Your main objective for the first few months of any digital campaign should be to come away with a deadly accurate pulse on your market conditions, your purchasing audience, what compels them to pay for your product and any obstacles getting in the way of paying for your product.

Armed with this knowledge, you can make critical decisions around HOW to market your product in digital ads, through a keen understanding of your audience’s pricing tolerance, preferred messaging and detailed targeting.

For the first phase of your digital campaign, ROAS is simply the cherry on top. You’re building the sundae from the bottom up, starting with:

• Detailed demographic, interest and behavior-based breakdown of what groups of people are eager to buy from you, those who can be coaxed into buying from you and those who aren’t worth your ad spend

• Average number of impressions it takes for a person to reach the purchase tipping point

• What X price point you need to set to achieve Y ROAS under non-cyclical conditions

• Accurate comparison of how messages perform (and compel to purchase) with various audiences

• How other channels might be brought in to assist in a conversion – and to increase the long term value of the customer by upsell and repeat purchase

• Which customers are most likely to purchase again (and again) and why

While any business owner would jump at the above information, few actually get there. Far too many are dissuaded from the testing it takes to uncover this valuable information by one difficult truth: These kinds of objectives are often at odds with increasing short-term ROAS.

Unlocking seven or eight figures of revenue might mean taking a hit on the first few months of ad spend. Brace yourself – it may be even more with big ticket items or those with a long purchase path. That's not a bad thing if you're laying the foundations for long-term success!

🏫 Want to get schooled? Check out our free training resources. →

Your customers move between five or more channels before making a purchase. If those channels feel disconnected, you lose them. An omnichannel marketing strategy eliminates the gaps between touchpoints so every interaction builds toward conversion, not confusion.

For ecommerce brands scaling past seven figures, omnichannel is no longer a competitive advantage. It is the baseline expectation. The question is not whether to pursue it, but how to execute it without burning budget on channel sprawl.

Why Multichannel Ecommerce Falls Short

Most ecommerce brands already operate across multiple channels. They run paid social, send email campaigns, maintain an organic search presence, and maybe show up on a marketplace or two. That is multichannel. But multichannel alone creates a fragmented experience.

Multichannel means being present on multiple platforms. Omnichannel means those platforms talk to each other. The distinction matters because customers do not think in channels. They think in experiences. A shopper who clicks a Facebook ad, browses on mobile, and completes a purchase on desktop expects the brand to recognize them at every step.

When channels operate in silos, you see these problems:

• Inconsistent messaging across paid, organic, and email
• Redundant retargeting that wastes ad spend on already-converted users
• Broken attribution that makes it impossible to know what drove the sale
• Customer friction from disjointed experiences between platforms

Avoiding common mistakes around channel consistency is step one. Building a connected system is step two.

The Core Components of an Omnichannel Marketing Strategy

A working omnichannel marketing strategy requires four structural elements. Miss any one of them and you end up with expensive multichannel instead of coordinated omnichannel commerce.

1. Unified Customer Data

Every channel generates data. The problem is that most brands store it in separate systems. Your email platform knows purchase history. Your ad platform knows click behavior. Your site analytics know browsing patterns. None of them share the full picture.

A customer data platform (CDP) or a well-configured CRM solves this. Tools like Segment or Klaviyo can unify identity resolution across devices and channels, giving you a single customer view that powers every marketing decision.

What unified data enables:

• Suppressing purchasers from acquisition campaigns in real time
• Triggering email sequences based on on-site behavior
• Personalizing ad creative based on purchase stage
• Measuring true cross-channel attribution

2. Consistent Brand Experience

Omnichannel does not mean identical content on every platform. It means a consistent brand story adapted to each channel's native format. Your Instagram creative should feel like it belongs to the same brand as your email campaigns and your product pages.

This requires:

• Centralized brand guidelines accessible to every team and agency
• Shared creative assets that maintain visual consistency
• Aligned messaging frameworks across acquisition and retention

3. Channel Orchestration

Orchestration is the difference between sending a customer five disconnected messages and guiding them through a coordinated journey. It means your paid media, email, SMS, and on-site experience work together rather than competing for the same conversion.

Effective orchestration looks like this: StagePaid MediaEmail/SMSOn-SiteAwarenessProspecting ads with social proofWelcome sequence after lead captureBlog content with category CTAsConsiderationRetargeting with product-specific creativeBrowse abandonment flowsPersonalized recommendationsPurchaseDynamic product adsCart abandonment seriesUrgency messaging and reviewsRetentionLookalike suppression, loyalty offersPost-purchase and replenishment flowsAccount dashboard and reorder prompts

Choosing the right mix of channels matters enormously. Understanding how different growth marketing channels impact your business helps you prioritize where to invest before you orchestrate.

4. Measurement That Connects the Dots

Single-channel attribution is a relic. If you only credit the last click, you will systematically undervalue the channels that introduce customers to your brand and overvalue the ones that close them.

Modern omnichannel measurement requires:

• Multi-touch attribution models (data-driven or position-based)
• Incrementality testing to isolate true channel impact
• Blended ROAS targets that evaluate the full media mix
• Cohort analysis to track customer lifetime value across acquisition sources

Tools like Triple Whale and Northbeam specialize in cross-channel attribution for ecommerce brands.

Building Your Omnichannel Platform Stack

You do not need a single platform that does everything. You need a stack where data flows freely between tools. Here is a practical framework for assembling your omnichannel platform:

Data Layer: CDP or CRM that serves as the single source of truth. This is the hub that connects everything else.

Acquisition Layer: Paid social (Meta, TikTok), paid search (Google, Bing), and programmatic display. These channels should share audience and conversion data with your data layer.

Retention Layer: Email and SMS platforms with behavioral triggers. These should fire based on real-time customer actions, not static schedules.

Commerce Layer: Your ecommerce platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, or custom) feeding product, inventory, and order data back to the data layer.

Analytics Layer: Cross-channel attribution and reporting that pulls from all of the above.

The key criterion for every tool in the stack: does it integrate cleanly with the rest? A best-in-class tool that creates a data silo is worse than a good tool that plays well with others.

Omnichannel Marketing Mistakes That Stall Growth

Even brands with the right intent get tripped up by execution errors. Here are the most common:

Expanding channels before mastering existing ones. Adding TikTok Shop because it is trending, while your email flows are still template-based and your paid social creative has not been refreshed in months, is a recipe for diluted effort. Master two or three channels before adding more.

Treating personalization as a feature, not a strategy. Dropping a first name into a subject line is not personalization. True personalization means adjusting the offer, the timing, and the channel based on where a customer sits in their journey. When done right, this keeps your sales funnel consistent across every touchpoint.

Ignoring post-purchase as a channel. The transaction is not the end of the customer relationship. Post-purchase email, SMS, and on-site experiences drive repeat purchase rate and lifetime value. Brands that treat omnichannel as an acquisition-only strategy leave significant revenue on the table.

Over-indexing on technology, under-indexing on process. Buying a CDP does not make you omnichannel. Having a clear process for how data flows, who owns each channel, and how campaigns are coordinated across teams is what makes it work.

What This Means for Your Brand

Omnichannel marketing is not a project with a finish line. It is an operating model. The brands that win are not the ones with the most channels. They are the ones where every channel reinforces the same customer journey.

If you are running paid, email, and organic as separate workstreams with separate teams and separate dashboards, start here:

1. Audit your current data flow. Map where customer data lives and identify the gaps between systems.
2. Pick your highest-leverage integration. For most ecommerce brands, connecting your ad platforms to your email/SMS platform delivers the fastest ROI.
3. Establish shared KPIs. Move your teams from channel-specific metrics to blended targets like customer acquisition cost and lifetime value.
4. Test orchestration on one journey. Start with cart abandonment or post-purchase. Get one cross-channel flow working well before scaling to the full funnel.

The shift from multichannel to omnichannel is not about doing more. It is about making what you already do work together. The brands that figure this out first will compound their advantage over the ones still running disconnected campaigns across disconnected platforms.

Omnichannel commerce is where ecommerce is heading. The only variable is how quickly your brand gets there.