First things first, one of the biggest benefits of being a BigCommerce store means you get to use fewer apps than you would on other platforms. This is because many of the apps you’d use elsewhere are simply built into the platform (saving you precious money and time).
Psychology sells –– especially online –– and Fomo helps you tap into one psychological trigger most of us can’t ignore: social proof and limited quantity.
Every time someone buys an item on your store, a pop-up alerts browsers on your site to that item’s purchase.
Why does this matter? Because we all want what others have (and know nothing good lasts forever).
Sounds gimmicky right? It isn’t.
Check out what BigCommerce customers are saying about the app:
“This is a great app! It gives energy to the site and offers customers quick insight into what trends may be happening at the time. Instant gratification.” – Taylor Street Favors
“Fomo keeps my customers aware of what’s selling through every step of the funnel!” – My Fairytale Books
2. ShipperHQ – Transparent shipping prices across the globe
Shipping isn’t the sexiest aspect of selling online, but it is where you lose a lot of potential customers. BigCommerce already has an abandoned cart feature built-in, but the company also partners closely with ShipperHQ – a rules-based shipping rate engine for everything from small parcels to freight.
It uses IP addresses to calculate shipping costs globally –– so your end customer isn’t surprised by additional fees on delivery. Plus, it follows the rules you put in place so that no customer is ever over-charged and you aren’t ever paying any additional fees.
“Shipper HQ really helps us out by allowing us to set up those various costs, surcharges, etc. and show them to the customer automatically on each product. It’s an app that helps us be super transparent about our shipping costs –– which is extremely important to our business.” – Vinyl Express
“We just started using ShipperHQ at the beginning of this month, and it has proven to be awesome. I have a very diverse membership nationally, and ShipperHQ allows me to dial in rates and service levels based on product prices, member locations, and more. The support I received was top notch. The team at ShipperHQ helped me through setup and continue to help me out when I have questions via the chat option. It’s a great app for BigCommerce users. I recommend it over anything else out there.” – National Ski Patrol
“ShipperHQ allows us to ship using parcel carriers and LTL carriers; multiple freight pricing schemes – fixed, free, and live quotes for each carrier; multiple ship from origins; domestic and international shipping; ability to add special handling fees for oversized products; customer group specific shipping rules; product group specific shipping rules, etc. ShipperHQ has been the solution we desperately needed. So far I have not been able to invent a shipping scenario that ShipperHQ has not been able to help us with.” – Matheson Gas
Many online stores worry constantly about how much their customers are willing to pay –- and if a competitor is beating them out.
Not so, with PriceWaiter.
PriceWaiter allows you to show a “Name Your Price” button on product pages that prompts users to say what they want to pay.
But don’t worry –– it won’t let them buy at too low a price.
You get to set up the rules on the backend, including bundling items if needing to help push customers toward a purchase. After all, if they are clicking this button, it’s likely price is the only thing stopping them from buying.
Give them more value and you have yourself a new customer. This is the ultimate in upsell.
“We also use PriceWaiter on our product pages –– which lets the buyer name a price. The buyer goes to our site and says, “Hey, I want to buy 50 of these at $2 a piece.” On the backend, we have loaded up all of our pricing rules into the PriceWaiter system. That app knows if we are willing to sell X items for Y dollars –– as long as the order value is above Z. PriceWaiter auto-calculates all of that on the fly for the B2B buyer so they don’t have to wait to hear back from us. They just get a message that says we’ve accepted their offer, or if the price is too low, we offer them a different deal.” – Atlanta Light Bulbs
“I like this app! It has certainly got customers more engaged and has converted a quite a few sales for our site! Thumbs up.” – Cue World
The #1 most valuable asset any branded site has is its email list. These are folks you can market to essentially for free. You can bring them back to your site. You can run A/B tests. You can engage with them and build a brand they love.
But first, you need an email capture system –– and JustUno is just that. With JustUno, you can capture email addresses via pop-ups, including welcome mats, discount code pop-ups and exit intent pop-ups.
The more emails you have, the more you can drive net new sales and increase AOV –– building lifetime loyalty for the long-run.
“I have been a Justuno user for a few years. You install it and it closes sales for you while you sleep. Conversion rates go up. It has generated a ton of money for our site. If I was building a new site, this would be the first app installed and I have used a bunch of apps. If you have to pick just one, pick JustUno.” – Pedors.com
“Just Uno is the #1 app you need if you want to convert your visitors. And a super amazing bonus is that their customer support is fabulous. I try to DIY as much as I can but sometimes I just need to have someone hold my hand or even do the work straight up for me with the best practices installed and ready to use. Jenna, my account manager, is AMAZING! You’d be crazy not to have this installed on your store.” – Dang Good Yarn
Smile.io is the rebranded Sweet Tooth with all the functionality brands and their customers have long loved.
You can quickly set up and run your own loyalty program. When you reward your customers they are much more likely to return and make a repeat purchase. Brands using Smile.io are seeing a 15% increase year-over-year in revenue and a 20% increase in repeat purchases.
“I looked around for the best reward program solution, and this is the best one hands down! Free to start, and integrates perfectly into our BigCommerce Store!” – Zavko
“I LOVE this app! It allows my customers to feel special and appreciated. This is a feature that I couldn’t create on my old website host. This will be a win-win for your business!” – The Snob Love Bar
“Our customers really love coupons and giving rewards points allows us to compete with the big guys. Thanks for the app, it’s a great addition to our site.” – LuvPetSupplies.com
You might think by now that I’m just harping on customer lifetime value, but building that kind of brand loyalty and love is hard –– and what creates a legacy brand.
Do you want a hobby, or do you want a business?
I’ll assume you chose option two –– and in that case, AfterShip is for you!
It allows customers to check up on their order status as well as sends email and SMS delivery updates to them.
No having to deal with couriers or sending customers to sites that aren’t yours. Plus, you keep them updated –– and they return the love.
“Great features and most of all our customers love us for it. AfterShip helps your brand look more professional and tracking updates are very powerful customer retention tool. Thank you AfterShip for this great app!” – Beauty Drama
“AfterShip is the easiest way for your eCommerce business to be professional to your customers. Telling them well in advance of their shipments not only give your customers a peace of mind but also reduces the amount of work to reply to customers’ individual enquiries.” – Cyclops Optics
“Of all of the add-ons we’ve tried to improve the customer experience this has been the best for the money. My customers simply LOVE the real-time updates on the status of their shipments.” – Rock Bottom Vapes
Anything you could ever use or need a recurring billing model for, PayWhirl has built right in. Whether you are launching a subscription box to drive recurring revenue, or are a wholesaler allowing your customers to set up regular orders, this app is for you.
It’s easy to create and manage subscriptions, payment plans and automatic invoicing on BigCommerce. Plus, customers can login and manage their own information, see their billing history and make changes to their account, including adding or removing remove payment plans, update cards on file, store multiple addresses & profiles, see upcoming payments and more.
“We created a subscription-based product 2 months ago and were keeping track of customers manually. It quickly turned into a headache! We stumbled across PayWhirl in the app marketplace and it’s making a big difference. Some of our favorite features: automatically generated orders in BigCommerce and the option to process all invoices on the same day. When we needed some help configuring our account, customer service was fantastic. Thanks PayWhirl!” – Krazy Kreations Studio
“Our site is built on a subscription model. So, when we found out late last year that the recurring billing platform we were using was no longer supporting BigCommerce, we panicked. Fortunately, we stumbled on PayWhirl via the BigCommerce marketplace. We were very pleased to see that these guys have figured out how to do this the right way with BigCommerce. Plans are managed in PayWhirl, not hacked up using products in the BigCommerce catalog like other solutions. Getting all of our plans set up took some time but the tooling is great. Even better – when we ran into issues, the PayWhirl support team was incredibly responsive. We’re now live with PayWhirl and it has certainly made our lives easier!” – Junior.Club
Talk to customers like the important people they are. Reamaze helps you to track customer information so you have data on hand about how any individual customer has interacted with your brand before.
The app brings in conversations from email, Facebook, Instagram and more. It also syncs with any support content you may have, to pull information for customers immediately.
Again, talk to customers like you know them. With Reamaze, you do.
“I would personally like to vouch for the way Reamaze has changed our company. Rather than having separate or one support account in Gmail, we have switched to Reamaze. All 5 of our support reps can manage support emails seamlessly and assign them to a person when appropriate. That person is notified when they are assigned which makes our response time unmatched. With each support email is a link to the customer’s most recent order that is easily opened in a new window, and any notes we’ve put in the customer’s account to be aware of are visible. What a fantastic product, it is well worth every penny! We are the largest insect farm in the world, if you’ve ever bought a cricket or worm for pet food or fishing, you’ve probably bought ours. We are a very large company, and you can imagine the volume of support emails when shipping live insects. Reamaze functions for us without skipping a beat. We highly recommend integrating this product if you want to gain an advantage in your market.” – Rainbow Meal Worms
“It’s really hard to find an app that works well and has great customer service. We have used this app every day for the last 6 months and it has always worked great. If we need anything the Reamaze team answers fast.” – Lash Stuff
Are you just getting started and don’t know what to sell? Or, are you wanting to expand your catalog without the risk of bringing product into your warehouse or 3PL?
Then Inventory Source can help!
Quickly and easily add products for dropshipping whether you are just getting started in ecommerce or want to test out new products.
Inventory source automatically loads products & images from the suppliers directly to your BigCommerce store.
Customize categories and price with simple controls. Filter SKUs, brands, categories, price ranges, low-stock quantities, products without images, and many other settings.
Even better, other BigCommerce customers love the app:
“Inventory Source is a God send for us! We no longer have to constantly monitor our online store, knowing that they have our back. Everything is totally automated without a hitch. Before Inventory Source, we tried other companies and were very disappointed with their lack of expertise and knowledge of what it takes to run a successful inventory automation system. We have now been with IS for almost 4 months and couldn’t be happier. Now that we have things running smoothly with our online store, we are now ready to have them automate our Amazon Store. Yeah!! Can’t wait! Thank you Inventory Source!” – Hunter’s Emporium
“If you want to save zillions of hours uploading products to your store and updating which are out of stock and which items are available, then Inventory Source app is for you. It will save you not only time, but a LOT of headaches. Their team is really helpful and will walk through all the details. Their interface is super easy to use and actually fun because you will see your store is full of products in no time.” – H Bees.com
Also note that Modalyst, an app new to the BigCommerce marketplace, is another great option.
10. Omnisend – Go further than just email marketing
Everyone hates being sold to. Think about the last time you actually clicked on an ad.
However, you don’t mind being sold to if it’s something you need. Omnisend helps you set up marketing automation workflows that will send your customer the most relevant message, no matter where they are in their customer journey.
Meaning, a customer who’s just purchased something from your store will receive a personalized message that’s completely different from a customer who has just discovered your brand.
And that’s just one aspect from this feature-rich platform. Check out what other BigCommerce customers have to say about Omnisend in BigCommerce App Marketplace reviews:
“…I LOVE Omnisend! Super easy to do, classy look, simple and yet has everything I need. It does have a similar layout to MailChimp but its a LOT better! Just sent out my first newsletter and the pop-up form is working great. Thanks Omnisend!!”
“…Not only can you segment your audience better but you can also set up better automations to target certain customers or subscribers. I had many questions and there were a couple of things that I needed to contact support about and every single time they have been prompt to answer and very quick to resolve and fix issues and all whilst being pleasant to work with. I would highly recommend omnisend, it’s truly a wonderful app.”
Do you want to create custom goods like t-shirts, mugs and the like –– without the risk of buying all the inventory upfront?
Well, you are in for a treat!
BigCommerce and Printful have a quick integration between the two platforms, where you can create various SKUs and variants for individual products (i.e. poster sizes) and have them sync with your BigCommerce product structure.
Simply, login to Printful. Choose a product and your own custom image, and then watch how Printful turns a single product into multiple SKUs and variants -– adding it to your BigCommerce product catalog easily and accurately.
This entire process takes approximately 5 minutes.
“We’ve been using Printful since January of 2017, and aside from the typical random damages or postal errors, we’ve been humming along like never before. Product selection is good, pricing is workable, and turnaround time is faster than other services.” – Cheesesteak Tees
“Simply an amazing app + service that is provided through Printful, they offer you all the tools you would need to build your products and also the Mockups, they have step by step guides to get you started and the best part is that everything is automated with BigCommerce + Printful so I can have all my order fulfilled without needing to do anything other than to sync them together.” – Real City Shop
Since finding Printful we have dramatically improved our business model, the recycled packaging, organic products, and the fact that we no longer have to carry inventory has really helped us to reduce our environmental footprint even further. Stoked to partner Printful and cannot wait to see what the future holds! – Coastal City Playground
And that’s the list, hope you enjoyed it! What are the BigCommerce apps you can’t live without? Let us know in the comments below!
