The 10 best ecommerce apps to grow your online store
It's no wonder ecommerce appeals to so many entrepreneurs. What entrepreneurial mind wouldn't be tempted by a borderless marketplace with seemingly limitless growth potential?
But that doesn't mean running an ecommerce store is easy.
From inventory management and customer engagement to logistics and marketing, ecommerce entrepreneurs face many challenges that can be overwhelming without the right tools and strategies.
Thankfully, Shopify exists. And there are many other ecom platforms that provide solutions for sellers scaling their businesses.
But as buyers become increasingly mobile, ecom sellers must lean into their mobile experience.
Various versatile and feature-rich apps and tools offer solutions to mitigate ecommerce store owners' obstacles, empowering them to navigate the competitive landscape and achieve their business goals.
So what are the best ecommerce apps? What integrations and features exist to bring your ecom store to the next level? Below, we've rounded up 10 of them — plus some of today's top ecommerce user experience platforms.
4 ecommerce platforms to get you started
Of course, you need a platform to build and host your ecommerce website before you can take advantage of the best applications and third-party integrations.
Some brands create branded apps to meet their business needs, but that isn't necessary with the following feature-rich platforms that help you save time.
1. Shopify
Shopify is an all-in-one ecommerce platform. It may be the best ecommerce platform with mobile app capabilities, allowing store owners to capture customers anywhere.
Shopify offers a user-friendly and intuitive interface, making it accessible to users with varying technical expertise and a wide range of professionally designed templates and customizable themes, allowing sellers to create visually appealing and unique online stores.
However, Shopify shines in its features. It offers robust features and tools, including secure payment gateways, inventory management, order fulfillment, and marketing integrations, empowering sellers to run their businesses and scale them efficiently over time.
To help sellers power up their websites, the platform offers a comprehensive app store, where you can find integrations and plugins (including for almost all of the apps featured in this article) to add even more capabilities to their Shopify stores, for example, SEO-optimized blogs with the Bloggle app. There's a reason Shopify has gained immense popularity among ecommerce sellers — it indeed does it all. See how to try Shopify for free.
2. Squarespace
Squarespace is another popular commerce platform for online sellers who want an all-in-one website building and hosting platform. It stands out for its sleek and modern design templates that allow businesses to easily create visually stunning online stores, even for users without advanced design skills. Squarespace also offers a user-friendly interface, making it accessible to many users.
Like Shopify, Squarespace offers robust ecommerce features, including secure payment processing, inventory management, and order fulfillment tools.
With reliable hosting, mobile responsiveness, and built-in SEO capabilities, Squarespace enables ecom sellers to create professional and visually appealing online stores optimized for search engines, contributing to their popularity among businesses seeking a seamless and aesthetically pleasing ecommerce solution.
3. Square Online
Square Online is a popular choice for ecommerce sellers seeking a versatile and user-friendly platform to build and manage their online stores.
What sets Square Online apart is its seamless integration with Square's payment processing system, providing customers with a streamlined and secure checkout experience. The platform offers a range of customizable templates, allowing store owners to create visually appealing sites that align with their brand. And Square Online provides necessary features like inventory management, order fulfillment, and marketing tools to support the growth and success of ecommerce businesses.
With its intuitive interface, robust functionality, and reliable payment processing, Square Online has gained popularity among ecommerce sellers looking for a comprehensive and user-friendly solution to establish and grow their online presence.
4. Amazon
And finally, there's Amazon. Amazon is a global ecommerce giant that has revolutionized how people buy and sell products online. It's a popular choice for ecom sellers due to its massive customer base and unparalleled reach.
Selling on Amazon can tap into a vast and active marketplace, gaining exposure to millions of potential customers. Additionally, Amazon provides comprehensive fulfillment services through its FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) program, enabling sellers to store their inventory in Amazon's warehouses and leverage their efficient shipping and customer service infrastructure.
Amazon has a trusted reputation in addition to its infrastructure, making it a top choice for ecommerce sellers seeking wide-scale visibility, convenience, and access to a massive customer base.
Ecommerce apps to take inspiration from
Whether through ecommerce AI chatbot conversations, personalization, or top-notch UI, here are some ecommerce apps that have gotten their mobile shopping and user experience right.
1. Sephora
Sephora is a cosmetics retailer with brick-and-mortar locations and a best-in-class ecommerce store. The Sephora website combines innovative features and a seamless user experience.
Key features:
Interactive product visualization. Sephora provides an immersive product experience through interactive features like 360-degree product views, virtual try-on tools, and swatch comparisons, enabling customers to make informed purchasing decisions and enhancing their online shopping experience.
Personalized shopping recommendations. Sephora leverages customer data and browsing history to offer personalized product recommendations, tailored content, and curated beauty guides. This ensures customers feel understood and catered to, which enhances engagement and encourages repeat visits.
Vibrant, engaged community. Sephora fosters a vibrant community by integrating user-generated content, including customer reviews, ratings, and beauty tips, which builds trust, fosters authenticity, and creates a sense of belonging among customers.
Why we love it: Sephora creates an immersive and personalized shopping experience that drives customer engagement, loyalty, and sales.
2. Warby Parker
Warby Parker revolutionized online shopping for prescription glasses with virtual and at-home try-ons, a user-friendly innovation that changed the entire customer experience in the eyewear industry. Users are at the center of everything on Warby Parker's website.
Key features:
Virtual try-ons. Warby Parker allows customers to virtually try on eyeglasses or sunglasses using their device's camera, providing an interactive and convenient way to visualize how the products will look on them before making a purchase.
At-home try-ons. Warby Parker's home try-on program allows customers to select up to five frames and have them shipped to their homes for free. It lets them try the frames in person before deciding on a purchase, fostering a risk-free and customer-centric buying experience.
Social impact. Warby Parker's commitment to social impact is prominently displayed on its website, showcasing its Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program, through which they donate a pair of glasses to someone in need for every pair purchased. This resonates with socially conscious customers.
Why we love it: Warby Parker's website is designed from top to bottom to foster brand loyalty — and it works.
3. Nike
Nike has been a brick-and-mortar retailer for as long as we can remember. But this long-standing brand has kept pace with the rise of ecommerce, offering an online experience that has always rivaled in-store.
Key features:
Product customization. Nike offers a robust product customization feature, allowing customers to personalize their footwear, apparel, and accessories through color choices, materials, and design options. This creates a unique and personalized product that reflects individual styles.
Immersive visual storytelling. The Nike website utilizes immersive visuals, high-quality photography, and engaging storytelling to convey the brand's essence and inspire customers. Through videos, interactive elements, and compelling narratives, Nike emotionally connects with its audience, making the shopping experience more than just a transaction.
Why we love it: Nike's website allows customers to create unique products, fostering an emotional connection with the brand and building a loyal customer following.
4. Walmart
Walmart has embraced mobile device ecommerce with a responsive website and feature-packed app, making it easy for its customers to shop in-store, at home, and on the go.
Key features:
Extensive product selection. Walmart offers an unparalleled range of products across various categories, including electronics, household goods, groceries, and more, providing customers with a one-stop shopping destination that meets a wide range of needs and preferences.
In-store pickup and same-day delivery. Walmart's website integrates convenient fulfillment options, including in-store pickup and same-day delivery services, allowing customers to choose the most suitable and time-efficient method to receive their orders, combining the convenience of online shopping with the immediacy of brick-and-mortar stores.
Why we love it: Walmart's vast product selection, commitment to competitive pricing and savings, and flexible fulfillment options cater to a diverse customer base and blur the lines between ecom and brick-and-mortar shopping.
Communicate seamlessly with buyers.
10 best ecommerce mobile apps to grow your business
There are many ecommerce apps — shipping and logistics, customer service, marketing, inventory management, analytics and reporting, payment gateways, and more.
But if your goal is to grow your ecommerce business, the ten apps below are great places to start. Each offers unique solutions that help solve the most common challenges online sellers face.
1. Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an ecommerce marketing platform that enables businesses to build and nurture customer relationships through personalized and targeted email and SMS marketing campaigns. It integrates with the most popular ecommerce platforms, providing a seamless experience for store owners.
Key features:
Segmentation and personalization. Klaviyo allows users to segment their customer base using criteria like purchase history, browsing behavior, demographics, etc. This enables ecommerce sellers to create highly targeted and personalized email and SMS marketing campaigns tailored to specific customer segments.
Automation and flows. With Klaviyo, sellers can create automated workflows and customer journeys based on triggers and events. They can set up welcome series, abandoned cart recovery emails, post-purchase follow-ups, and other automated sequences that engage customers at different stages of their buying journey.
Analytics and insights. Klaviyo provides comprehensive analytics and reporting tools to measure the performance of email and SMS campaigns. Users can track metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, revenue generated, and customer lifetime value. These insights help sellers optimize their marketing strategies and make data-driven decisions.
Why we love it: Klaviyo is a must-have for ecommerce sellers due to its powerful features and capabilities. It enables businesses to leverage targeted marketing campaigns, automation, and personalized messaging to engage customers and drive conversions. With its robust analytics, sellers can gain valuable insights to optimize their marketing efforts and maximize revenue potential, making Klaviyo an indispensable tool for ecommerce success.
2. Popupsmart
Popupsmart is a no-code popup builder designed for ecommerce stores looking to increase sales and conversions. It allows store owners to create customized, targeted popups and automated emails that capture attention and drive action. Whether looking to collect email addresses, reduce cart abandonment, or promote special offers, Popupsmart offers many features to help merchants achieve their goals.
Key Features:
Advanced segmentation. Popupsmart’s advanced segmentation options ensure popup campaigns are shown to the right people at the right time. Whether based on visitor behavior, location, or other criteria, this targeted approach helps increase the effectiveness of the campaign’s messages.
Email automation for Shopify. Popupsmart offers specialized email automation features for Shopify store owners. You can capture leads through popups and automatically engage those leads with personalized welcome emails, checkout abandonment emails, and thank you emails.
Template library. Popupsmart offers over 350 templates catering to various sectors and business goals. These ready-to-convert popups can even be gamified or animated, making the user experience more engaging and interactive.
Why we love it: Popupsmart makes creating and managing popups easy without knowing how to code. Plus, for Shopify users, it offers extra features like audience targeting and email automation.
3. Gorgias
Gorgias is a customer support and helpdesk app explicitly designed for ecommerce businesses. It consolidates customer communication channels into one platform, allowing sellers to provide efficient and personalized support across various channels, including email, live chat, social media, and more.
Key features:
Unified customer communication. Gorgias brings together customer inquiries from different channels into a single dashboard. This centralized view enables ecommerce sellers to manage and respond to customer queries seamlessly, improving response times and ensuring consistent support across all communication channels.
Automated responses and macros. Gorgias can create computerized responses, macros, and predefined templates for frequently asked questions or common customer issues. This feature saves time and effort by allowing sellers to quickly provide standardized responses, enhancing efficiency in handling customer inquiries.
Integration with popular apps for ecommerce. Gorgias integrates with popular ecommerce platforms, such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and more. These integrations enable sellers to access customer information, order details, and other vital data directly within the Gorgias app, providing crucial context for customer support interactions.
Why we love it: Gorgias streamlines and optimizes customer support operations. Sellers can provide prompt and consistent support by consolidating customer inquiries from various channels, improving customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty. Then, the automation features and integration with ecommerce platforms further enhance productivity and enable sellers to deliver efficient and personalized customer service experiences.
4. Shippo
Shippo is a shipping and logistics app that simplifies the shipping process for ecommerce sellers. It integrates with multiple shipping carriers, providing businesses a unified platform to manage and streamline their shipping operations.
Shippo's integrations allow sellers to access competitive shipping rates and choose the best options. With automation features and bulk shipping capabilities, sellers can save valuable time and resources while making data-driven decisions based on the robust analytics Shippo provides. With its comprehensive functionality, Shippo empowers ecommerce sellers to streamline their logistics, reduce costs, and provide a seamless shipping experience for their customers.
Key features:
Multi-carrier integration. Shippo integrates with many shipping carriers, including USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, and more. This integration allows sellers to compare shipping rates, print shipping labels, and track packages from different carriers within a single interface, eliminating the need for multiple carrier accounts and simplifying the shipping process.
Automation and bulk shipping. Shippo enables sellers to automate shipping tasks, such as label generation, order fulfillment, and tracking notifications. The app also supports bulk shipping, allowing businesses to process and ship multiple orders simultaneously, saving time and effort.
Shipping analytics and insights. Shippo provides robust analytics and reporting tools to help sellers gain insights into their shipping performance. Users can analyze shipping costs, delivery times, carrier performance, and other key metrics, enabling them to optimize their shipping strategies, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction.
Why we love it: Shippo's customer service is next-level. It's known for being responsive and helpful, aiming to provide timely assistance and solutions to users' inquiries. They strive to ensure a positive user experience and offer guidance on using the app's features, troubleshooting shipping-related issues, and addressing any concerns or challenges that may arise.
5. Rebuy
Data shows that 28.2 percent of online shoppers — nearly one in three — are repeat customers. Rebuy helps ecommerce sellers take advantage of that segment by allowing customers to purchase items they've already bought with just a few clicks.
More than that, Rebuy offers ecommerce sellers a robust suite of reporting and analytics tools to get better insight into their customers' behavior. Then, while Rebuy encourages customers to return time and time, it also gives sellers the power to make customized upsell recommendations, increasing average order and customer values.
Key features:
Intelligent merchandising. Rebuy uses real-time insights, conversion data, and a self-training AI model to help ecommerce sellers offer the most personalized shopping experiences possible. In an age where every online shopper wants to feel one-of-a-kind, these tools are game changers.
Smart Cart. Rebuy's Smart Cart turns your customers' shopping carts into branded experiences with accelerated checkout, personalized product recommendations, AI-driven upsells, discounts and gifts, and more to decrease cart abandonment rates.
Post-purchase tools. Rebuy knows that buyer intent peaks right after checkout — not before. So they've designed a suite of tools, including automated coupons and recommended upsells, to capture return customers just seconds after making their first purchase.
Why we love it: Forrester reports that 77 percent of consumers have chosen, recommended, or paid more for a brand that provides them with a personalized experience. Rebuy is one of the best personalization apps in an age where personalized online shopping experiences are no longer above and beyond what every shopper expects from ecommerce brands.
6. Returnly
With the average ecommerce return rate hovering between 20-30 percent, online sellers need to make the return process as smooth, seamless, and painless as possible for their customers. Enter Returnly, an app that specializes in making returns as hassle-free as possible. It provides a seamless and customer-friendly experience for managing product returns and exchanges, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Key features:
Instant store credit. Returnly offers a feature that allows customers to initiate returns and receive instant store credit even before returning the product. This provides a hassle-free experience for customers, as they can use the credit to make new purchases immediately, boosting customer satisfaction and encouraging repeat business.
Automated returns management. Returnly automates the return process by generating return labels, tracking shipments, and updating customers throughout the journey. This eliminates manual tasks for sellers, reduces operational overhead, and enhances efficiency in managing returns and exchanges.
Customizable return policies. With Returnly, ecommerce sellers can customize their return policies according to their business needs. This includes setting return timeframes, specifying return eligibility criteria, and defining refund or exchange options. The flexibility in tailoring return policies helps sellers balance customer satisfaction and revenue.
Why we love it: Returnly helps businesses retain customers and drive repeat purchases. The automation of returns management reduces operational complexities, saves time and resources, and ensures consistent and efficient handling of returns. Overall, Returnly empowers ecommerce sellers to create a positive post-purchase experience for customers, fostering trust and loyalty in their brand.
7. Loox
Loox is an app designed to help ecommerce sellers generate and display customer reviews and user-generated content on their online stores. It uses social proof to enhance credibility, build trust, and increase business conversions.
Key features:
Automated review collection. Loox streamlines the process of collecting customer reviews by sending automated requests to customers after their purchase. This feature saves sellers time and effort while ensuring a steady stream of authentic and valuable reviews from satisfied customers.
Visual review display. Loox emphasizes visual content by enabling sellers to showcase customer reviews alongside product photos and ratings. This visually appealing presentation of social proof enhances the overall user experience and helps potential customers make informed purchasing decisions.
Customization and integration. Loox offers customization options that allow sellers to match the app's review display with their store's branding and design. Sellers can also integrate Loox with their preferred ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, seamlessly incorporating customer reviews into their online store.
Why we love it: Loox leverages the power of customer reviews and social proof to drive sales and build trust with potential customers. This leads to increased conversions and a more positive shopping experience that boosts customer loyalty and drives long-term success.
8. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a comprehensive marketing platform offering various tools to help businesses automate and optimize their email marketing campaigns. It enables ecommerce sellers to engage with their audience, build customer relationships, and drive sales through targeted email marketing strategies.
Key features:
Email marketing automation. Mailchimp provides robust automation features that allow sellers to create personalized and automated email campaigns based on customer behavior and triggers. This includes welcome emails, abandoned cart reminders, post-purchase follow-ups, and targeted promotions. Automation saves time and ensures timely and relevant communication with customers.
Audience segmentation and personalization. Mailchimp allows sellers to segment their audience based on various criteria — purchase history, preferences, demographics, and more. This segmentation enables personalized and targeted email campaigns, improving customer engagement and increasing the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Reporting and analytics. One of the best things about Mailchimp is its in-depth reporting and analytics tools to track the performance of email campaigns. Users can monitor key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, conversion rates, and revenue generated. These insights help sellers measure their campaigns' success, identify improvement areas, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their email marketing strategies.
Why we love it: Mailchimp is a must-have for ecommerce sellers due to its comprehensive email marketing capabilities, automation and optimization features, and analytics tools. It empowers sellers to communicate effectively with their audience, deliver personalized messages, and drive sales.
9. Social Snowball
Affiliate marketing is a huge revenue driver for many ecommerce businesses. But many software solutions that support affiliate marketing are clunky, difficult to learn and navigate, and have unnecessary features.
That's where Social Snowball comes in. It's purpose-built for small businesses to help them level up their affiliate marketing by automating as much of the process as possible. The result is affiliate marketing that runs itself, so your store can reap the rewards while you focus on other aspects of running your online business.
Key features:
Easy payouts for affiliates. Social Snowball makes it fast and painless to reward affiliates for their referrals. Sellers only need two clicks to pay them via cash, gift cards, or other incentives.
Referral programs that work. Get $10 for referring a friend? Those programs are a thing of the past. Social Snowball offers pre-built referral programs with rewards people want — or you can create your own program and tier structure and efficiently administrate it using Social Snowball's targeting criteria.
Affiliate program data and metrics. Social Snowball automatically tracks attribution and ROI for your influencer and creator partnerships so you can make data-driven business decisions and quickly see what works for your online store (and what doesn't).
Why we love it: All too often, affiliate marketing is either a time-intensive manual process or an afterthought — even though word-of-mouth has the highest ROI of any marketing channel. Social Snowball removes many of the manual tasks from your plate, running your affiliate programs for you so you can reap the rewards without spending time and effort.
10. Moz
Moz is an app that provides SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tools and resources to help ecommerce sellers improve their online visibility, drive organic traffic, and enhance their overall search engine rankings.
Key features:
Keyword research and analysis. Moz offers robust keyword research and analysis tools to help sellers identify relevant keywords and phrases with high search volume and low competition. This feature enables sellers to optimize their website content and product descriptions, increasing their chances of ranking higher in search engine results.
Site audits and optimization. Moz allows sellers to perform comprehensive site audits to identify technical SEO issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, and page speed problems. Sellers can then optimize their website based on Moz's recommendations, ensuring a well-structured and search engine-friendly site.
Link building and competitor analysis. Moz provides tools to analyze competitors' backlink profiles and identify link-building opportunities. By understanding the linking strategies of successful competitors, sellers can develop their own link-building strategies to improve their website's authority and visibility in search engine results.
Why we love it: Moz equips ecommerce sellers with the necessary SEO tools and insights to increase their online visibility and drive organic traffic — a great source of new customers.
Adding conversations into your ecommerce app
You may have noticed a common theme within these apps: Personalization.
In an age when customers expect hyper-personalization, integrating conversation features into your ecommerce app is crucial. It enables personalized interactions, where customers can ask specific questions and receive tailored responses.
That's why, no matter what ecommerce platform and tools you use, you need Sendbird.
Sendbird is a powerful chat and messaging platform that integrates conversation features into your ecommerce app. By incorporating Sendbird, you can enable real-time communication between customers, sellers, and support teams, enhancing the overall shopping experience and meeting the growing demand for hyper-personalization in online shopping.
With Sendbird, customers can chat or send messages directly through your ecommerce app. This allows them to ask questions, seek assistance, or receive personalized recommendations in real-time, mimicking the in-store experience where customers can interact with sales associates. This level of conversation empowers customers to make more informed purchasing decisions and increases engagement and satisfaction.
By offering a direct communication channel, you can address customer concerns, provide real-time support, and offer personalized recommendations based on their preferences and browsing history. This customized engagement builds trust, enhances customer loyalty, and increases sales and customer satisfaction. But more than that, it's what ecommerce brands need to offer to stay competitive in the age of conversational commerce.
By leveraging Sendbird's ecommerce AI chatbot, customer support software, and omnichannel business messaging capabilities, you can create a more interactive and personalized shopping experience that meets the expectations of modern customers.
