The time of the year has come, when people become shopping crazy. And it all starts with Thanksgiving. Walk in malls and stores or simply browse the internet – and you’ll be struck by the Offer lightning in doses of Thanksgiving – Black Friday – Cyber Monday Deals. The Holiday season is the ka-ching season for online and offline business owners. In fact, last year – according to TechRadar – witnessed a record-breaking $3.34 million in online sales on Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) alone. NetElixer forecast projects a 10% revenue increase in 2017 Holiday season.

If you have a Shopify store, you can make the most of Holiday Sales Phenomenon. Shopify has already developed and introduced an amazing sales driven opportunity, via Instagram – Instagram Shopping. We’ll jump onto it later. But first, let dig into the Holiday eCommerce Profit Mine – with this list of 10 Apps for Shopify Stores to use during this Holiday Sales Season!

Inform your users – allow them to add to the wishlist

Be it Black Friday – Cyber Monday (BFCM), Thanksgiving or Christmas – you need to get the word out – leave a solid trail to allow your potential customers follow and reach your online store.

Give them a gap of a week or so, prior to Black Friday to prepare for the Big Deals. Convince your users to add the necessary items in their wishlist. Once the wish list is created, you can keep a tab of the products they want or wish to buy and you can get in touch with offers and deals with respect to the wishlisted products. Another method to inform your users about the offers beforehand is by starting a pre-sale or an Exclusive Access program.

Instagram and shopify partnership to drive sales

Shopify announced integration with Instagram last month – with Shopping on Instagram. This is currently an invitation based program, where a selected few merchants can tag posts along with product catalog. Allowing a forage for customers experiencing the best shopping experience.

Creative banners for holiday sales advertising

Visuals and creative banners attract user’s attention faster than a text. It is the best way to promote your holiday offers. You can use banner ads on your homepage or even be creative with the hero / header image.

You can get a professional designer or simply use the Shopify apps, like – Banner Slider, Welcome Header Bar (these two are FREE), Image Slider and others.

Re-hash SEO

Search engine optimization is crucial, especially, if your goal is to make it easier for customers to find your products, offers and deals.

• Make the product descriptions as descriptive as possible, with the target keywords
• Add keywords in the meta description
• Add LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords or words that are closely related to your niche keywords

10 Apps for Shopify Stores to use during this Holiday Sales Season

Yotpo

Yotpo is an awesome platform that helps in the maximization of marketing efforts. It’s a social review Shopify app that allows verified customers to leave their reviews on the site. With Yotpo, you can do an in-depth analysis of customer ratings and reviews on specific products, access testimonials, photos and more. These factors build trust amongst your buyers and boost your overall brand value.

Smile.Io

Smile.io uses the marketing technique of attracting customers by rewarding them. When a customer makes a purchase and shares his / her positive experience with the product / site – s/he is awarded incentives. The method acts are a motivational tool to generate content via users and provide them with the best shopping experience.

Countdown cart

The human psychology drives us to things / experiences / feelings / emotions that are unattainable. We want something more than ever, when the supply is limited. Hence, the economics of supply-demand phenomenon. eCommerce owners play on this human psyche of urgency-scarcity to earn a massive moolah. The Countdown Cart app is an ideal platform to play with customer psychology and persuade them to take the actions. The app comes with a social proof, stock countdown and countdown timer widget that you can add to the product pages. It boosts conversion rate by coaxing users to shop on your store.

Bulk discounts

Shopify shop owners can create, modify, as well as, delete a massive number of unique discount codes – whenever needed – with the Bulk Discounts app. It is easy to use and install. You can create limited-use, single-use or unlimited-use codes and schedule their expiration date. Along with this, you can also track the used discount codes, add a custom prefix to discounts, calculate the conversion rate and more.

Better coupon box

What’s the best way to maximize your marketing strategy? Reduce bounce rate and increase conversion. And you can do so by simply attracting and encouraging your customers to buy from you only. Better Coupon Box is yet another Shopify app that helps in converting customers and deliver better user experience. Better Coupon Box app when installed displays unique responsive coupon popups for higher conversions. These popups are customizable. You can also create exit-intent popups for reducing cart abandonment rate and bounce rate.

EasyMobile – iOS mobile app

The projected eCommerce retail value in 2018 is 2.48 TRILLION DOLLARS! The number is baffling – at the same time – a ka-ching – moment for eCommerce business owners. Having said that – 80% makes up for mobile phone users. Therefore, it is crucial to tap this chunk of user market to drive sales this Holiday Season. And EasyMobile – iOS Mobile App is the best way to make the most of this lucrative opportunity. The app integrates with Shopify stores without any prerequisite of coding. You can reach customers with a single push notification when and whenever needed. Along with this, your customers can gain offline access to your online store and products, as well.

Product upsell

Product Upsell is one of the bestselling Shopify apps. You can boost sale via product upselling. The app allows you to showcase other relevant products to customers along with their chosen items. You can display the products in the form of popups.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is one of the best Shopify eCommerce ESP. it is a core email marketing software via which you can send automated emails, daily marketing emails, customer audience email marketing blasts and more. You can also connect with your users directly and analyze your campaign and strategy’s performance.

FOMO

FOMO (fear of missing out) is a popular Shopify app that works on the human psychology of not being left out and getting things what others have. This is a perfect app to build upon your conversion strategy. The app provides real-time notifications to customers, keeping them on a constant loop on products. You can also customize content to the core, along with its placement. The best part of FOMO is that it integrates with Yotpo reviews and social media.

Referral candy

This is a referral-based discount app that encourages customers to refer other new customers and in return get incentives and rewards. The app transforms existing customers as advocates for your brand and drives sales. Referral Candy is easy to install and use.