Finding the Tools to Run Your Ecommerce Site
Having the right tools can be the difference between success and failure for your ecommerce website. With countless plugins and apps available, it can be overwhelming to determine which ones are truly worth your time and investment.
To help you make the most of your website development, we’ve conducted a comprehensive research and compiled a list of the best all-around solutions for WooCommerce and Shopify stores.
When evaluating plugins and apps, we focused on the ease of use and the effectiveness of the plugin in how it addresses specific needs and goals, as well as the costs. Here are some of the best apps we recommend.
SEO Solutions
Yoast SEO
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Yoast SEO is a comprehensive SEO plugin for WordPress that helps beginners and experienced professionals alike in optimising the website for search engines. It offers a wide range of features, including on-page optimisation, XML sitemap generation, and social media integration.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free Premium – $99 per year All plugins – $229 per year VIP – custom pricing
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On-page optimisation – provides suggestions for keywords, meta descriptions, headings, and image alt text. XML sitemap generation – helps search engines index your website’s content. Social media integration – allows you to optimise your content for social sharing. Internal linking suggestions – help you improve your website’s structure and navigation. Readability analysis – suggests improvements to your content’s clarity and engagement. |
Breadcrumbs – helps improve your website’s navigation and user experience. SEO analysis – provides detailed insights into your website’s SEO performance. Redirection manager – helps you manage redirects and prevent broken links. |
Rank Math
(Woocommerce)
Rank Math offers a wide range of features to help you improve your website’s search engine visibility. It’s known for its user-friendly interface and powerful tools, making it a popular choice for both beginners and experienced SEO professionals.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free Pro – $4.92 per month Business – $20.99 per month Agency – $49.99 per month
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Keyword research – helps you find relevant keywords to target. Competitor analysis – shows you how your competitors are ranking for certain keywords. Local SEO – helps optimise your website for local search results. Schema markup – helps search engines better understand your website’s content. 404 monitoring – notifies you of broken links on your website. |
Google Analytics integration – tracks your website’s traffic and performance. SEO analysis – provides detailed insights into your website’s SEO performance. Image SEO – allows you to optimise your images for search engines.
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SearchPie
(Shopify)
SearchPie is an SEO and speed optimisation app for Shopify stores. It offers features like automated SEO, SEO audits, speed optimisation, local SEO, and 24/7 support, aiming to simplify SEO for Shopify merchants and improve their online visibility.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free plan Starter – $39/month Premium – $99/month Enterprise – $789/month |
Automatic meta tag generation – automatically generates optimised meta titles and descriptions for products and pages to improve chances of appearing in search engine results. Product content editing in multiple languages – easily manage and edit your product content in multiple languages to reach a wider audience. Schema and snippets – enhances your website’s visibility in search results by adding rich snippets and structured data. |
SEO manager – provides a detailed analysis of your website’s SEO performance, identifying potential issues and offering actionable recommendations. Speed optimiser – optimises your website’s images and code, reducing page load times and improving user experience. SEO content generator – automatically generates unique and SEO-friendly product descriptions, saving you time and effort. |
Reviews Solutions
Stamped.io
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Stamped.io is a customer marketing platform designed specifically for ecommerce businesses. It focuses on two main areas, collecting and displaying customer reviews, and rewards and loyalty programs, helping businesses gather reviews from customers and then showcase them prominently on their website and marketing materials. This builds trust and social proof, which can lead to increased sales.
They also offer tools to create loyalty programs. This can incentivise customers to leave reviews, make repeat purchases, and become brand advocates.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free plan Starter plan – $49 per month Professional plan – $249 per month Enterprise plan – Custom pricing |
Review collection – allows customers to leave reviews through various methods, including email requests and SMS. Review moderation – approves, filters, and responds to customer reviews. Review analytics – helps track key metrics like review sentiment, star ratings, and reviewer demographics. Customisable widgets – your website and social media channels. Email automation – email requests for reviews and follow-up emails to customers. |
Review rewards – incentivise customers to leave reviews with discount codes or loyalty programs. Social proof notifications – showcase recent positive reviews to encourage new customers. Multi-location support – manage reviews for businesses with multiple locations.
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Trustpilot
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Trustpilot is a well-established online review platform where businesses can collect and showcase customer reviews. It allows for review collection, moderation, and analysis of customer feedback, helping businesses build brand reputation.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free Plus – $259 per month Premium – $629 per month Advanced –$1,059 per month Enterprise –custom pricing
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Review collection – collects customer reviews through various methods, including Trustpilot invitations or integration with your online store. Review moderation – approves, filters, and responds to customer reviews on the Trustpilot platform. Review analysis – tracks key metrics like review sentiment, star ratings, and reviewer demographics. Basic analytics – provides insights into review performance and customer sentiment. (Advanced analytics are also available in paid plans) Review widgets – embed basic review widgets on your website to showcase Trustpilot reviews. |
Social media integration – shares reviews on your social media channels. Trustpilot Business Profile – enhances your brand’s online presence on the Trustpilot platform, with advanced features available in paid plans.
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Yotpo
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Yotpo is a popular ecommerce review platform that helps businesses collect, manage, and display customer reviews on their websites. It offers a range of features to enhance customer engagement, build trust, and boost sales.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Starter – $79 per month Pro – $169 per month Premium – custom pricing |
Review collection and display – automatically collects reviews from customers via email or SMS, making it easy to gather feedback and showcase reviews prominently on your website.
Social proof – leverages the power of social proof to increase conversions by displaying reviews on your product pages and checkout process. Loyalty programs – creates and manages loyalty programs to reward repeat customers and encourage them to leave reviews. Analytics – tracks key metrics like review sentiment, star ratings, and customer feedback to measure the impact of your review strategy.
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Automated review collection – makes it easy to gather feedback from customers without manual effort. Customisable Review Widgets – showcases reviews on your website in a way that complements your brand and enhances the customer experience. Detailed Analytics – gives valuable insights into your customers’ feedback with Yotpo’s comprehensive analytics tools.
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Email Marketing Solutions
Mailchimp
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Mailchimp integrates seamlessly with your WooCommerce store, allowing you to create and send targeted email campaigns, build email lists, and automate marketing workflows.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free – limited features for 500 contacts maximum Essentials – $13 per month for 500 contacts Standard – $20 per month for 500 contacts Premium – $350 per month for 10,000 contacts
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Email campaign creation – designs and sends email campaigns with a drag-and-drop builder.
Email list management – builds and segments email lists based on customer data. Automation – creates automated email workflows based on customer behaviour and triggers. A/B testing – tests different versions of your emails to optimise performance. |
Abandoned cart recovery – sends automated emails to recover abandoned carts. Product recommendations – recommends products to customers based on their purchase history. Pop-up forms – captures email addresses with customisable pop-up forms.
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Klaviyo
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Klaviyo is a third-party email marketing platform that offers more advanced features than Shopify Email. It provides tools for building and nurturing customer relationships through email and SMS marketing.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free – Up to 250 contacts and basic email marketing features SMS – $15 per month Email – $20 per month |
Email marketing – creates and sends targeted email campaigns with a drag-and-drop editor. SMS marketing – send SMS messages to your customers for targeted promotions and notifications. Customer segmentation – segments your audience based on demographics, behaviour, and other criteria. Analytics – tracks the performance of your marketing campaigns across multiple channels. |
Advanced features – offers more advanced email marketing features than Shopify Email, including SMS marketing. Customisation options – customises your email templates and workflows to match your brand. |
Omnisend
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
Omnisend is a comprehensive marketing automation platform that offers email marketing, SMS marketing, and web push notifications. It integrates with various ecommerce platforms, including WooCommerce, and provides powerful tools for building and nurturing customer relationships.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Standard – starts at $16 per month Pro – Starts at $69 per month Enterprise – Custom pricing |
Email marketing – creates and send targeted email campaigns with a drag-and-drop builder. SMS marketing – sends SMS messages to your customers for targeted promotions and notifications. Web push notifications – sends browser notifications to your website visitors. Automation – creates automated marketing workflows based on customer behaviour and triggers. |
Customer segmentation – segments your audience based on demographics, behaviour, and other criteria. Personalised content – creates personalised email and SMS content using dynamic tags. A/B testing – tests different versions of your marketing campaigns to optimise results. |
Active Campaign
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
ActiveCampaign is a comprehensive marketing automation platform that offers features like email marketing, landing pages, automation, and CRM. It’s designed to be user-friendly and provides various resources for learning. You can also integrate it with other platforms like ecommerce and CRM tools. ActiveCampaign is a valuable tool for businesses aiming to improve their marketing efforts.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Starter – starts at $15 per month Plus – starts at $49 per month Pro – starts at $79 per month Enterprise – starts at $145 per month |
Email marketing – creates and send personalised email campaigns, including newsletters, promotional emails, and automated workflows.
Landing pages – designs and builds high-converting landing pages to capture leads and drive sales. Marketing automation – automates repetitive tasks, segments your audience, and creates personalised customer journeys. CRM – manages customer information, tracks interactions, and streamlines your sales process. Contact management – rganises and segments your contacts based on various criteria, such as demographics, behaviour, and engagement. A/B testing – tests different versions of your emails, landing pages, and other marketing materials to optimise your results. Analytics and reporting – tracks key metrics, analyses campaign performance, and shows valuable insights into your marketing efforts. |
Conditional automation – creates complex automation workflows based on various conditions and triggers.
Visual workflow builder – designs and visualises your automation workflows using a drag-and-drop interface. Predictive scoring – prioritises leads based on their likelihood to convert using predictive analytics. Social media integration – connects ActiveCampaign with your social media accounts to track interactions and engage with your audience. |
Hubspot
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
HubSpot is a leading all-in-one platform designed to empower businesses of all sizes with the tools they need for marketing, sales, and customer service. It offers a suite of integrated solutions that help businesses attract leads, nurture relationships, close deals, and provide exceptional customer experiences.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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$12.42 per month, billed annually at $149 (single option) |
Email marketing – creates and sends automated and personalised email campaigns. Landing pages – builds high-converting landing pages to capture leads. Marketing automation – automates repetitive tasks and nurture leads through the sales funnel. SEO tools – improves your website’s search engine ranking and organic traffic. Social media management – schedules and publishes social media posts, tracks engagement, and analyse results. Content management system (CMS) – creates and manage website content with ease. |
All-in-one platform – integrates all its marketing, sales, and service tools in a single platform, eliminating the need for multiple tools and simplifying operations. Intuitive interface – designed to be user-friendly and easy to use, even for businesses with limited technical expertise. Scalability – offers flexible pricing plans to suit businesses of all sizes and can grow with your company’s needs.
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Product Management Solutions
Composite Products by WPClever
(Woocommerce)
Composite Products is a WooCommerce plugin that allows you to create bundled products, combining multiple simple products into a specific product. This can be useful for offering customers a discount on a package of related items or creating unique product combinations.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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$12.42 per month, billed annually at $149 (single option) |
Bundle creation – combines multiple simple products into a single bundled product. Custom product options – allows customers to choose different variations of the bundled products. Quantity discounts – offers discounts based on the quantity of bundled products purchased. |
Flexibility – customises your bundled products to meet your specific needs. Increased sales – offers bundled products to encourage customers to purchase more. |
WP Sheet Editor
(Woocommerce)
WP Sheet Editor is a versatile WordPress plugin that allows you to manage and edit your WooCommerce products, posts, and pages in a spreadsheet-like interface. It’s particularly useful for large-scale product management tasks, enabling you to make bulk changes efficiently and save time.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Annual – $49.99 per year Lifetime –$19.99 lifetime access All Plugins –$399 lifetime access |
Bulk editing – edits multiple products, posts, or pages simultaneously within a spreadsheet, making it easy to update large datasets.
Filtering and sorting – quickly filters and sorts products, posts, or pages based on various criteria, such as product category, price, or publication date. Import and export – imports and exports data in CSV or Excel format, allowing you to work with data outside of wordpress. Performance optimisation – designed to handle large datasets efficiently and is optimised for performance so it doesn’t significantly impact your website’s speed.
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Intuitive spreadsheet interface – the familiar spreadsheet layout makes it easy to navigate and edit your data.
Customisation options – tailors the spreadsheet to your specific needs by adding or removing columns and customising the display. |
Shipping Solutions
Cedcommerce
(Woocommerce)
CedCommerce Shipping is a versatile shipping solution designed for ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce and Magento. It offers a wide range of features to streamline shipping processes, calculate rates accurately, and provide a seamless shipping experience for both merchants and customers.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free Trial Beginner – $15 per month Growth – $49 per month Enterprise –$250 per month
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Shipping label printing – generate shipping labels directly from your ecommerce platform, saving time and reducing errors.
Shipping rules – set up custom shipping rules based on product categories, order values, or other criteria. Shipping zones – define shipping zones to apply specific rates and rules to different geographic regions. Shipping methods – offer various shipping methods to customers, such as standard, expedited, or express. Shipping insurance – provide customers with the option to purchase shipping insurance for added protection. |
Carrier integration – connect with multiple shipping carriers to access competitive rates and services.
Rate calculation – automatically calculate shipping rates based on various factors such as weight, dimensions, destination, and carrier services. Real-time tracking – provide customers with accurate and up-to-date tracking information for their orders, improving customer satisfaction. |
AfterShip
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
AfterShip is a third-party app that provides advanced shipping tracking and delivery updates for your customers. It integrates with major shipping carriers and offers features to improve the customer shipping experience.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free Essentials – $11 per month Pro – $89 per month |
Tracking and updates – track orders from multiple carriers on a single platform and send notifications through sms.
Branded tracking pages – create branded tracking pages to match your store’s design. Returns management – manage returns and exchanges easily. |
Improved customer experience – provide your customers with real-time shipping updates.
Brand consistency – maintain your brand identity with branded tracking pages. Automation – automate the shipping tracking process to save time. |
Security & Spam Protection Solutions
Wordfence Security
(Woocommerce)
Wordfence Security is a popular security plugin for WordPress that provides comprehensive protection against malware, hacking attempts, and brute force attacks. It offers a range of features to safeguard your website and data.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free Premium – $119 per year Care – $490 per year Response – $950 per year |
Malware scanning – regularly scans your website for malware and malicious code. Firewall – protects your website from hacking attempts and brute force attacks. Intrusion detection – monitors your website for suspicious activity and blocks malicious traffic. Real-time IP blocking – blocks IP addresses known for malicious activity. Threat intelligence – provides information about the latest security threats. |
Two-factor authentication – adds an extra layer of security to your WordPress login. Security scanner – scans your website for vulnerabilities and provide recommendations for improvement. Activity logging – logs in user activity on your website. |
Jetpack
(Woocommerce)
Jetpack is a versatile WordPress plugin that offers a wide range of features to enhance your website’s functionality, security, performance, and user experience. It is a valuable tool for website owners of all sizes, from small businesses to personal blogs and ecommerce stores. It can help streamline site management, improve performance, and enhance the overall user experience.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Jetpack Free Jetpack Security – starts at $3.50/month Jetpack Complete – starts at $29/month Jetpack VaultPress Backup – starts at $39/month |
Security – protects your website from brute-force attacks, malware, and DDOS attacks.
Backups – saves every change to your site and allows you to restore it quickly with one click. Social sharing – shares your new posts on social media networks automatically or lets you schedule future shares with custom messages. Search – provides a powerful search function that replaces the built-in wordpress search and is powered by elasticsearch in the wordpress.Com cloud. |
Comprehensive security – robust security features to protect website from various threats, including malware, brute force attacks, and ddos attacks.
Performance optimisation – enhance your website’s loading speed and seo, ensuring a better user experience. Reliable backups – protects your website data so you can easily restore your site in case of any issues.
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No Fraud
(Woocommerce, Shopify)
NoFraud is a leading fraud protection solution designed for ecommerce businesses. It helps merchants reduce chargebacks, increase order approval rates, and protect their revenue from fraudulent transactions.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Customised pricing scheme |
Real-time fraud screening – comes equipped with advanced algorithms and machine learning to detect fraudulent transactions in real-time, preventing them from being processed.
Chargeback protection –gives guaranteed chargeback protection, ensuring that merchants are reimbursed for any fraudulent charges. Order approval optimisation – helps merchants approve more legitimate orders, reducing false declines and increasing sales. Risk scoring – assigns a risk score to each transaction, making it easier for merchants to assess the likelihood of fraud. Customisable rules – allows merchants to create custom rules to tailor fraud detection capabilities to their specific needs. |
Advanced fraud detection – machine learning algorithm detects even the most sophisticated fraud attempts.
Guaranteed chargeback protection – provides merchants with peace of mind by guaranteeing reimbursement for fraudulent charges. Easy integration – easy to set up and integrate with your existing ecommerce infrastructure. |
Blockify
(Shopify)
Blockify is a drag-and-drop page builder app designed for Shopify stores. It empowers users to create visually stunning and functional pages without needing coding knowledge. With a wide range of pre-designed blocks and customisation options, Blockify allows for a user-friendly website creation experience on Shopify.
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Pricing |
Key Features |
Feature Highlights |
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Free to install Premium – $5.99 per month Enterprise –$12.99 per month Shopify Plus –$22.99 per month
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Drag-and-drop editing – builds pages intuitively by dragging and dropping various content blocks onto your canvas.
Pre-designed blocks – chooses from a library of pre-designed blocks for common elements like headings, images, product carousels, forms, and more. Customisable templates – utilises pre-built templates to kickstart your page creation and save time. Responsive design – ensures your pages display seamlessly across all devices, from desktops to mobiles. Customisable branding – tailors your page’s look and feel to match your brand with options for fonts, colours, and layouts. |
Responsive design optimisation – ensures a seamless user experience across all devices by building responsive pages that adapt to different screen sizes.
Easy branding customisation – creates pages that reflect your brand identity with customisable fonts, colours, and layouts. Mobile editing – edits and optimises your pages specifically for mobile devices. |
New plugins and apps to watch out for
Ecommerce plugins and apps are constantly evolving, with new tools emerging to address the latest trends and challenges. Here are some updates that are worth keeping an eye on:
License Manager for WooCommerce streamlines the process of managing software licenses for your WooCommerce store. By leveraging the WordPress REST API, this extension automates the activation, deactivation, and verification of licenses, saving you valuable time and effort. Meaning you can manage all your apps from a single place.
Price on Request & Quote simplifies the process of responding to pricing requests. This tool allows you to automatically generate and send quotes as PDFs, saving you time and effort.
Pickup Points is a new Shopify function that empowers developers to create custom apps for shops that offer convenient pickup options, allowing customers to select pickup locations like post offices or parcel lockers during checkout, enhancing the overall shopping experience.
Choosing the Best Solution for Your Ecommerce Site
Plugins and apps play a crucial role in enhancing the functionality and performance of your ecommerce site. They offer a wide range of features, from SEO optimisation and marketing automation to customer support and payment processing, to help you improve your ecommerce platform.
FInd the plugins and apps that work best for your ecommerce site by experimenting with different options. Many offer free trials or freemium plans, so you can test them out before making a commitment. Do not be afraid to try new tools and see how they can benefit your business.
By experimenting with different options, you can find the best plugins and apps to help your business grow. If you are unsure what steps to take, contact us for a free consultation, we can help you make more informed decisions based on our experience.
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