All the Shopify apps we use and what we spend on Minimalism

Yes, the technology behind Minimalism is built with Shopify . Anyone who has been reading our blog for a long time knows our origins with Wordpress and our migration to Shopify . After a year and a half we can reconfirm that we are delighted with the platform, it gives us flexibility, speed and independence. It makes technology important but not a headache.

Since we started the project we have been encountering technological and design "challenges" that we have been overcoming little by little, without having any idea of ​​programming and without throwing a line of code . The basic Shopify platform has many limitations, instead you will always find a developer who has created an app for what you need to do in your store. Of course, you will have to spend a lot of time trying various apps, reading opinions, installing them and seeing that they work well and adapt to what you need.

Three recommendations after trying, installing and buying more than 25 different apps:

1. Always make a backup of your code before installing anything . Highly recommend this.
2. It is important that they have support , make sure that the reviews speak well of it. In many moments it is key that the developer helps you to make the app work as you need.
3. Be careful with getting your hands on the code , we (and especially I) have come to destroy a large part of the web by trying to change little things. It is important to read the documentation of the apps, they are usually very useful.
4. If you don't use an app, remove it from your store. The more apps you have installed, the heavier your website will be, the slower your code will be and the longer it will take to load the store.

WHAT APPS DO WE USE AND WHAT ARE THEY USED FOR?

Weglot Translate . One of the best apps we have, it helps us translate the entire web into the language we want. At first, we don't trust this type of app very much since the translations are usually "Google Translate-like"... that is, of poor quality and without agreement between the phrases and the words. But no, it works very well and gives us a lot of speed to launch tests in a certain country. Be careful, this does not imply that you do not have to review the entire website in case there is a mistake. We pay €40/month.

Gempages . If it is already easy to create a website or landing page with Shopify, this makes it even easier. We use it to create product landing pages, which is where we drive paid traffic from Instagram and Google. It is a very easy to use page builder with many customization and design options. Our "home" is created with this app. We are delighted. We pay €20/month.

Product Bundles, by Bold . After trying several apps to create product packs, we stayed with this one since it is one of the few that perfectly solves the problem of synchronized stock. From this app we create the products in packs and we price them, but these packs are connected to our main stock of individual products. It also allows you to create widgets of the product packs to put them as related products. We pay €20/month.

Quick Announcement Bar . The typical app to place a message at the top of the web. We chose this one and not others since for €5/month it allows us to filter what message we send to customers according to the country where they visit us or the page they are on. It works very well for us and has a good level of customization. It has allowed us for many months to launch different discount offers and coupons depending on the country. We pay €5/month.

Quaderno . We recommend this Spanish app (we spoke with the CEO on LinkedIn on a Sunday) for everything that has to do with billing. It helps us save time when someone asks us for an invoice and when we have to make the quarterly VAT return. We pay €29/month.

Zendesk .This app helps us to have all the queries, doubts or complaints in a single management platform. We try to answer all emails in less than 4 hours, without this app it would be much more complex. We pay €150 per year. €12.5/month.

GeoIP Country Redirect . The name says it all, with this Shopify app we can show our different websites depending on the country so that the payment is made 100% in local currency. We pay €7/month.

CustomJavascript . With this app you will be able to insert JS code in your store in a simple way and without knowing much about programming (like us...). In some moments it can help you out of a jam. Free.

We also use other free apps such as Facebook Marketing, Mailchimp (note that on May 12 they announced that they will stop providing service for Shopify), Google Shopping and Databox to connect these services to our store. The apps are free but we pay for subscription services separately, such as Zendesk.

In total we spend €133.5 month to month on Shopify apps.

We hope this post will be useful to you and if you have any questions about any app or any of the services mentioned, you can write or comment on this post. We are happy to help and add value.

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