Mandy Barbee: Overcoming Stressors to Thrive with Your Biz and Life

Listen to our exclusive interview with expert, Mandy Barbee

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As entrepreneurs, we all face challenges with anxiety, stress and mental blocks that hold us back! But what if we can overcome them? We spoke with expert, Mandy Barbee, who has over 15 years of leadership experience and is certified in clinical hypnotherapy, neurolinguistics, and the mind-body connection.

Mandy Barbee, MA Economics & CCHT, founder of Palladium Mind, is a transformation and healing expert who has helped hundreds of clients across the globe to overcome anxiousness and thrive in business, health, and life. By combining the power of imagery with their innate capabilities, she empowers men and women to regain a positive sense of control, transcend struggle, and enjoy everything more.

Learn more about Mandy and her work at > https://www.palladiummind.com/

Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)

Adam G. Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host Adam for syrette Change Creator. I’m excited to be here today because I love talking about the mind and how we behave and why we do things and our mental blocks and all that good stuff. And today we have a treat for you. We’re going to be talking to someone by the name of Mandy Barbie. She’s the founder of palladium mind. So we’re going to cover a number of topics here. She’s actually a she helps people in transformation and healing right? So she works with a lot of clients all around the world. And they she basically focuses on like how to overcome anxiety and different stressors and get over certain mental blocks in your life so that you can really start to thrive thrive not only in your business, But in life in general. So she has some unique insights that she’s going to be talking to us about today that I think will be really great takeaways that will help you on your journey as an entrepreneur. So excited to jump into that with Mandy today. If you guys missed the last episode of the Change Creator podcast, definitely go back we spoke to Ken Casals. He’s a very sharp guy. He was on the Forbes 30. Under 30. We talked about growing leads and revenue faster for e commerce. And there are some interesting considerations from you know what’s going on in the world today, but also just from his extensive experience working with a lot of clients and running a lot of different campaigns and stuff like that. So if you have an e commerce company, definitely something to check out. And even if you don’t, there’s a lot of great conversations just about growing leads and revenue, right? So don’t want to miss that one. And guys, one of the things that we have been focused on I know, we’ve had a lot of people come up to us and they’re obviously trying to go digital and they’re kind of stressing it. which totally get that. But you know, we are programmed the captivate method is we’re all we’re focused on digital, right? So the captivate method program is really about helping people get more, to really build trust with their audience, get more leads and get consistent sales. And we do this through strategic storytelling. So we really supercharge the business and marketing with storytelling, but we also set up these systems the right way. So you guys can have that that basically a sales loop, right? So if this is something that’s going to help you because you want to get digital and get your revenue channels up on the digital side, this could be a great program for you. We do look for early stage entrepreneurs who at least have their product that maybe made a sale or two at least, right? Because we’re not doing product development, but the community offers lots of live coaching and all that kind of stuff. So it’s a very powerful program. If you’re interested, it sounds like something that can help you right now. Go to Change Creator calm and you’ll see in the navigation menu or the header. It says Join captivate, you’ll be able to get on a waitlist and within a very short period of time, after you get a couple emails and updates, you’ll get an opportunity to join our masterclass to learn more about how this can help you. And then from there you can make your decision as if this is the right community for you or not, but really exciting stuff. It’s proven it works. We use these strategies all the time, not only for ourselves, but to help other clients scale their businesses all the time. So alright guys just wanted to make mention of that during this time with this pandemic, because I realized how important I mean digital is always important, but more than ever now we’re just seeing a whole influx of people who are looking for that kind of support so I would jump on it get in there check it out, and you can always reach out go to our contact page reach out if you have questions or you know, there’s a chat bot or whatever on there that you could talk to us. Alright guys, without further ado, let’s jump into it. Don’t forget to leave us a review on iTunes. And yeah, let’s talk to a man Hey, show

Unknown Speaker 3:57
me that he

Adam G. Force 4:01
Hey, Mandy, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show today. How are you? I am so good. Adam, thank you so much for having me. You’re very welcome. excited to talk with you based on all the incredible expertise you have. It’s a space that I always like to get involved in. So why don’t we just open the door a little bit with, you know, what is going on today with you? Not today specifically, but just present time. And give us a little bit of that background. So I like to get like what’s going on now and then we can kind of work our way into how you got here.

Mandy Barbee 4:37
Yeah, absolutely. So right now today in my world, I were hunkered down in Seattle, Washington, doing some social distancing here. And yeah, I get to work from my home office, and I’m serving clients all over the United States and one international client through my coaching and hypnotherapy practice. displayed in mind, currently, what’s going on, it’s very exciting to me is something that’s been a long time in the works, which is not a plug, it’s just something I’m extremely passionate about is the very first opportunity that I have ever felt alignment to share something virtual, a resource that will actually create healing with people where they don’t have to dip that toe in the water of one to one in person or, or virtual work. So it’s something it’s a product that I’ve been ruminating on and steeping on for the last like five years. And it’s finally coming to fruition in April. So that’s very exciting.

Adam G. Force 5:43
Very cool. Congratulations. So thank you. I you know, for me, one of the things that’s so important and why I really wanted to have this conversation with you is that you have an expertise in helping people overcome struggle by understanding and Managing, you know, the anxiety and fear, fear based decision making. And then when it comes to us being entrepreneurs, especially solopreneurs, who are, you know, on our own and doing these things? There’s a lot of that, right? There’s a lot of ups and downs and stressors that can really trigger a lot of anxiety and fear. And so, you know, one thing we always talk about is how, you know, when we make decisions from those places that are our timing from going from point A to point B gets much longer because we make lots of bad decisions. And I want to help people understand, you know, how to think about that and how to start managing it. So can you just like talk a little bit about, you know, how you work with people in general right now, just to give us some background on what you’re doing, and how, like some of the key things that you’re working with people on?

Mandy Barbee 6:56
Oh, yes, that’s such a great setup. The I’m a way that I work with people. This, this work that I do falls under it could be described in a lot of ways. And I think the best way to understand it is it’s working with imagery. So a couple key points are that anything happening automatically, in your experience, anything that’s automated, in your experience, by your body or by your mind is governed by your subconscious. So subconscious problems can’t be analyzed away. We can bring unconscious issues to light to awareness, but even if you do, you can’t like troubleshoot a feeling away. There needs to be an experience. I love it. You’re laughing beautiful. Can you relate to that? Oh, yeah,

Adam G. Force 7:51
I mean, you have these experiences and I just like that, use the word troubleshoot, like Oh, let me you know, it’s just it’s it’s a funny way of putting it I actually just say, I typed down I quoted you on that one, you can troubleshoot and experience.

Mandy Barbee 8:05
Yeah, you can troubleshoot a feeling away. Like even if this is the this is the awareness that I had like years into doing this work with people. And I will describe the work in just a moment. I want to bring that clarity too. So we’re all like kind of speaking the same language. But the awareness that I had was people like I don’t know what this anxiety is from, I don’t know what is causing it. I don’t know. And this is a huge point of frustration. And it’s also can make a feeling or a sense of failure. result in that person’s experience depending on how we relate to not knowing something, what we feel or decide about the fact that we don’t know the reason. It can either be scary or it can be defeating, and that’s totally relatable, but in, in in the big scheme, even If you do know because often people will learn most the time when I work with people, we discover the root just knowing it doesn’t change it. And that is something beautiful that I want to add took me like I said, years of working with people one on one to notice this huge frustration that we bring a loading to the situation with burden of Oh my God, I don’t know why, and then we find out and we still have to find a way of resolving it. So I think that that bit, that little nugget of information can bring a lot of grace like okay, so So knowing it isn’t going to make you feel better. What will

Adam G. Force 9:39
Mm hmm. And well, I mean, at least I guess if you can, like you have these conversations, you get to the root of what’s causing because like I always say like, if you don’t know a mistake that you’re making, right, you think you’re doing everything great just like having clarity on your business. Like if you think you have clarity and you don’t know the mistakes you’re making, well, you can’t get around them and fix them if you’re not even aware. So at least The first step it sounds like is like, well, what is the source of this anxiety? It’s easy to say I’m stressed because of money, and I’m Chef. But there’s probably other things that go far deeper that causes ongoing, you know, stressors or trigger you into behaviors that create these, this anxiety, right? So if we can understand what they are, then I guess you could start at least taking the next steps to manage that.

Mandy Barbee 10:26
I think that’s such a beautiful like uncovering that you just made about. We say when we say it’s just an opportunity, even for listeners in this very moment, to think like if there’s something that’s Top of Mind like, it’s money, I’m stressed about money, or I’m stressed about that, that one hiring decision or the firing decision that I’m contemplating or making that leap. It’s like you’ve identified it, that’s good. But then what’s the reason why that is causing so much distress,

Adam G. Force 10:57
right? And I mean, so like, what Like, what do people how do you start figuring that out?

Mandy Barbee 11:05
Yeah. Is it magic sauce? Oh, I can totally I’ll share as much as I possibly can. This is my area of genius or geek out. Yeah. Well, I think this would be a perfect time to do it best I can in describing exactly what I do and how I do it. So we can open that up. And others can benefit and command the resources that they are governing. So we use the very mechanisms in the body and in the mind and in the person in the awareness that are creating the problem automatically, to shift it. So if you want to operate at the level where change needs to happen in the subconscious, that’s the feeling body. So it’s not the intellect or the logical part. I’m pointing up right to my neocortex right now right to the temple. Not that frontal lobe. It’s the feeling body, the instinctual primal awareness, the instincts and intuition you could say, and how you in how you work with that is actually so simple, because imagery is the language of the subconscious. Oh, that isn’t that amazing? Yeah, we can talk problem with imagery. imagery. You haven’t heard

Adam G. Force 12:28
of the subconscious? No, I have not heard that concept. That imagery is the language of the subconscious. Can you can you tell us a little bit more about that? Like why that is?

Mandy Barbee 12:40
Yes. There’s, I say, I usually hold up three fingers and I’m doing that right now. There’s imagery, hormones and emotions. There may be more I’ve often asked myself this, but these are the languages of the subconscious. These are the shovelers of automatic creation. reactions. And so, like in dreams, for instance, this is a best way to describe it when we’re processing at night in a certain brainwave pattern. And we’re becoming aware of our unconscious information when we remember our dreams. Dreams are primarily an imagery. But there’s other aspects of imagery that also show up, we have an internal sense, we have an internal set of senses, that replicates the sensory experience we have in the outside world. So our perception gets repeated on the inside so the body mind can store it. I hope this is making sense because basically, if we, if we hear a sound, the way that we’re able to recall the sound later is because we have an internal sense of sound. Yeah. So you could imagine someone gently brushing a hand against your hand or you could remember sandpaper, how it feels. We have these internal sensory ways of storing information as well. And so that is the matter By which subconscious information is stored and organized. It’s also how it’s recalled.

Adam G. Force 14:06
Yeah. Okay, so, so now Okay, can we talk I want to talk about like, so this is helpful just to get that like depth of understanding. And I think a lot of times, you know, people and I’m going to ask a general question because I want to see just how you feel about it that when we are entrepreneurs, and we are exploring the unknown, we’re solving problems. The people that really are held back from finding success in what they do, it doesn’t matter how great of an expert they are, if they aren’t making it, it tends to be because of mindset blocks. Is that a fair statement?

Mandy Barbee 14:49
I am, like I would love to add to hear it because we talked a little bit before this call as well. And you mentioned mindset there too. And I think that mindset is one of those words when people say it, they might mean, sometimes different things. Okay. I would love to hear what you can you describe mindset, and then I’ll also butt up against that.

Adam G. Force 15:07
Yeah. So if I’m relating it to what you’re talking about. So if I was it’s the subconscious, so the subconscious conscious dictating how we feel how we respond. And a simple example would be around money, right? So everyone talks about money blocks, and it’s about well, what did your parents teach you about money? What were the stories you heard about money? And how do those affect the way you behave around money? And you know, it creates the feelings you have about it. So, you know, I always say, if you hate money, you’re probably not going to have much right if you’re not, if you’re not, if you think it’s a really hard thing to get, then you’re probably going to always make yourself work 100 hours a week in order to get money. Right. So it’s like, yeah, these are the types of exactly that I see with entrepreneurs. Including myself, we all have these things. And I’m like, for example, I read a book by Bruce Lipton called the Biology of Belief and dives into a lot of these types of things because I’m always hunting for how do I improve myself? How do I strengthen my mindset, but like a great example was like, Okay, if you had a CD playing old school, right, you got a CD playing a song and you’re like, I really want to change the song. Just thinking about it like saying, don’t eat those donuts, and I’m gonna be on a diet like it just saying it doesn’t do anything. You have to literally go there and reprogram it by putting a new CD and so how do we do that in our brain?

Mandy Barbee 16:39
Yes. I love that book, Adam. And I tell people you can listen to it in three hours on Audible on a Sunday morning. It’s good if you’re able super so good. He’s just a beautiful humans. How do you reprogram it? Yeah, and and do I agree about this? This, you know, experience of struggle being a lot mindset as you described it 100% were in alignment and understanding there, okay. How do we reprogram it? There’s working with imagery, you know, working with imagery is something that it’s let me pause there. I want to say something different. Okay. We reprogram it. When I was thinking of when I work with people, what’s really important to me to convey is that sometimes because I do practice hypnotherapy, people come in and actually Bruce Lipton, Dr. Bruce Lipton also mentions hypnosis at the end of the Biology of Belief, which is so interesting, just this tiny little word. Yeah, but I do practice it with therapy. It’s because it was a way that I was trained to utilize imagery with others. The imagery isn’t proprietary to any modality You’re using imagery all the time. Sometimes we can use it for good. Or we could use it for evil because we could use imagery to make ourselves spun up and imagine really terrible things. Or we can use imagery. Sometimes it feels spontaneously, or automatically without choice to put ourselves into what Tony Robbins would say, a beautiful state, that we can command our state, by the way that we direct our attention and the imagery that we call in this, you can see that there’s this interesting interplay that I think about all the time between conscious control and direction, and the allowing of our subconscious to play as well. And so I do people come into hypnotherapy a lot and they find me through through hypnotherapy quite frequently, and we always start with debunking this idea that there’s any form of transfer of control. Because I’m only going to help that person steer their own imagery in a relaxed state, I can’t install imagery. I can’t actually reprogram they, in a state of relaxation can access the subconscious and imagery arises naturally when we flip out of analytical mindset. Yeah, yeah. So

Adam G. Force 19:24
does that answer? It does so I have questions, of course. So you are talking about being in a state of theta, right? Is that your, your relaxed state.

Mandy Barbee 19:35
Theta is the data is one of those relaxed states and I, I tend to, I really work with people in alpha, which is a very, it’s a very wakeful, but alert state where imagery is natural. And so theta and delta are generally in a state of like deeper sleep. Like they’re either sleep light dreaming sleep or deeper sleep, and we’re definitely in a waking state. Just relax critical mind. Got it.

Adam G. Force 20:08
And when you talk about using imagery, just so everybody listening understands, like we’re not talking about necessarily, or maybe you are. So you can tell me like holding up a tangible image. So you see something in front of you, it’s more about creating the images in your your mind, right, like thinking about certain images. Exactly. Okay. Okay, and so, like thinking about certain images. I mean, does this come through like the, I guess one of the processes I’ve always been curious about, and it’s like, well, does this really work? And how do I know it works is like, you would obviously work with someone through this image process, which I’m not super familiar with, but does it relate to things like affirmations? Like what it was like, Is that another process or is it tied to it?

Mandy Barbee 20:58
Yeah. I’ll go back one tiny step and then take you all the way through like a spectrum of options. Because this is also like a point of passion for me is sharing with people the spectrum of tools that other people are giving them so that they understand where everything fits. Almost like like a care team, like your whole medical team working together, you can start to go Okay, wait a second, I see what’s going on here and why, and then this one, and then I’m getting a suggestion for this from somebody else. And you can kind of begin to govern your own experience even more powerfully. There’s a conscious piece and there’s an unconscious piece and the conscious piece like every person, every client, every human that I interact with, I want us all to be building awareness because in that awareness, other things become possible, just like you said earlier. Yeah. When you become aware of the problem, suddenly you can think about solving it. This when you work in a relaxed state of awareness that is one of the easiest tools for solving a feeling problem or an automatic problem. And that’s what we’re talking about here. So when we drop into a relaxed state of mind, it affirmation is one way of imagining something that’s not true now, or that we perceive is not true now, but we’re putting ourselves in the experience of being true by writing the affirmation or speaking the affirmation. I see this. Does that jive?

Adam G. Force 22:27
Yeah. For you? Yeah, I’m good. Okay.

Mandy Barbee 22:29
I think that that’s one way that I describe affirmation, because it’s one thing to go. What? Already reveal myself Harry Potter. I must not tell lies. I must not tell anybody I must write total dork moment. But if we write the affirmation over and over and over again, surely we could eventually maybe have a chance of brainwashing ourselves. But if you if you actually engage emotionally with the affirmation That you’re saying, You’re basically dressed, rehearsing the emotional experience and giving your nervous system the opportunity to taste what life is like, when that’s true. And you’re making it true right now.

Adam G. Force 23:16
I love that. Yeah. So okay, so cuz that’s something I picked up on through this process is like, you don’t just sit there and say something in your mind. Right? And you you want to, I learned that the most and I think you’re saying the same thing. The most important part of that is to not just say it and think it, but to actually feel it to actually emotionally feel what it’s like, when you’re saying that. Like that. That affirmation. So yeah, just mentioned jolting the nervous system and starting because now if you can feel it, like when you said I guess what life is like, right, and I think that that hit me, I’m like, Yes. Okay. So that’s probably the most important part of that process, right?

Mandy Barbee 23:59
Yes. Yes, and let’s take it a step further. So an affirmation is this one part of utilizing our decision making process which is conscious, to step into an emotional experience of something new, being true. And affirmation is not the primary tool that I use in my practice, but it’s what I will send people away to do at home because it’s support. It’s like this beautiful foundation or a brick road that you’re building underneath all the change work that we’re going to do the transformation work that you can do with imagery with a person one on one. And so, with imagery like on top, if we stack these resources, we’re bringing consciousness to bear we want the decision we want the decision making process on board with what we’re doing. We’re not trying to go ahead or without the rest of the person’s good decision making on board right then affirmations can support change work and in very light situations with enough rapid And consistency, they can and will change problems. But a lot of times when there’s real deep fears, I don’t mean deep like long ago or deep down or dark. I just mean, if it’s really emotionally charged. It’s really hard to step into the experience of those words even being true. We need something else to shift. And you can make shift happen like like that. I mean, practically like that when you’re working directly with the problem state via an interface such as imagery. So imagery allows, like an like an, like a translator between conscious awareness and unconscious problem within the body. So suddenly, they have a means of talking. Got it?

Adam G. Force 25:46
Yeah, I love that. That’s interesting. And so can you I guess I’m curious. Now that we’re kind of talking about the imagery, we talked about the affirmations like, how long is A process like this usually taking place before we can start seeing shifts in, I guess I want to say the reality that we’re manifesting.

Mandy Barbee 26:13
Mm hmm. This is this is one of the most fun parts of my job. But I get to tell you that when you do this type of when you do this type of you have this type of conversation within yourself. Yeah, using this language where suddenly I’ll say, it feels like sometimes when you’re trying to problem solve a feeling. It can be like one person speaking one language screaming at another person speaking another language and the other person screaming back with anxiety. And the conscious mind is screaming back with problem solving. They’re both just screaming each other and nobody’s understanding anything. Right? And it’s like, Can we just get a translator in here? And then you have a translator and they don’t even have a beef. Like Okay, cool. It’s like a handshake and it’s done. But communication got to happen. Right? And that is that fast. And not only is it that fast it’s that when you have that conversation, you’ve actually resolved the reason for the feeling. The feeling is only coming to deliver information. The problem is its language isn’t being heard or understood. Because we get so used to listening with our conscious mind, right or no longer those children just in worlds where reality and dreams can mix and we’re like, with our playmates, you know,

Adam G. Force 27:38
yeah, yeah. Okay. So I guess I’m curious. So I mean, because I guess it’s, it’s different for everybody, right? It’s not like you can say, oh, in a month, I’m gonna be a millionaire because I overcame my fear of money. Or like, you know, whatever it might be. You know, even like Tony Robbins, we interviewed him and he was like, you know, I’ve worked with all these big times. CEOs, professional athletes, all these guys, and no matter what level you’re at, he said that, you know, when someone’s trying to go to the next level of success like to move into a new version of themselves and a new version of their life 80% of the time, there’s a psychological block holding them back that he just helps them get around. And that’s all it is.

Mandy Barbee 28:22
Yeah, this is the exact This is the nature of my work is I help people shift the block, we help people resolve the block, right. And I can speak to and if anybody’s still listening after all of this technical communication, please. I feel like I just been on overload delivering so much tech information, but I really, I really love talking about this stuff out of them. So you don’t know how much I appreciate you just sharing this time with me and I really admire the work that you’re doing. Thank you.

Adam G. Force 28:57
No, I mean I love I love getting into these conversations I just think they’re so important. Because you know, entrepreneurship in my mind is about creating a life. And it’s, it’s there is no work life balance. It’s just about this harmony of how do you live your life? How do you spend your time? And I think there’s so many unnecessary stressors from past. You know, what do you call it conditioning that we’re not aware of. And I just give you example of how important this mindset stuff is. We had I was at a summit not long ago, and it’s about 40 people in a mastermind that we’re in, you know, one that you have to pay a big bill to be heard of. And so you’re already paying a lot of money over $20,000 to be part of this mastermind. And we got a room of 40 people. So a guy goes up and he presents about money mindset. This is what his program what he helps people with, right is just money mindset. And so it’s a $5,000 program for to be part of this. And then he had a small discount for people in the room. But at the end of the day 50% of the room right there on the spot, opened up their phones and bought that these are these are multiple high like six figure seven figure entrepreneurs. And they are without even thinking about it. Half that room bought that program because money mindset was just so important to the process of getting to that next stage. So what the reason I’m sharing this is that the work you do is probably one of the most important parts of becoming successful in building the life that we want.

Mandy Barbee 30:32
Wow, he really just honored me I see it that way too. And it’s one of the greatest joys of me finding my purpose is that I really think that like when you when you scrape away the scum and then you scrape away the pain you get all the way down to bare metal, like what I get to work with people is on the foundation, and when the foundation is rock solid, you can’t stop a person and it’s not hard. It’s not long to get there. Even Though that is so counterintuitive, because we can struggle against these things, for as long as we have memory, right, I see this stuff shift so fast. And it’s not a magic button. You know, and I know that you know that it’s not a magic button. That’s not what I’m saying. But your question was, interestingly, your question was like, how long does it take? Yeah, and I have worked well, my background in the military. And I also have background in manufacturing in a regulated, regulated industries, two of them. So we’re like precision and quality and root cause analysis, and resolution, the five why’s like it’s gotta be dialed in. Yeah. And I bring that to bear with this really soft, compassionate type of work to help people resolve some of the darkest stuff where we’ve got guilt or shame or whatever, and anxiety where it’s like, we’re breaking our heads against it. So to help people be able to shift those things. Where there’s a lot of belief sometimes stacked against ourselves. It is such an honor. Yeah. And so I have worked really hard my entire obsession is in creating a being able to provide something where there is an expectation that within this window, you can expect that a normal bell curve of results are going to be you can have a resolution not like in, you know, 19 days, it’s like a timer, it just goes off and you’re done. But it’s like, you know, there’s a range and if you follow the process, you can shift and a lifelong problem in weeks. I love

Adam G. Force 32:39
that. Yeah, I love that. And it’s because it’s funny you could see people they’ll spend all the money in the world on like, a course for a marketing strategy on Pinterest or all this other stuff and they end up missing the nurturing of the most important part important part of their success which is cultivating the mindset because and the reason is Say that is what everything we’ve been talking about. But the other part of it is, you know, right now you are not the person that you need to be to get where you want to go. So you have to literally become different versions of yourself to continue to grow into that, that future that you have a vision for, right?

Mandy Barbee 33:23
Yes, yes. Yes. And when when you were speaking about when you were just talking, what came to mind was when, when you with what you said was, we’re buying the strategies where it will pay for the marketing will invest in the equipment, right, but we’re less likely sometimes to pour into ourselves. Yes. And what came to mind was the creator and that’s this is your podcasts, you know, it’s it’s the Change Creator who’s creating the change, it’s the creator and so we have to nourish ourselves first because we are the consciousness That’s bringing all of this about. Exactly, exactly. I think it’s a good note to, to wrap up on I did want to just ask them, who you typically work with, right? Who is your, I guess primary, your perfect customer, if you will? Yeah, I, I am. I have a huge smile on my face right now because I have never really resonated with like with gender specific work. And I really believe strongly in the universality of this resource and want to be available to the human race. That being said, You know, I do have issues that I work very specifically and I can share a little bit about my practice if I actually work with 50 by 55% of my practice has been served has served men and 45% has been women. I work I have worked with people across 25 different countries. I can serve people as long as they should Share at this point in time, English as a common language, very percent because when you’re relaxed, it’s even harder to do that translation and maintain relaxation even if you’re multilingual. And my truly, my focus issue is on helping people resolve anxiety because I have walked that road, and it is possible to resolve anxiety and cease managing it. So I’m just really I’m really psyched about helping people to heal anxiety and no longer cope with it. Okay,

Adam G. Force 35:35
great. Well, why don’t we give a shout out where people can learn more about what you’re doing and find you?

Mandy Barbee 35:45
Yes, Adam is I’ll tell you right now then beautiful I am on Instagram. I’m a little I have a little bit of an Instagram addiction. lol and my handle is my palladium mind because my company is palladium mind play is one of the elements on the periodic table in the Platinum group. So that’s p ALADM. Mind and my website’s palladium mind calm and there’s a giveaway for accessing your alpha state at palladium mine forward slash change creators. Got it.

Adam G. Force 36:18
Okay, great. And we’ll put that in the show notes for everybody to check out. Mandy, thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise. Inspire it was inspiring and very helpful. Thank you so much, Adam.

Unknown Speaker 36:34
That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag Comm. We’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.

Check out these other great episodes you might like!

The Top 3 Ways to Help Your Business Reach a Larger Audience

The key to long term survival for any business is the ability to sell products to a larger section of the available market. In effect, the more people you can reach in as short a time as possible, the better your bottom line. Expanding your reach doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right tools and knowledge, you can make products and services known across a variety of channels that will reach the right customers. So, in the spirit of helping you expand your horizons, here are 3 of the best ways that your business can reach a much larger audience in a short time.

1. Optimize SEO Results

If you want to reach a larger audience, you need to learn their language and speak it with fluency. In simple terms, you need to know the words and phrases that they are using to search for relevant goods and services on the web. If they are looking for “San Diego industrial lunch pails”, you need to be using this exact same SEO phrase.

The more your SEO matches up with their search terms, the higher your content will rank in the results of all major search engines. As you can imagine, if you are number 2 on the first page, you have a higher chance of getting a click than if you are number 90 on page 5. This is one area where you need to be as close to the top results as possible.

And when you get to that exalted region of the page, you will instantly recognize the results in terms of visitors and conversions. You will find your page getting more clicks than ever before. And if you play your cards right, the natural result of more visits to your site will be an increase in your number of sales. This is the endgame of SEO and it’s a game well worth playing.

2. Maximize Online Presence

Don’t have a page on Google My Business? What about Instagram or YouTube? If you answered yes to any of these, then you have a clear and immediate problem at hand. Online communities, from Zillow to Reddit and a million others, are changing the way that people shop and do business. You need to be up to spread your brand across the spectrum in order to reach a whole new level of exposure.

Moreover, online communities are an excellent venue to advertise your business. For example, you can use Google My Business to spotlight your company to give accurate and helpful information about your products and services while highlighting positive reviews. Additionally, you can include a short capsule description and all of your contact info. Best of all, you can also optimize your SEO content to localize visits to your page. This can give a major boost to your search engine rankings and sales.

In the case of sites such as Instagram or YouTube, you can add video content to give your audience an even more immediate and intimate look at what you have to offer them. This will allow you to further humanize and personalize your image in order to make the best first impression. The best brands are the ones that offer products that meet their customers’ needs, and a video can help you build a narrative about what, how, and why your company is in business.

3. Use Instant Text Messaging

One of the most effective things that a business owner can do to reach a larger audience is to make use of mass text messaging. This is a technique that can increase the size of your audience by an exponential factor in a very short amount of time.

Mass texts are the secret to reaching a whole lot of people very quickly without a lot of effort. By setting up a text messaging campaign, you can set your parameters to reach 500 or 500,000 people with a single burst of activity. After doing so, you can then get instant analysis that will help you weigh the results. You will see who has answered, who got a voicemail, and what numbers are not in service.

The impact of instant messaging in mass numbers on your business will be immediate and positive. You will be able to get instant reactions from your core demographic while also being able to reach entirely new groups of people. For this reason alone, mass messaging is a technique that is highly recommended by experts in the industry.

The Time for You to Reach a Larger Audience is Now

You can’t sit back and watch while your rivals gobble up all of your potential audience along with all of your potential sales. The time for you to make your move to reach a much larger audience is now. You can make use of these helpful tips and tricks to give your business a whole new lease on life.

Storytelling in Anti-Human Trafficking Enterprises

It’s not just a job, it’s a calling and a project wrought with passion. A way to leave the world better than you found it, because right now, at this very moment, people are suffering. And the suffering is not in some far-flung corner of the globe. It’s here in our towns, on our streets, and in our very own backyards.

Human trafficking isn’t a myth or an anomaly. It’s not some cautionary tale from humanity’s more barbaric past. It is happening today, at this very moment. Studies show, in fact, that human trafficking is a thriving industry, with an estimated 46 million people currently enslaved at a value of more than $150 billion to the traffickers.

When you commit to fight to end this scourge, you may feel overwhelmed and paralyzed, not sure where to start. It begins with shining a bright spotlight on this monster who flourishes in the darkness. But how do you tell the stories of human trafficking without sensationalizing or exploiting survivors’ stories? How do you tell the truth in a way that will make a real, tangible difference in the lives of those who have survived and to those who are still struggling to survive?

This article provides specific strategies for telling the stories of human trafficking in a way that is both respectful and effective. It is important to get these stories out because survivors and those still enslaved don’t need your readers’ sympathy. They need their action.

Be Specific and Real

Readers are not going to respond to vague abstractions, platitudes, or sermons. You don’t need try to whip readers up into some emotional frenzy, histrionically trying to show them how wrong human trafficking is. They already know this.

What they don’t know are the specific stories of individual sufferers, and that is what they need to read. They need someone to humanize the problem for them, so that it is no longer just a faceless problem. The numbers can be overwhelming, after all, but being able to apply just one person’s story to those breathtaking statistics can make human trafficking “real” for your reader. If you feel like you’re not yet fully prepared to tackle these kinds of stories, consider taking classes or training yourself otherwise in the basics of being a better writer. After all, the way in which you present these important stories is going to have an effect on how they’re perceived — you’ll want to be performing at your very best.

Educate But Don’t Preach

Telling the stories of human trafficking is not just about inspiring action. It’s also about raising awareness. Make people note the simple fact is that human trafficking is going on all around us, all the time. We simply don’t see it because we don’t understand the signs.

Human trafficking rarely happens in the forms we imagine. Yes, the trafficking of girls and women for sexual purposes is a significant portion of the industry, and those are the stories that tend to be the ones that receive the vast majority of media attention, but boys and men are also routinely trafficked, and enslavement takes many forms. People may be trafficked, for instance, to be domestic servants or agricultural workers. They may be immigrants or refugees, but they may also be natural-born citizens. They may be children and teens, but there are also millions of adults and even elderly persons.

When you are telling the stories of human trafficking, be real but also be unexpected. Show the sides of human trafficking that people simply don’t know about. Every true story is a mini-lesson and every narrative is an education in the mechanisms of the industry that the traffickers don’t want us to know about.

With every story you tell, you are opening the reader’s eyes a little wider, making it that much harder for the traffickers to do their work in the darkness. If you can teach your readers to spot just one sign they may have otherwise missed, you could well save a life or many lives.

The Takeaway

Telling the stories of human trafficking is both a privilege and a responsibility. When survivors entrust you with their testimony, they do so because they trust that you will use it for a purpose and turn pain into power. When done well, it is no small task, but it can save lives. It can put the monsters, the perpetrators of such heinous acts, in cages where they belong. When you take on such a responsibility, however, it is important to be strategic.

You need to harness the techniques of good storytelling to ensure that your readers don’t just respond to your pieces with quickly passing emotion. You want them to be moved, to learn, and to act, so focus on specificity and concreteness. Put faces to the statistics. Give the names behind the numbers. Take care, also, to educate as well as incite. Try to figure out what your readers don’t know or understand about human trafficking, and use real stories to fill in those blanks. Above all, don’t fall into the temptation to sermonize. Don’t preach. If you tell the survivors’ stories well enough, your reader will get the lesson. They will make their own moral judgments and decide how to act. Trust the story to speak for itself, and trust your readers to listen.

Essential Shopify Apps and Integrations to Help Run Your Ecommerce Store

In this post, we’re going to be looking at some of the best apps and integrations available to you and your Shopify store.  

And, as anyone who has spent any amount of time on Shopify’s platform will know, there is a lot for you to choose from.  

So, without further ado, let’s get stuck into some of the best Shopify apps and integrations on the market.  

What is Shopify? 

Shopify is an ecommerce software solution.  

What does Shopify do?  

Shopify gives you the functionality to create and manage an online store. Also, its admin panel will allow you to add products to your store that you can promote and sell through your storefront. Along with other sales channels.  

What are the best Shopify apps and integrations? 

Now, that we’ve got all the formalities out of the way, we can begin listing off some of the top Shopify apps and integrations.  

And, to help you guys out, we’ll be segmenting these apps and integrations into specific sections. 

This will make the process of finding more information about “the best landing page builder for Shopify” or the “best Shopify app to help with shipping” much more fluid.  

Hopefully, it will help you find what you’re looking for with greater efficiency. 

App 1: Shogun 

The first app on our list is Shogun.  

Shogun is an app that you can use to create beautiful and high converting landing pages. In fact, you can use Shogun to create anything from landing pages to about pages. So, it pretty much allows you to create any page type you can think of. 

Shogun offers some cool features including:  

  • Drag and Drop Editor  
  • 30+ Page Templates  
  • Theme Editor 
  • Image Optimiser 
  • Image Resizer 

App 2: Oberlo 

For anyone looking to get into drop shipping, Oberlo is a must-have.  

This app is only available to drop-shippers who use Shopify as their ecommerce platform. 

It will give you a host of features and functionality that will allow you to smoothly run your Shopify store.  

You can use Oberlo to scan through the catalogs offered by awesome wholesalers such as AliExpress and AliBaba.  

Once you’ve found a product, the app will enable you to quickly import it to your Shopify store and start selling and shipping to your customers.  

Top Oberlo features include:  

  • “Order Volume” Sorter  
  • Oberlo Chrome Extension (add products to your store in a few short clicks!) 
  • Captcha Solvers 
  • Affiliate Program 
  • Bulk Orders 

App 3: Omnisend

Omnisend describes itself as an all in one “omnichannel automated marketing solution”.  

Which, in plain English, means that you can use it to market your brand across more than one sales channel, from the same platform.  

Pretty neat, eh? 

 Here are some helpful features offered by Omnisend: 

  • Customer/Contact Segmentation 
  • Email/AB Testing/SMS Campaigns Available 
  • Sign-Up Form Variations for Lead Generation  
  • Powerful Automation (Workflows)   
  • Single-Click Shopify Integration 

App 4: Swell 

Swell is an app that will help you increase your brand’s conversions by offering rewards that will encourage customer loyalty. 

Something cool about Swell is that it’s a YotPo company. (YotPo is another marketing app that encourages repeat buyers and referrals, just in case you didn’t know!) 

Helpful Swell features are as follows:  

  • Rewards Program 
  • Referral Program 
  • Multiple Plans Available to Suit Every Business  
  • VIP Tiers and Gamification Strategies  
  • 15+ Actions to Reward Customers 

Also, the app can be integrated with more powerful marketing software such as the already alluded to YotPo and the popular Mail Chimp. 

App 5: SEO Image Optimiser – SEO Tools

This app will help you drive traffic to your Shopify store, by improving your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). 

You see, it is set up in a way that helps you attract more visitors from Google searches. 

Also, it offers alt tag and meta description features that will help make your site more visible in Google Image’s search results.  

Which is an incredibly effective way of attracting buyers to your Shopify store. 

The following are top tools and facts related to SEO Image Optimizer:  

  • No Coding Knowledge Required to Use
  • Easy to Install with a few quick clicks  
  • Alt-Text Optimisation  
  • Meta Tag Optimisation (Paid Plan Only) 
  • Automated JSON-LD 

App 6: Shippo 

Shippo is an app designed to help you customize and automate your shipping as much as possible. 

It offers discounted shipping rates to save you some extra cash and can be integrated with a host of big-name couriers. 

If you’re looking for an affordable and easy to manage shipment interface, Shippo is worth considering.  

Shippo offers a tonne of helpful features:  

  • Discounted Rates if you Ship with USPS and/or DHL Express 
  • No Hidden Fees ($5 cents Per Label) 
  • Auto-Sync Package Info  
  • Ability to Stamp Your Brand on Packaging  
  • All in One Platform to Import Orders From  

App 7: Privy 

If you find that leads are bouncing from or pogoing around your store quite a bit, without ever making a purchase, Privy can help.  

The app is designed to target visitors with promotions and offers that have been optimized to generate conversions and increase your contacts list.  

Privy can be integrated with both Shopify and Shopify Plus, so you can get started with it right away.  

Here are five interesting things about Privy:  

  • You Do Not Need to Possess Any Coding Knowledge to Use its Software 
  • Offers a Powerful Blend of Conversion and Marketing Tools  
  • AB Testing Available to Aid in Increasing Conversion Rates  
  • Real-Time Reporting Visible Through the Dashboard  
  • Cart Abandonment Notifications Can Be Sent Via Email  

App 8: Sales Pop 

If you’ve never owned an ecommerce business, then you probably won’t fully appreciate the value of social proofing. 

Sure, you’ve probably bought products online and have seen popups notifying you of others who have bought similar products?  

But, have you ever thought about the true value of these popups? 

As in, did they make you feel secure, and like you were dealing with a reputable brand? 

Well, they should have because this is one of the most installed and highly rated apps out there. 

And what does it do? Why, it sends popup notifications to your site when visitors make a conversion, which encourages more visitors to make even more conversions. 

Simple, effective and a proven method you can use to increase your conversions.  

Now, for a few facts about Sales Pop:  

  • Over 25,000 Shopify Stores Currently Avail of Sales Pop’s Services 
  • You Bill Be Able to Manage and Control Pop-up Locations And Whereabouts On-Page  
  • Templates Available That Can be Edited Code-Free or with CSS 
  • Geo-Location Notifications Available  
  • API available for advanced customization  

App 9: Discounted Upsells – Upsell   

This Shopify app was created by Booster Apps.  

And, as you can tell from its name, it will allow you to upsell and cross-sell products in your store.  

Now, let’s look at some of the best features available through this app:  

  • Discounted Rates When It Comes to Upselling and Cross-selling 
  • No Coding Needed to Get Setup 
  • AI Available to Choose Products to Upsell and Cross-sell 
  • Optimized for Mobile  
  • Free Trial Available  

Best Shopify App to Increase Conversions – Swell  

Swell is available for integration with Shopify, and we recommend that you take full advantage of that fact.  

We’ve already given a brief overview of what problem the app solves up above.

So, in this section, we plan to get into greater detail regarding its pros and cons.  

We’ll begin on a positive note, by taking a look at what we like about Swell.  

Pros 

The first thing that we like about Swell, is that it is used by some of the largest and most notable businesses on Shopify. So much so, that the app has been made a Shopify Plus Technology Partner. Also, the integration has received over 2,000 reviews in Shopify’s app store and is averaging a 4.7-star rating. What all of this tells us, is that the app is extremely effective at generating conversions through its rewards, referrals, and loyalty programs. This also means it’s worth integrating into your Shopify store because it can earn you more conversions. 

The next thing that we find attractive about this Shopify app, is that it improves conversions through gamification techniques and VIP tiers. For those of you who don’t know, gamification simply refers to implementing a game-like experience into things that are not typically game-related. A great example of this, conveniently enough, is Swell’s VIP tiers that will be integrated into your sites. How these tiers work, is that once you make a purchase, every purchase after that moves you up a position into a higher tier. This creates a game-like feel for your customers as they try to continue making purchases to move up the ranks and unlock new rewards. All the while, increasing your conversions. Pretty smart, right?  

Our final pro is the app offers a tonne of great features. For example, once you integrate the app into your Shopify store, there are over 15 actions that your customers can perform to earn a reward. This is a great way to encourage repeat customers. The more repeat customers you have the better.  Mainly, because it’s far easier to keep customers than it is to set up marketing campaigns to attract new ones. The app’s customer dashboard will showcase metrics such as points earned as well as your customer’s VIP tier. You can use these metrics to make your programs better and therefore more likely to generate conversions. Swell also allows you to see how much customers are spending, which will give you an idea as to how well your program is performing.  

Cons  

As you can imagine with an app that’s been reviewed by 2,000+ people, and received nearly a five-star rating, Swell doesn’t have a whole heap of negatives. To be honest, we’re kind of clutching at straws to find any.  

One possible con that we did notice while researching Swell on the Shopify app store, was that its interface seems to bug out for some users. But, that’s hardly substantial evidence as there was only a tiny figure of marketers who noted this glitch in their reviews. Besides, so many more sang the apps praises with 1,700+ reviewers leaving a five-star rating, as opposed to the 29 that left a one-star rating. It’s still a tad worrying though, so be mindful of bugs and glitches if you choose to install the app. 

Also, if we were to be a bit picky, you need to have some technical knowledge to install its API and SDK. 

Something that bugged us, were claims that Swell demands an additional fee for setup support. So, we sent them an email to find out whether this was the case. 

And, setup support is free. Their “Growth Support Hero” Rogelio, was kind enough to explain that they offer both instructions and article guides to help you in the process.

 So, to reiterate, there are no additional fees for setup support.  

A Must-Have Shopify App to aid in Customer Retention – Privy  

Privy has over 22,300 reviews and a 4.7-star rating in the Shopify app store. So, it’s easy to tell that this is a Shopify app worth integrating with your store. 

Anyway, we’ve chosen Privy as our must-have customer retention app. And, there are a few main reasons as to why we did that.  

Pros  

The first one being, that the Shopify integration simply offers a tonne of extremely helpful conversion and marketing features. For example, the app allows you to create and customize a variety of displays. All of which, have been optimized for mobile.  So, whether you want to embed an email sign-up form into your site to generate more leads. Or, gamify it with a spin to win wheel, you can. Ultimately, these actions and displays will increase your conversions over time. So, we like that about them.

While on the topic of conversions, it’s a good idea to mention that you can implant coupons, email autoresponders and pop-ups throughout your store. Coupons are always an excellent way of increasing conversions and encouraging repeat customers because let’s face it, we all love saving some money! Also, the app offers AB testing and the ability to run targeted campaigns that you can center around key metrics. AB testing is great because it will allow you to see your store’s conversion rates. Which will allow you to further optimize your pages for conversions as well as the performance of your conversion strategies. The idea being here that it will increase your conversion rate even further overtime. 

Its targeting and triggers are fantastic as they ensure that the right customers are receiving information about your products and promotions. Again, these tools and practices serve to increase your conversion rate, which is great for you as a marketer.  

Our final Privy pro is that it lets you automate your email marketing process. Obviously, email marketing is massive for anyone looking to retain customers because it allows you to accumulate a list of contacts or leads. These leads can then be targeted with advanced marketing campaigns to make more sales. Privy will give you a host of options to create and manage these marketing campaigns. For example, you will have the ability to send email newsletters, cart recovery emails, and emails to follow up on customer orders. On top of that, you’ll be able to take advantage of the popups you place within your store by combining them with targeting and triggers. This will all help you grow your email list with new leads, and therefore, increase your potential to generate conversions.  

Cons  

Now, for the cons.  

Oh boy, the app has over 20,000 positive reviews in Shopify’s app and integration marketplace, so we’ll once more be clutching at straws.  

That being said, one issue you could find with Privy, is that they don’t offer a huge number of fonts. Granted, there is enough for it not to become a problem, and its higher-end plans do offer you the ability to import custom fonts. Nonetheless, if you’re someone who loves customization, and has no reason to buy into one of the more expensive plans. Well, this could become an issue for you. 

The next con we want to bring to your attention is that some online reviewers have noted that the platform is buggy. Again, this is only a minority experience that the majority of people who use Privy will ever experience. So, don’t worry too much about the app not working because it is highly unlikely to ever affect you.  

Our final Privy con has to do with pricing. And, there are a couple of points we want to make here. Firstly, this ecommerce integration does not allow you to hide its logo on its website if you enroll in its free plan. Now, this isn’t by any means going to affect your digital store. But, as one online reviewer explained, it is rather uncomfortable not to have the power to remove the logo from your site. After all, it is yours, so Shopify integration should allow you to do so. Also, if you compare Privy’s pricing to other solutions, most would agree that it’s a tad bit pricey.  

The Best Landing Page Builder for Shopify – Shogun

For our landing page selection, we’ve chosen Shogun.  

This Shopify integration has a 4.9-star rating in the ecommerce platform’s app marketplace, with over 1,700 reviews.  

At our time of writing this post, it’s in Shopify’s staff picks section, so you can rest assured it’s high performing.  

Anyway, it’s high time we begin taking a look at some of the pros of this landing page builder. 

Pros  

Our first Shogun pro is that it’s super easy to design pretty much any page type using the app. You can use it to create high converting landing pages, helpful FAQ pages or even set up a donations page. There really is no limit to the page types you can create using its editor. Oh, speaking of Shogun’s editor, you’ll be pleased to know that you’ll need zero developmental knowledge of CSS or JavaScript to use it. This is because it operates in a drag and drop format.

 Which, is great for you because it’ll save you having to pay a developer to customize your pages for you. The Shopify integration also boasts a super helpful import editor that lets you edit pre-existing pages. You’ll also have access to 30+ custom templates that can be edited using the app’s theme editor. In a nutshell, you’ve got extremely powerful page customization options.  

Did you know that Google Images is the second most popular search engine on the internet? 

Well, that interesting little fact brings us to our next Shogun pro. You see, with Shogun, not only will you have an abundance of page options, you’ll also have an abundance of Image options, too. You’ll be able to avail of the app’s image optimizer and image resizer. These tools will allow you to ensure that you have high-performing images that fit seamlessly into your pages and galleries.

Also, they’ll ensure that your store’s images are working on all devices. Be that laptop, tablet or mobile. The latter of the three is particularly important, as roughly 50% of all web traffic is now mobile. And, nothing will turn buyers away quicker than malfunctioning images on your storefront. The point we’re trying to make here is that mobile optimization is absolutely crucial. And, Shogun allows you to optimize for mobile, which is awesome! 

Our final Shogun positive is that it offers awesome versatility. For example, you’ll have access to a host of different features concerning SEO, marketing, conversions, and integrations. Remember we mentioned its image optimizer? Well, that’s awesome for SEO because it will allow you to compress images so that they load faster on your page. The faster your page loads, the better because page loading speeds are a metric Google takes into consideration when creating the SERPs. 

Other cool SEO related features include the ability to create your personal:  

  • Meta Titles 
  • Meta Descriptions 
  • Alt Text (This is super important for images) 

The app also offers a host of marketing tools such as an affiliate program, AdWords and flash funnels to boost your store’s conversion rates. In terms of aiding conversions, you’ll have access to AB testing and other page elements that will encourage sales.  

On top of that, the app can be integrated with Google Analytics and Adobe Typekit.  

Cons  

Now, it’s time for some of the negatives associated with Shogun. 

If we had to pick one though, we would bring your attention to some online reviewers noting that the app is buggy. One marketer remarked that they lost hours of work due to Shogun malfunctioning by not saving the code of published landing pages properly.

 Obviously, this was an overwhelmingly disappointing experience, which resulted in their hard work being lost. And, as Shogun duly noted in its reply to its disappointed customer, “unacceptable”. Not to put Shogun on blast entirely, they did apologize profusely and offered the person who left the review a full refund as gratitude for their loyalty. 

Also, its engineering team was said to have been attempting to locate the code and remedy the situation. So, if something does go wrong when using Shogun, you can at least have the peace of mind that you will be taken care of.  

It’s also important to note that software will sometimes bug out, and you may be unfortunate enough to be the only victim of this glitch. So, always bear in mind, before you purchase any Shopify app or integration, that it may not work entirely as you wish. Although, they should if you’re investing your hard-earned cash into it. Regardless, if you’re thinking about using Shogun, be aware that this is an issue that could crop up.

Anyway, that’s enough of a pep talk.  

Our final Shogun con is a mixture of juvenile things that we feel might annoy you, but won’t affect your store’s conversion rates. For instance, one online reviewer complained that Shogun sent them an email after they had contacted them asking to no longer receive emails. Another aspect of the ecommerce integration that some may not like, is that it’s more compatible with the likes of Chrome and Firefox.  As opposed to lesser-known search engine operators. Again, all of this is hardly a deal-breaker, so I wouldn’t lose any sleep over any of it.  

Overall, Shogun is an awesome up and coming landing page builder. And we, along with Shopify, would recommend trying it out with your ecommerce business.  

The Best Shopify App for Shipping – Shippo 

We’ve opted for Shippo as our best Shopify shipping app.  

Shippo has 440 reviews in the app store and is averaging a 4.6-star rating.  

Here’s what we liked about Shippo. 

Pros  

When it comes to Shippo, we are in love with the fact they offer a tonne of reduced carrier rates. For instance, if you use some of the top couriers in the world such as USPS and DHL Express, you will be entitled to a discount. 

But, that’s not all. If you choose FedEx as one of your couriers, the FedEx Advantage Program could save you as much as 29% on shipping. All in all, that is a lot of money that could be put toward other business ventures, which are more likely to yield a higher ROI. Oh, the app lets you sync up with over 50 different couriers across the globe, which is impressive.  

Another positive we would associate with Shippo is its tracking. The app will automatically send tracking information back to Shopify, so you don’t have to worry about anything. One of the major reasons we like this so much is that you can then use this data to inform customers of where their purchases are around the globe. 

People like to know that they’re not being scammed. And being able to frequently check-in on the whereabouts of their purchases should put their mind at ease. Which, could also lead to them shopping with you in the future, thus increasing your sales.  

Saving the best for last, it’s now time to talk about Shippo’s automation.  Which is great because it helps make everything so much more efficient. For instance, the app allows you to automatically save package information and email customers with tracking updates. 

On top of that, you can import store data from Shopify along with other social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.

 Also, if you’re selling products abroad you will have a host of features at your disposal. For example, you’ll be able to automatically create custom forms and invoices for your business.   

Cons  

The first Shippo con has to do with its Customer Service. Some online reviewers have complained that they were left waiting an unacceptably long time to hear back from Shippo. This is a concern as you need to be able to rely on the app’s support team in case you run into difficulties.  

Another con is the inability to customize emails on Shippo’s basic plan. This could prove problematic if you’re trying to stamp your brand over what you do.

Our final Shippo con has to do with Shipping. You see if you choose to deliver a package by hand or via a courier not ordered through Shippo. And, the order has been placed through your Shopify store. It becomes difficult to tell the software that the order has been fulfilled. 

Essential SEO App for driving traffic to your Shopify Store – SEO Image Optimiser – SEO Tools 

Next up, is SEO Image Optimiser.  

The Shopify app has over 3600 reviews and is averaging a 4.8-star rating in the store. 

Pros 

We don’t have a whole pile to say about this app, other than it does what you’d expect it to, which is optimize your images. We’ve alluded to this previously, but image optimization is critical if you’re to successfully optimize for mobile. Mobile optimization is also extremely important as it is a metric taken into careful consideration by Google when ranking pages. 

Oh, almost forgot, image optimization is also important because it can serve to send traffic to your online store via Google Images.

So, in summary, our first pro for this Shopify integration is that it can improve your position in the search rankings. So, in summary, our first pro for this Shopify integration is that it can improve your store’s SEO.  

The next thing we like about this ecommerce integration is that it can be installed in a matter of clicks. To be specific, one click. Which, is extremely efficient, and should save many of you guys a lot of stress.

Also, according to Booster apps, it will only take less than a minute to get the app integrated with your store. Which, means you can begin improving your SEO straight away.  

“Set and Forget SEO”, has a lovely ring to it, don’t ya think? Well, it’s our final pro. Now, you may be wondering what the hell it means, so allow us to explain. Once you run the install on the app and get it fully set up, you never have to do anything with it again.

 And, that’s because the app automates the image SEO process for you, leaving you to do whatever you please! 

Cons 

The first thing that we didn’t like about the app, is that it claims to be free to download, yet offers a paid plan.  

The paid plan includes meta optimization as well as SEO assistance. But you have to pay $24.99 to avail of it on a supposedly free app. 

Granted, those are awesome features, and it offers some even better ones, so the features aren’t the issue here. 

The issue is, the app is supposed to be free, yet it’s not.

So, truly, if you want the best the app has to offer you need to purchase the paid option, yet the app doesn’t clarify that in its product description. It’s a little annoying is all.  

Otherwise, it’s a great app and there are no major issues with its performance.  

Our Shopify Dropshipping Recommendation (Top App/Integration Available with Shopify) – Oberlo 

We couldn’t write this article, without mentioning the Shopify integration we feel is the best when it comes to dropshipping.  

So, step up, 

Oberlo.  

Pros 

Oberlo is an awesome aid when it comes to running your Shopify store. It has over 2,300 reviews in the app marketplace and is averaging a 4.6 star-rating, so you know it’s reliable. 

Oberlo’s first pro is the amount of data it places at your disposal. This is fantastic because you can use it to make smarter product selections. You’ll be able to assess metrics such as pricing and popularity, which are crucial to ensuring you find a winning product. 

On top of that, the app’s sales dashboard will give you the power to monitor how the products you import into your store are doing. This will also enable you to figure out your best sellers, and set up marketing campaigns centered around them, to improve your conversion rate.  

The next Oberlo pro is its pricing. Well, more so its free plan, which will give you pretty much everything you need to run a dropshipping store. Another thing that we liked about Oberlo, is that it lets you set up “global pricing rules” for your Shopify store. This is great because it will save you having to chop and change pricing yourself, which leaves you with more time for other parts of your business. 

The automation offered by Oberlo, when it comes to managing and updating stock, is super helpful, too. 

Mainly, because it means that you’ll never have to worry about being unable to fulfill orders. This is due to the fact that Oberlo will not allow customers buy a product through your store if it cannot confirm that it’s in your inventory.

Anyway, all of these perks and features combined, make your life much easier.  

Our final Oberlo pro is the level of customization on offer. You’ll have the ability to edit the title of your imported products to something eye-catching and innovative. To compliment your catchy title, you can create a product description, in which, you’ll provide information regarding your product. Obviously, you’ll want to talk about the best features your product has to offer so that people want to buy them. Oh, you’ll also be able to customize images. 

In short, you’ll have a high enough level of customization to plant your brand’s mark on all the products you import through Oberlo.  

Cons  

It’s time for the cons associated with Oberlo. (Plus, a little rant about dropshipping.) 

First up, is its support. Well, specifically its live chat, which allegedly is not very helpful. With one online reviewer complaining, that they were left waiting roughly two hours for an answer to a question that they had asked. They also claimed that they had been in contact with two members of Oberlo’s support team. 

And, both support assistants, are alleged to have left the chat after half an hour without any warning, or solving the reviewer’s problem. This is extremely strange, as most online reviews reported no issues in relation to Oberlo’s support. 

Nonetheless, these claims are somewhat worrying and do bring into question why this issue was not resolved in a timely manner. 

Another con of Oberlo is the manner in which it’s marketed. You see, the Shopify integration summarises its app as a tool that’ll help you:  

  • Find Products 
  • Import them to your store  
  • And ship them off 

In an ideal world, owning an ecommerce store would be so easy. But this isn’t an ideal world, it’s the real one. So, it’s a little too casual of an explanation regarding what the app will allow you to achieve. 

And, one that appears to have left many of its users feeling aggrieved online. A great example of this comes from one reviewer who felt that the app did not offer enough products. Nor did they feel that is offered enough high-quality products. Also, this person didn’t like Oberlo’s success stories, as they felt that it gave off an aura of unrealistic success. This entrepreneur clearly felt that the app was not stating the reality of how tough ecommerce is to be successful.  

But, it’s only right to point out the obvious here, Oberlo is not at fault for your dropshipping store not succeeding. Nor are they at fault for trying to market their product in the most efficient way possible. Most successful dropshippers are choosing from the same products as everyone else.

The only difference is, they’re investing the amount of time and money required to market them properly. This same marketer states that one of his problems with Oberlo, is the fact “it costs money to properly market your store” and that you’ll be charged by Shopify regardless of your success.  

As previously mentioned, this is the real world. So, you’re nothing short of totally naïve if you think that a company isn’t going to charge you for using its services, merely because you didn’t make any money off of them. 

Likewise, you can’t expect that you’re going to be able to create a successful business without pumping some serious cash into it.

The moral of the story is, be careful with things that sound too good to be true because they probably are. 

An Awesome Shopify Social Proofing App – Sales Pop  

Pros  

Sales Pop’s first positive is that it will help you earn more conversions. It does this by providing social proof in the form of popups that report your store’s activity in real-time. Not only does this make your store look busy. But it also creates a perception that the buyer is missing out on something if they don’t purchase your products. You’ll have a range of countdown timers and promotion types at your disposal to create this effect.  

The next thing we find brilliant about Sales Pop is the level of customization you’ll have over its popups. For example, you’ll be able to take its templates and edit them using a range of features. Also, if you have programming knowledge, you can customize these templates even further using CSS. This should enable you to create authentic pop-ups for your Shopify store.  

Our final pro has to do with the level of control offered by Sales Pop. Not only will you have the power to customize your popups to fit your brand’s needs. You’ll also have the power to place them wherever you like within your store. What’s even more useful, is you’ll be able to view data relating to how your popups are performing. So, what that also means, is that you’ll be able to optimize them for conversions.  

Cons  

Sales Pop is known to suffer from the odd bug, which could result in some obscure popups on your website. If this happens, reach out to its support team immediately. 

You have to rate the app before you use it, which has ticked off several people online, so that’s another con of the app.  

Our Pick for the Best Upselling App Available for Integration with Shopify – Upsell  

Pros  

Upsell is great because it will encourage your customers to buy more products from your store. And it will do this by pushing promotions alongside your customers’ purchases. Also, these promotions can be offered at a discounted rate, which should provide double the incentive for shoppers to splash their cash.  

This Shopify integration is also helpful due to the fact it allows you to increase your conversions, without having to attract new customers. In the current digital economy, marketing is becoming more and more difficult, not to mention, far more expensive. So, something that lets you sell more to existing customers, is very valuable.  

The final thing that we like about the app, is that its AI will analyze your store’s data, and tell you which products to upsell. This will prove invaluable to entrepreneurs who haven’t quite learned the ropes just yet.  

Cons 

This is one of those Shopify apps that doesn’t offer a live chat, which means you’ll be waiting a while to hear back from its support team.  

Also, while researching the app, we noticed a few negative reviews regarding the integration of the app messing up store code. And, its support staff not being at all helpful when people get in touch with issues.  

Must-Have Shopify Apps 

In summary, here is our list of essential Shopify apps. 

  • Shogun  
  • Oberlo  
  • Omisend  
  • SEO Image Optimiser – SEO Tools  
  • Swell  
  • Shippo  
  • Privy  
  • Sales Pop
  • Upsell

Further read:

11 of the Best Salesforce Commerce Cloud Apps to Run Your Business Effectively [2021 Update]

Salesforce is a powerful platform. Used by over 150,000 people, it is known as one of the best CRM (customer relations management) platforms out there. It’s a great tool that can help you to run your business more effectively – but it can be customized further using their App Marketplace.

The question is – which apps are the best? With over 3,000 apps to choose from, it’s hard to know where to begin. In our guide on the best Salesforce commerce cloud apps, we’ll take you through the top ones out there.

We’ll look at a variety of apps in different categories – event management, accounting, analytics, marketing automation, and more – looking at the main features they have to offer. We’ll also take a look at customer reviews, giving you an overview of what real users think, and we’ll give you the average star rating out of 5 for each app.

Plus, we’ll tell you which tiers work for each app – as not all apps are compatible with every tier.

We’ve tried to pick an app from a broad range of categories, so you can find something to suit your business.

Let’s start off with marketing!

Best for Marketing – Lead Scoring

For a free app, this one packs a punch. Lead Scoring gives your customers a score based on rules that you can set yourself (for example, making a purchase). The higher the score, the more likely the customer is to make a new purchase – meaning you can specifically target those customers in your marketing strategy.

It’s a simple app to install and run, and it doesn’t take long to set up the rules. If you’ve never encountered lead scoring before, this app provides a good way to try it.

Main Features

  • Capture leads based on a variety of criteria
  • Highly customizable
  • Easy to install

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users enjoyed how easy it was to install the app, and how many features it offered for free. They also report that the app is very customizable, allowing you to set your own criteria for lead scoring. This may put some people off if you’ve never attempted lead scoring before, but it may be just right for you if you want to have full control of the process.

It has an average rating of 5 stars.

Pricing

Lead Scoring is a free app – you can find out more here.

Best Page Builder – Shogun

Shogun will give you the power to create beautiful pages for your eCommerce store. Whether you need to make landing pages, blog posts, or product pages, the easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor will enable you to do so.

What’s great about Shogun is that it’s a very visual platform, simple to learn and easy to use. Just drag and drop the page elements where you want them – and then customize it to your hearts’ content. If you want to make page building simple, this is a great app to go for.

Plus, it comes with extra features, including A/B testing for your pages, and analytics (depending on which price plan you choose).

Main Features

  • Create great-looking pages, using templates or from scratch
  • Simple drag-and-drop page editor
  • A/B testing
  • Analytics suite

What Do Users Think?

As Shogun doesn’t appear on the App Exchange, we weren’t able to get user reviews. However, you can find our review of Shogun for Shopify here (it works in the same way once you’ve got the integration up and running).

Pricing

There are different price plans for Shogun, depending on which features you want. To find out more, visit Shogun’s website.

Best for Events Management – Cvent Events App

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If you need to sell tickets to an event online, this app is a must-have. It streamlines a lot of the processes that come with event management, saving you time and effort – and it’s particularly well-suited to businesses with larger teams. You can allow your teams to invite and register customers to events and track how well your events have performed.

The great thing about this app is that you can follow your contact’s journey with your business – at past events for example. This can give your sales team an idea of which future events they can market to specific customers. From your point of view, you can track and manage the performance of your sales team easily.

The data from your events is displayed clearly – making it much easier to report the results of an event to your wider team.

Main Features

  • Streamline the processes that come with running events
  • Clear reporting shows you the success of each event
  • Sales team can individually track and pursue potential customers

Available For

  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users really enjoy how much this app streamlines their work processes, eliminating some of the time-consuming manual tasks (like manual invitee list uploads).

It has an average rating of 5 stars.

Pricing

Starts at $2,450 per company per year – click here to find out more.

Best for Analytics – Conga Grid

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With a huge amount of 5-star reviews, Conga Grid is the ultimate analytics solution. It will organise data in a way that makes it simple to understand. It allows you to manage information, simplifying it so you have the most accurate data available. Using their grid system, you can create a customized display that will show your data in one screen – this saves you time and allows you to see how well certain products or pages are performing, so you can make adjustments if necessary.

You can also use Quick Start Grids if you want to get up and running right away.

Main Features

  • Create your own personalized grid to organise data
  • Keep data organised and clear
  • Quick Start Grids allow you to get going straight away
  • Clear display allows you to see and understand your sales data in one glance

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users find Conga to be intuitive and simple to use, with little training needed to get up to speed with it. They also found Conga’s customer service to be brilliant, with dedicated account managers available if needed. They enjoyed how easy it is to import data in one click, saving a lot of time and effort.

It has an average rating of 5 stars.

Pricing

Conga starts at $18 per month for 10 users (this is the minimum user amount). They offer discounts for non-profits. Find out more here.

Best for Accounting – FinancialForce

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Keeping on top of your accounts can be complicated and time-consuming, so when you’re looking for an app, you want one that is going to simplify the process as much as possible, saving you a lot of headaches. Financial Force is a great one, as it has tons of features and helps to break things down in a simple, easy-to-understand way.

With a modern, clean interface, Financial Force allows you to automate the billing and collections process, saving you time. It gives you comprehensive financial reporting, with very readable information that is updated in real time. It also allows you to streamline some of the more boring processes, like recurring journal entries and reversing of entries. You can also monitor cashflow, even across multiple bank accounts – which is a vital tool.

You can even get access to trend forecasting, and it’s easy to access data wherever you are, even on mobile.

Main Features

  • Streamlines tedious processes, making bookkeeping much easier
  • Gives you comprehensive financial reporting
  • Automates billing and collections process
  • Trend forecasting
  • Easy to access live information at any time

Available For

  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users found the app to be user-friendly and intuitive. They found the reporting to be very powerful, too. Some users found it slowed things down a little, as the app installs a lot of objects, tabs, and pages, so that’s something be aware of. However, most reviews are positive.

It has an average rating of 4.6 stars.

Pricing

Pricing starts at $420 per company per month. Click here to find out more.

Best for Marketing Automation – ActiveCampaign

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When it comes to marketing automation, ActiveCampaign are well-known, and their app for Salesforce is brilliant. You can create personalized email marketing campaigns using information you already have in your Salesforce accounts. You can manage leads and contacts easily, allowing you to specifically target certain customers with marketing campaigns that are just right for them.

It’s packed with features, including marketing automation, email marketing, site messaging, online chat, segmentation, and conditional content – meaning you can create highly personalized, customisable campaigns.

Whether you want to send follow-up emails, target leads with specific campaigns, or just observe how your leads are interacting with your email campaigns, ActiveCampaign covers it all.

Main Features

  • Marketing automation which allows you to create highly personalized campaigns
  • Email marketing, site messaging, and online chat
  • Lead management allows you to segment and organise your contacts
  • Set unique goals for each customer
  • Start a campaign to win back previous customers

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Essentials

What Do Users Think?

Users think that the app takes a little time to learn – so if you don’t want a learning curve, it might not be for you. However, most users report great results, meeting or exceeding all expectations when it comes to creating marketing campaigns.

It has an average rating of 4.4 stars.

Pricing

ActiveCampaign starts at $9 per company per month, with discounts available for non-profits. Find out more here.

Best for Shipping – FedEx Shipping App

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If you want to manage your shipping seamlessly, FedEx is a great choice. You can mail and ship products to any lead, contact, or account. The app automatically calculates FedEx shipping rates, too – meaning it can quickly print shipping and return labels, saving you time and effort.

It also allows you to keep in touch with your customers using the ‘Chatter’ service, giving them real time tracking updates.

Main Features

  • Send mail or ship packages to any Lead, Contact, or Account
  • Automatically calculates FedEx rates
  • Generate and print labels automatically
  • Track shipments using Chatter service

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Force.com
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users enjoy how easy this is to use, especially as you never have to leave the Salesforce cloud to do it – saving you from having to learn to use multiple platforms. They found the automation of otherwise time-consuming tasks to be extremely useful, which is great.

It has an average rating of 4.9 stars.

Pricing

The price starts at $208.75 per month, with discounts available for non-profits. You can find out more here.

Best for Customer Feedback – Formstack

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Sometimes, you need to capture data from your customers. Whether you want feedback on a certain event, campaign, or sale, or you need to collect data for an order form, Formstack has you covered with it’s easy to use form builder.

You can create a variety of forms, including customer feedback, event registration, waivers and disclaimers, job applications, order forms, and more. You can even create a contact form so your customers can contact you directly. The form builder itself is intuitive and simple to use, and best of all, it’s safe – it’s HIPAA, PIPEDA and GDPR compliant, meaning you can trust that your customer’s data will be kept securely.

Main Features

  • Create any kind of form using an easy, intuitive form builder
  • Form builder is HIPAA, PIPEDA and GDPR compliant
  • Forms are responsive and mobile-friendly
  • You can send forms to customers via email
  • Includes a free 14-day trial

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Force.com
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users think that the form builder itself works really well, and they like how customizable it is even if you have no technical experience. They also praised the customer support, saying they were responsive and helpful.

It has an average rating of 4.8 stars.

Pricing

FormStack starts at $79 per month with discounts available for nonprofits. You can find out more here.

Best for Staff Training – Trail Tracker

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If you run a bigger business and you manage a sales team, motivating your team to learn a new platform can be difficult. Trail Tracker is designed to train your staff to learn how to use Salesforce in a fun, engaging way. Your employees can collect badges as they learn new skills.

It’s also very easy to keep on top of how your employees are doing. It automatically syncs on a daily basis, and it gives you all the customer data you need, including most active users, most popular badges, and records of activity for each user.

It’s a fun app – and if you want to encourage your staff to learn new skills and reach their goals, this is a good way to do it.

Main Features

  • Fun platform encourages staff to reach their goals to earn badges
  • Data syncs every day, so you can track the performance of each staff member
  • An easy, fun way to motivate staff to learn new skills

Available For

  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Force.com
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users find Trail Tracker to be an excellent way to motivate staff. Many found that a sense of friendly competition pushed their staff to work harder – which is a great result. A few people had some issues with installation but found the customer service team to be very responsive.

It has an average rating of 3.2 stars.

Pricing

Trail Tracker is free to use. You can find out more here.

Best for Email Marketing – iContact

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If you want to send mass emails as part of a campaign, but you don’t want to leave the Salesforce platform, this could be the app for you. You can send an unlimited amount of emails per day, choosing from over 600 responsive email design templates – and you can personalize them using Salesforce custom fields.

You can track how interested your contacts are in your email campaigns, so you can then target them with specific emails that will interest them.

The best part is that you don’t have to learn a new platform – it’s all in one place, so as long as you’re already familiar with Salesforce, you’ll be good to go.

It’s also the 2 x winner of the Best Mass Email App by App Exchange in the Customer Choice Awards – so you know they’re a popular choice with Salesforce users.

Main Features

  • 600+ email templates to choose from
  • Send an unlimited amount of emails each day
  • Track how contacts interact with your emails, so you can target them based on their interests
  • Functions within Salesforce platform

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users praised the simplicity of this app, and they like that they don’t have to leave Salesforce to use it. They found the interface to be user-friendly and modern, and felt the customer support was excellent.

It has an average rating of 4.6 stars.

Pricing

iContact starts at $99 per company per month, with discounts available for non-profits. You can find out more here.

Best for Translation – Lingotek Translation

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We’ve got one more free app to round things off. If you want to translate information into different languages, you’ll need an app to help you out – and Lingotek is a brilliant one. Not only does it allow you to translate knowledge base articles and content, it also allows you to translate leads – allowing your sales team to get the right information on each lead in their native language. This helps to improve communication overall, which is great if you have staff in different locations.

All that, for free – and you don’t need to know any coding languages or have strong technical skills.

Main Features

  • Translate pages quickly and easily
  • Translate knowledge base articles to help users
  • Translate lead information for your sales team
  • No coding required

Available For

  • Professional
  • Enterprise
  • Unlimited
  • Force.com
  • Developer
  • Performance

What Do Users Think?

Users liked how simple this app is to use, and how effectively it was able to translate information for different staff members. They found it saved time and allowed their team to work more efficiently.

It has an average rating of 5.0 stars.

Pricing

Lingotek is a free app. You can find out more by clicking here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have any burning questions about Salesforce Commerce Cloud apps? We might have the answer here.

Where Can I Find the App store?

You can find the Salesforce AppExchange by clicking here.

How Much Do Apps Cost?

It depends. Many of them are free (you can filter them to show the free ones if you like). Others can cost hundreds of dollars per month depending on how they work and what they have to offer.

What Apps Do I Really Need?

This depends on the focus of your business and what you want to achieve. If you want to improve your marketing in your eCommerce business, for example, focusing on email marketing apps and marketing automation apps can really help. If you want to run events, you’ll obviously need a good events management app. You can get apps to help with accounting, form creation, shipping … There’s a lot of choice out there.

One thing you may want to consider getting is a good analytics app. A good app (like the one we looked at earlier, CongaGrid) will be able to break down information in a way that is easy to understand. The more data you have about your business – sales, customer information, clickthrough rates, cart abandonment rates, and so on – the more power you have to make practical changes to bring in more sales. We’d definitely recommend finding a decent analytics app for that reason.

How Do I Install a New App?

On the app’s page, click ‘get it now’ and go through the checkout process. You will see a button named ‘install’. Salesforce will then talk you through the steps required to complete the installation process.

How Can I Delete an App on Salesforce?

Head to ‘Setup’, then use the QuickFind box to search for ‘Apps’. Click ‘App Manager’, and from there you can view and delete the apps you don’t want.

What’s the Main Feature I Should Look for in a New App?

Time saving – a lot of time saving!

When you’re running a business, small, repetitive tasks can become a headache really quickly. Many tasks on Salesforce can be automated – from printing postage slips to inputting data to translating pages – and the more time you can save, the easier your life becomes. You can then put your focus into things you’d rather be doing, like building meaningful relationships with your customers or clients, or upskilling staff members.

Every app in this article will save you time in some capacity – and that’s one of the most important things you can look for in a new app.

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud Platform?

Salesforce also has a marketing cloud platform where you can find apps to help you communicate with your customers, create marketing campaigns, generate customer engagement, and analyze data.

Conclusion

Salesforce Commerce Cloud, formerly Demandware, is a great tool for an ecommerce site, but sometimes the AppExchange can be pretty overwhelming.

We hope this guide has helped you to figure out which apps you need the most on Salesforce for your digital commerce. With so many attractive apps out there, it’s tempting to dive right in and download as many as you can – but by being strategic, you can maximize your Salesforce experience, streamlining a lot of processes, like marketing, inventory management, and shipping, that would have otherwise taken up a lot of time and energy.

Market Hero vs Clickfunnels: Which Tool Boosts Business Revenue Faster? 

Marketing automation plays a huge role in online business success today. Processes like email marketing, website hosting and management, social media marketing and customer support can all benefit from automation. Entrepreneurs today can save time and increase revenue by streamlining these processes with automation.

Right from lead qualification to creating digital campaigns, automation makes the process less complicated. You can your monitor marketing campaign, enhance productivity, and improve customer retention. However, you need the right tool. The market is awash with several automation tools but we’re looking at two of them today, Market Hero and Clickfunnels.

Each of these tools offers unique benefits to online businesses today.  Let’s look at them in detail.

The Main Differences between Market Hero vs Clickfunnels

The Main Differences between Market Hero vs Clickfunnels are:

  • Market Hero focuses on e-mail automation services and marketing, whereas Clickfunnels helps you build high converting sales funnels.
  • Market Hero provides templates for you to use, whereas Clickfunnels has a variety of products to use like conversion pages, affiliate programs with email, text and messenger follow-up funnels and more
  • Market Hero use a special ROI calculation tool for track you sales, whereas Clickfunnels does not have this feature.

Let’s take a further look at these key differences.

  1. They Focus on Solving Different Problems

Despite the fact that they are both marketing automation tools, Market Hero focusses on email marketing to grow your business revenue while Clickfunnels builds beautiful sales funnels that turns visitors into leads and leads into loyal customers.

  1. ROI Calculation Tool

Market Hero features a special lead ROI calculation tool. It actively tracks each sale and conversion within your business. You’re able to tell how much your leads are worth over a long period with several filters. This way you will tell what is bringing the best ROI in your business.

You can advertise in Facebook or Google, spending less than what each lead is worth. That way, you’re sure to make a profit. Clickfunnels does not have this feature.

  1. Products are Packaged Differently

Clickfunnels offers a variety of products including Clickfunnels for building funnels, Etison Editor for creating high-conversion pages with a ‘drag n drop’ editor, Backpack which runs affiliate programs in your funnel and Actionetics which creates email, text and messenger follow-up funnels. Each of these products is elaborate with a variety of well-designed templates to make your work easy.

Market Hero on the other hand does not have separate and elaborate products. For example the email editor provides only seven templates with basic design. You cannot create your own forms because the form builder is incorporated within a specific funnel. The elements available are limited.

  1. Training

Market Hero offers an in-depth training by Alex Becker himself.

Even the cheapest membership fee gives you full access to the Market Hero academy. The training offers a ton of value. Clearly, they are committed to seeing you succeed with email marketing.

What is Market Hero?

Market Hero is mainly an email marketing service. It was founded by Alex Becker who wanted to help businesses grow by generating more revenue from a lead than it cost to acquire. The goal of Market Hero is to provide the best email analytics system and revenue centric auto responder. Market Hero’s aim is to empower businesses with a simplified process of obtaining metrics for explosive growth.

This company focusses on the basics of growth to take your business to the next level. Not only do promise you a simplified email marketing system, but also next-level automation and analytics presented in a user-friendly, simple and sleek app.

What is Clickfunnels?

Russell Brunson founded Clickfunnels in 2014 as a solution to the frustration that many business owners face with building websites and funnels. For the business owners who can’t code, you don’t need a tch team. Building an attractive and profitable website is easy with this dynamic platform. This all-in-one software helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses with more leads, more sales, more revenue and several other benefits.

Clickfunnels provides businesses with the tools they require to market, sell and deliver products and services online. You can easily generate leads, sell your products and even follow up on your customers anywhere and at any time.

After signing up with Clickfunnels, your business is on the sure path to success by simply answering the following questions:

  • What is your business?
  • What is your objective?
  • When do you want to achieve your goals?

By now we’ve already established that Market Hero is focused on increasing revenue through email automation while Clickfunnels increases revenue using well-built websites and effective sales funnels. Let’s look at the features of each marketing platform.

Why Compare Market Hero and Clickfunnels?

Market Hero is primarily focused on email marketing and Clickfunnels on creating funnels – although they have an autoresponder service as well. So, it would seem strange to compare these two tools. Wouldn’t it be much easier if they were both email marketing tools? Or funnel building tools? But they are not.

We’re comparing them so that you get the best value when trying to convert leads to sales.

Market Hero is targeted towards new fairly marketers who want to use email marketing to generate revenue. Clickfunnels can be used by beginner and seasoned marketers. The platform’s features make it so simple to build a funnel without technical help Making Instead of scratching their heads over which tool is better, some business owners have resorted to using both tools – together. Let’s look at their features.

Features of Market Hero

  1. Messenger Enabled Auto Responder

Email and Facebook messenger are the two most used communication fronts online. You can use messenger to apply all the awesome automations you’ll find on email. It has over 1 billion users and is the most engaging channel online.

Facebook messenger has an average of 80% open rates and a click through rate (CTR) that is 4-10 times higher than email. This means that your audience is actively using messenger on a daily basis. This is a great opportunity to have your business as a part of it too.

  1. Integrations

Market Hero has the ability to connect with other platforms including Shopify, Zapier, Clickfunnels, Demio, SamCart, Leadpages, JVZoo and PayKickstart. Are you on Shopify and not using Market Hero? They claim that you are simply choosing to limit your income potential. Market Hero allows you to segment and email your customers.

This software automatically compiles your sales and provides you with metrics concerning your customers. It also automates upselling, down selling, abandoned carts and more.

  1. In-depth Metrics

With Market Hero, all the information on your customers and emails are at your fingertips. You can see how many emails were opened, clicked and sent. You can also see the CTR, spam complaints and how many have unsubscribed from your list. It is easy to obtain your sales metrics and determine how much each customer is worth.

  1. Support

Market Hero provides a 24 hour chat support on their website if you need answers quickly. If you’re on Facebook, Twitter or any other social media platform, they can find you there too. They hold monthly webinars and trainings where world renowned experts show you how to use the platform for effective email marketing and exponential business growth.

When you sign up, you’re entitled to a mega course on email marketing, Shopify and messenger. Alex Becker (CEO, Market Hero) created this course to provide you with the same email tactics he has used to build several million-dollar businesses.

The mega course will teach you how to get the most out of email marketing, how to grow your Shopify sales with funnels, emails and messenger, 7 figure advertising techniques, sales and behavior based automations and high ROI email funnels.

  1. Pricing

Market Hero pricing is obviously dependant on the size of your email list. On the website, you’ll have to drag a slider across to see the prices for each category. For 1000 emails, the cost is $19 per month. For 3000 emails, it’s $49 per month and 7500 emails cost $99 per month.

For 10,000 emails, you’ll pay $129 and 25,000 emails will cost you $229. If your email list is 50,000, you’ll part with $549 while 75,000 and 100,000 go for $800 and $950 per month respectively.

Market Hero offers a 14-day trial period – no commitments whatsoever. It comes with a mailing limit but you have access to the whole platform. They also have a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you would like to pay yearly, it comes with a 15% discount. You can pay using Visa, MasterCard, and American Express. You can also use PayPal, checks or wire transfer.

Other Features

Attractive Interface

Any platform with a great looking interface attracts the attention of users. Of course let’s not forget that there are more important factors on the inside that should keep the users. Market Hero features a simple dashboard and a well- designed interface.

Subscriber Management

Adding subscribers or leads can be done using the import tool or manually. The platform uses a tag-based management system. The tags are added when a lead enters your funnel or during the import process. You can easily filter the leads based on various factors like names, emails and status.

Email Campaigns

To send an email broadcast, click the ‘Broadcast’ option on the sidebar menu. Click ‘get started’ and set up your first broadcast. Fill in the sending information and the segment of leads you’re sending the email to.

Market Hero provides only 7 templates, all with basic designs, to choose from. The drag and drop functionality in the email editor works well. You can make changes with the fonts, the floating bar and colors. However, the number of elements to choose from is limited.

Form Builder

You need a form to drive leads into your email funnel. Market Hero does not allow you to create a form like other platforms. The form is integrated in a particular funnel. That is where you will make necessary changes to the elements like images and button types.

Features of Clickfunnels

  1. Smart Funnel Builder

Clickfunnels makes it easy for business owners to independently set up high converting digital marketing funnels without the help of a tech team. Entrepreneurs are too busy to deal with all the moving parts of a marketing funnel. This software is the solution and you can do it in as little as 10 minutes following these steps;

Choose the type of funnel your business needs

Business owners create funnels to;

  • Generate leads – with basic email (or messenger) leads or with long-form application
  • Generate sales – with a two-step tripwire funnel or a sales letter funnel or a launch funnel
  • Run events like webinars – a live webinar with third-party software or an automated webinar run on Clickfunnels only

To choose your preferred funnel, go to Clickfunnels and from the drop-down menu, choose ‘Build a new funnel’, select your goal from the three we’ve discussed above, then choose the type of funnel you want. Immediately, the software will set up all the pages required for your funnel. With a few clicks, you’ll have a tried and tested framework for your online business.

Adjust your funnel to your desire

You can add, move, delete or edit pages as you see fit. You can also add membership sites. Clickfunnels can easily add one-click upsells to increase your cart value. You can add a membership page to host your training without another marketing tool or third party software.

You can reduce cart abandonment by creating an easy check-out process. Clickfunnels helps you do this by using a style order form. It captures lead details which you can use to market to those that abandon carts.

You can add your affiliate program to any Clickfunnels sales funnel within minutes, using only two extra pages. Within the affiliate area, you can edit commission plans, do payouts and create affiliate areas with easily downloadable banner ads and copy. You can also generate affiliate links to put on any of your Clickfunnels pages. This way, your affiliates can collect sales for sharing your content.

Customize your pages

You can make the pages look exactly the way you want by swapping Clickfunnels’ videos, text, logos and products with yours.

Your pages should reflect your unique voice and style. You can achieve this within a few clicks.

Capturing Leads

With Clickfunnels, you can do this in two ways.

  • Automation Tab

You will find this inside your new funnel. You’re able to connect with your audience by creating short email sequences which are sent after an opt-in or sale. Also, you can create notifications that will alert you on any purchase or opt-in.

How do you send an email through automation tab?

Step 1: Add a New Email

Each page in your funnel has an automation tab. First, select the page to send an email to. It could be an order page or opt-in page. Select ‘Add new email’, type in your name, subject and SMTP configuration and the times that you want the emails sent.

Step 2: Select a predesigned template

The predesigned email templates allow you to customize them as much as possible.

Step 3: Edit the template with your unique voice

  • Actionetics Follow-Up Funnels

Actionetics is a powerful tool within Clickfunnels. It is an auto responder that creates, schedules and delivers email sequences. You can also use it to create powerful follow-up funnels that communicate directly to each customer based on the following information;

  • Who they are
  • What they’ve bought from you and when
  • Their activity within your funnel
  • Where they’ve come from

Personalized follow-up funnels boost conversions and generate sales.

How do you create follow-up funnels inside Actionetics?

Step 1: Build your list

To build lists inside Actionetics, go to the ‘Email Lists’ tab and select ‘Add New List’. Choose a name for your new list and save. Actionetics also helps you to create a ‘smart list’ which collects specific data on your leads. For example:

  • Who enjoys your free content and has never bought anything

  • Who has purchased a product and has over 1000 Facebook followers

  • Who purchases all your products

  • Who was interested in your product but abandoned their cart

Step 2: A Follow-Up Funnel

Actionetics is a multi-dimensional follow-up funnel that allows you to communicate to your prospects wherever they are. You can reach them via email, Facebook messenger, desktop notifications or SMS. If they miss your communication on one channel, they’ll definitely see it on another.

Step 3: Send broadcasts to your subscribers

Actionetics helps you send multi-dimensional broadcast messages via Facebook, text, email and desktop notifications.

Step 4: Open your stats and adjust accordingly

When your subscribers receive your messages, you can monitor the statistics and determine the following:

  • How many subscribers opened the emails/messages
  • Who bought your products
  • What revenue you made from each email

This information will help you determine which emails resonate best with your followers.

Adding products onto the platform

With Clickfunnels, you don’t need a third-party tool to sell your products. To add your products, use these steps:

Step 1: Go to the ‘Products’ tab and select ‘Add Product’.

Step 2: Fill in the fields for Product Description, Price and Payment Gateway

Within a few minutes, you can add products, price them and start selling. You can add digital products or physical products. For digital products, when a subscriber makes a purchase, it can provide access to a membership site. This works best if you sell courses and training or if you’re a coach. It can also direct them to a ‘thank you’ page to download the product.

For physical products, once a customer has ordered, you can export the product to a fulfillment company like ShipStation which ships the order.

How will ShipStation work with your funnel?

Step 1: Integration – ShipStation and Clickfunnels

Go to your Clickfunnels dashboard and click ‘Integrations’ then ‘Add New Integration’. Now click on the ShipStation image and then type in a name for the integration. Type in your API key and you’re done.

Step 2: Connect ShipStation to the funnel

When ShipStation is connected to your funnel, you can easily access several other ecommerce and drop shipping sites.

Step 3: Add products in your funnel

After adding your products, ShipStation will do the rest for you until your product reaches your customer.

A/B Split tests for higher conversions

Optimize your funnel for maximum leads and sales by running split tests. With Clickfunnels, you can set up A/B tests for anything including headlines, images, videos, pages and copy.

Your funnel goes live

Within a few minutes, your funnel is ready to go live to generate leads and sales.

For your funnel to go live, ensure that you have done the following;

  • Gone through each step in the Clickfunnels checklist
  • Made a test purchase
  • Set the correct domain for traffic to hit the first page when your funnel goes live

Monitor Your Numbers

Your Clickfunnels dashboard will show you the performance of your funnel. You can compare sales, opt-ins and page views for various funnels. You can also see how many leads you have and where they are coming from.

The stats will also show you which funnels are converting the most leads so that you can focus there. You can see your business growth by selecting sales over a particular period of time. For example over the past 30 days or over the past 2 weeks.

  1. Etison Editor

Clickfunnels designed this page editor so that you can easily pick a template, point and click then drag and drop. You can also create attractive pages that convert visitors into customers. It also enables you to customize a page design for your specific brand.

How does this page editor work?

Step 1: Choose Your Favorite Design and Customize

Clickfunnels has dozens of amazing high converting templates which you can use for free with your account. First decide what type of page you want, then select it, edit it and customize. Inside Clickfunnels, you can create the following pages:

  • Opt-in Pages

All opt-in pages are already engineered to generate leads. You can create op-tin pages within a few minutes, collect leads and start building a list immediately. All you have to do is choose your favorite op-tin page template, then add your opt-in information and branding.

  • Order Form Pages

These are used to collect payments. They make the purchasing and check-out process easy for your customers. To create your order form, fill in your product description, price and merchant account. Now you’re ready to collect payments from your customers.

  • Sales Pages

You have several sales page templates to choose from and they are already designed to convert your leads into customers. You simply have to choose the template you like best, then drag and drop the sales options you want on your page and replace them with your unique branding.

  • Upsell Pages

The page editor helps you create an additional high converting offer page which increases your cart value. All you have to do is choose your desired upsell page template. Then you’ll simply replace the page elements with your own branding.

  • Webinar Event Pages

The Clickfunnels webinar event page templates are built to maximize webinar registrants and boost attendance. After selecting your favorite registration page templates, replace the elements with your webinar information.

Step 2: Understand the Page Structure to Tailor-Make it For Your Brand

The webpages use color-coded building blocks to help you customize. The four basic building blocks are:

  • Sections: These appear in the color green in the page editor and are the base for the page.
  • Rows and Columns: These appear in the color blue and are placed in the various sections on the page.
  • Elements: Elements appear in orange and bring your page layout to life. They are placed in the rows or columns on the page.

Step 3: Add Page Elements

After designing the page structure, you can personalize it by choosing from over 50 elements. Simply drag and drop to the page and switch them around until you have the page you want.

The element library includes text elements, media elements, form elements, advanced form elements, countdown elements, content blocks, miscellaneous elements, order forms, affiliate elements, membership elements and webinar elements.

Step 4: Use Advanced Tools to Create Perfect Pages

You can have more control over your pages by using advanced tools within the Etison Editor. Such tools include:

  • Custom CSS
  • Color Adjustment
  • Padding Adjustment

Step 5: Go Live

When your funnel looks as good as you want, it’s time to go live. Ensure that you’ve followed all the steps and test the pages in your funnel to make sure they’re working correctly.

Step 6: Customize for MobileEnsure that your customers have a flawless experience on any device. You can optimize your mobile experience by:

  • Setting a custom desirable text size for mobile
  • Setting any section, row or element to appear in desktop only or mobile only or both
  • Previewing the page in mobile
  1. Backpack

Create your affiliate program easily with Backpack. You don’t have to pay anything until a sale is made. You only need a few affiliates to multiply your income. With Backpack, you can add an affiliate program to your funnel seamlessly.

Backpack uses ‘sticky cookies’ to keep your affiliates happy, committed and sending you more traffic. When a customer makes a purchase with your affiliate’s ID link, not only do they earn a commission on that purchase but also on any additional purchase the customer makes after that.

The customer’s information ‘sticks’ to the affiliate after the purchase even if they never use the ID link again. Your affiliate will send tons of traffic to you because the financial gain is worth it.

How does Backpack work?

Backpack works in four steps:

  • Decide on a percentage for your affiliates then create a commission plan
  • Add your affiliate program to any sales funnel by adding two simple pages
  • Create an affiliate center for affiliates to easily promote your products
  • Track your ‘affiliate dashboard’ statistics and make payments
  1. Actionetics MD

With Actionetics MD, you can create, schedule and deliver emails easily but it’s more than that. It acts as a follow-up funnel. You can use it to easily communicate with leads based on who they are, where they’re from and their behavior in the funnel. This ensures that you send them the right message at the right time and not treat all visitors the same.

  1. Integrations

Take your sales funnel to the next level by integrating some of your favorite powerful tools. Clickfunnels can be integrated with several tools including Aweber, Converkit, Facebook, HubSpot, MailChimp, Kajabi, InfusionSoft, Zapier and others.

  1. Price

Clickfunnels offers a free 14-day trial. If you’re happy with the product and want to upgrade, you can sign up for the basic plan which costs $97 per month. If you want to add Backpack and Actionetics for a full Clickfunnels Suite, it will cost you $297 per month and you get unlimited funnels, more payment gateways, and domains.

  1. Support

Clickfunnels support is available from Monday to Friday between 9 am and 5 pm. You can click the ‘Get Help’ icon at the bottom right corner of the screen. To get help from your account, click the help menu. Enter your query and click ‘Continue’. Review the articles recommended to you. Then click ‘solved’ or ‘I still need help’ as required. Select an option from the menu and submit your ticket.

How Market Hero and Clickfunnels Can Work Together

If a lead/subscriber did not buy your upsell, no worries. You’ll simply send them a few emails to help them make a few purchases. And what if they actually bought your upsell? Fantastic! Move them to a list where they will receive specific emails at the right time and based on the behavior in the funnel.

That said, you can still use Clickfunnels on its own because it already has an email autoresponder feature. Market Hero on its own would work well for businesses geared towards email marketing and would like to establish the worth of their leads to determine the ROI.

What’s Your Decision?

Market Hero is majorly focused on email autoresponder services and is heavily sales-centric. This tool is ideal if your business is looking to drive sales of your products and services via email. The email templates may be limited with basic designs but the platform guarantees deliverability of your emails. Generally, this platform has good potential.

Clickfunnels on the other hand has a reputation for building high converting sales funnel. With over 90,000 entrepreneurs currently using the platform, it’s safe to say their product has the credibility that every business owner looks out for. Also, they provide a much wider range of services. So, does your business need a sleek email autoresponder platform? Or do you need a sales funnel designed to turn visitors into customers? Or will you use them both? You decide.

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Pagefly vs Shogun App – Which is the Best Shopify App for Your Business? [2021 Update]

If you run a Shopify store, you may be a little frustrated at the lack of templates, and you may wish that you could have better-looking landing pages for your business. In that case, you might be looking at Shopify Apps. Designed to extend your Shopify experience, third-party apps can allow you to design the page you’ve been looking for.

In this PageFly vs Shogun app comparison, we’ll be looking at two similar apps for Shopify. Both allow you to create multiple pages for your website, using a simple drag-and-drop builder. However, there are some differences between the two. We’ll take a look at each platform in detail before directly comparing them to see which one is better for your eCommerce business.

Let’s start with the main differences between the two.

The Main Differences Between PageFly vs Shogun

The main differences between PageFly vs Shogun are:

  • Shogun has a great design and templates, whereas Pagefly is easy to use.
  • Shogun has built-in analytics and split testing, whereas with PageFly you have to integrate with third-party analytics
  • Shogun is more expensive, whereas Pagefly even offers a free plan

What is PageFly?

PageFly is an app built for Shopify that allows you to build landing pages, product pages, blogs, and FAQs. Using a simple drag-and-drop page builder, you can build great pages for your Shopify products, creating a better shopping experience for your customers.

The Main Features of PageFly

In a nutshell, here are the main features you can expect from the PageFly app:

  • Simple to use drag-and-drop page builder which allows you to make pages
  • 50+ templates and 40+ page elements to choose from
  • Save features you have designed to use on other pages

Page Builder

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PageFly allows you to choose from the following:

  • Regular page
  • Home Page
  • Collection Page
  • Product Page
  • Password Page
  • Blog Post

The only one we could test in our free trial was a regular page, but the page builder itself seems to work similarly for each type of page.

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There are over 50 templates to choose from – you can choose to filter them by industry or by page type. You can also quickly view how each template looks on widescreen, desktop, tablet, or mobile device. The templates are attractive and look easy to navigate.

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Once you’ve chosen a template, the page builder will load up. You can build your page using the options on the left.

Elements

Elements are the building blocks of each page. You can play around with the layout here, adding ‘blocks’ in which you can place content.

You can set preferences for each section on the page, including setting ID and class, visibility on different devices, and set a click action (for example, you can send a customer to a certain link if they click on the section).

You can also add headings, paragraphs, buttons, icons, and QR codes. You do this simply by dragging the item you want onto the page. You can then play around with the settings to make it look exactly the way you want it to.

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There are other things you can add too, including:

  • Media, like SoundCloud clips, YouTube videos, and other videos and images
  • Social media, like Instagram, Facebook Like, Facebook Page, and Twitter
  • Advanced features, like a countdown timer, MailChimp Form, tabs, tables, accordions, slideshows, lists, dividers, Google Maps, and custom HTML.

Shopify

The Shopify section allows you to add products directly from your Shopify account. You can choose from the following:

  • Product List
  • Product Details
  • Product Image
  • Product Title
  • Product Vendor
  • Product Price
  • Product Compare at Price
  • Product Variant
  • Product Quantity
  • Product Add to Cart
  • Product Description
  • Product View Details

However, a lot of them are limited to Pro mode, so you need to consider this when deciding which price plan to choose.

Being able to add these elements is really useful, and it’s easy to adjust these if needed.

Third Party Elements

PageFly integrates with other apps, which you can use when you’re building a page. You can add Judge.me Product Reviews, Ali Reviews Product Reviews, and Loox Photo Reviews. 

Premade Sections

You can also add premade sections. These are only available on the Pro plan and are easy to drag and drop into your page. It’s great to have these premade sections available, especially if you want to build a page from scratch.

You can choose to see how your page will look on different types of devices whenever you want to, and it’s easy to switch between them as you edit the page.

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You can see your page outline and bring up a custom code editor – so if you know coding, you can get stuck in here.

You can also build a page from scratch, in which case, the page editor looks like this:

On the Premium plan, you can create sections and save them. So, if you create a design element that you really like, you can save it and use it on other pages. This is really useful if you have multiple pages you want to create that look similar.

The page builder is pretty simple to use, although it doesn’t look as pleasing to the eye as it could do.

SEO

PageFly allows you to improve your SEO in the following ways:

  • Page URL
  • Meta Description
  • Page Title

This is really simple to do as you set up each page, and PageFly reminds you of this when you create a new page.

Analytics

PageFly doesn’t have its own analytics – you have to integrate with Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel instead. PageFly gives you a tutorial to walk you through this process step-by-step.

Support

PageFly has a great, easy to navigate knowledge base. 

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It has a wide range of tutorials, articles and videos. It also has a great ‘Best Practice’ section which will teach you how to make the most of the platform.

If you need support, you can ask a question using a ticket system, or you can join the Facebook community if you want to seek support from other users.

Pricing

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PageFly has three pricing plans to choose from:

Free

Free is – as the name suggests – free! It offers the following:

  • 15+ templates
  • Basic page elements
  • 1 saved section
  • 3 page limit
  • New regular page
  • Page outline

The Free plan would really suit someone who only wants to create, say, a landing page and an about me page. However, many of the better page elements are missing from the Free plan, which is something to keep in mind.

Pro

Pro is $9.95 per month (or $8.25 per month if you choose to pay for a year in one go). It offers:

  • Everything in the ‘Free’ plan
  • 40+ templates
  • Advanced page elements
  • 5 saved sections
  • No page limit
  • Product page add-on
  • New Home page
  • Autosave

Premium

Premium is $29.95 per month (or $24.96 per month if you choose to pay for a year in one go). It offers:

  • Everything in the ‘Pro’ plan
  • 20 saved sections
  • Collection page add-on
  • New Coming Soon page
  • New blog post
  • Import/export page
  • Slideshow element
  • Version history

You can find out more about PageFly’s pricing plans here.

Pros

So, what are the pros of PageFly?

  • Price plans – the prices are very reasonable, and the addition of a free plan is a great bonus.
  • Simple to use – the platform is pretty easy to use
  • Good knowledge base – the knowledge base is extensive and useful

Cons

There are a few downsides, however:

  • Design of platform – the platform isn’t as pleasing to the eye as it could be
  • No analytics – there aren’t any analytics built into PageFly, which would have been useful

What is Shogun?

Shogun is a page builder for Shopify (and is available for BigCommerce and Magento too). It allows you to build beautiful landing pages for your Shopify store, including standard pages, blog posts, product pages, and collections.

The Main Features of Shogun

Here’s what you can expect from Shogun:

  • User-friendly drag-and-drop editor
  • Range of beautiful templates to choose from
  • Easy to install split-testing
  • Analytics to measure how well your pages are doing
  • Page scheduler which allows you to choose when to publish each page

Page Builder

With Shogun page builder, you can create four types of pages: standard pages, blog posts, product pages, and collections.

There are many great templates to choose from – they look professional, well-designed, and easy to navigate. You can also choose from a series of ‘blank’ templates, too:

This is great if you want the basic building blocks of a page without the images or text that accompany the other templates.

You can preview your chosen template and see how it looks on different devices. Once you’ve settled on a template, you can choose your basic settings, like the page name and URL.

The page editor itself is incredibly user-friendly, and it looks great. The bar along the top allows you to quickly switch between device types – you can view (and edit) how your page will look on widescreen, desktop, tablet, and mobile device. The menu on the right allows you to drag and drop the elements you want to include onto your page.

Structure

The ‘structure’ section allows you to build the basic layout of your page. You can make:

  • Sections
  • Columns
  • Sliders
  • Tables
  • Tabs
  • Accordions

Once you’ve chosen the structural element that you want, you can drag it onto the page wherever you want it.

Once the structure is in place, you can start to add content.

Content

Adding content is as simple as clicking and dragging it into the block you want. You can choose from the following:

  • Images
  • Videos
  • Headings
  • Text
  • Buttons
  • Icons
  • Countdowns
  • Separators
  • Forms
  • Maps
  • HTML

If, for example, you’re uploading an image, you can drag and drop the ‘image’ icon, then upload the image you want to use. You can also choose an image from other places, like Facebook, Google Drive, Instagram, and Evernote.

It’s so easy to use, and very intuitive – it all runs very smoothly.

Shopify

The Shopify section allows you to add content from your Shopify store. For example, you might want to create a product page that includes a specific product image, reviews, and price. You can drag and drop these wherever you want on the page. This way, you can create a beautiful, eye-catching page that will be attractive and easy to navigate for your customers.

Social

This allows you to add social media buttons to your page. The great thing about this is that you can change the size, color, and positioning of the buttons, making them match your page exactly.

Structural Blocks

Structural blocks allow you to add whole blocks of content to your page in a specific style, using their premade templates.

This is particularly helpful if you’re starting from scratch and you’re not sure how you want your page to look – you can simply assemble these blocks together to create a great-looking page.

Scheduling

You can also schedule your page – this is great if you want a product to launch on a certain date. You can also ‘unpublish’ the page, which is good if you have a sale on for a certain amount of time.

Blank Pages

If you’d rather forego the templates and build your page from scratch, you can choose to start with a blank page.

Split Testing

One excellent feature of Shogun is split testing. Say you have two slightly different ideas for a page, and you would like to know which one performs better. Shogun can run a split test for you, calculating which one is the most likely to win, and automatically choosing that one for you (if you wish). This is easily set up during the page editing process.

You can choose from three objectives – clickthrough, sales, or add to cart. If you want to see which page will cause the most customers to press ‘add to cart’, for example, you can click that, and then easily switch between the two pages to make changes to them:

You can tell which page you’re currently editing by the colored border that will surround it. This will help you to differentiate between the two.

The ‘Versions’ tool allows you to see all previous versions of that page, switching between them if you want to. Once the split test is finished, you can choose to view the results or have Shogun choose the winner for you. 

If you’re running a split test on a page, that page will have the status ‘currently running test’, so you’ll know that a test is ongoing.

The only downside to this tool is that it’s only available on the most expensive price plan – so keep that in mind if you’re on a tight budget.

SEO

What about SEO? Shogun has a few features that will allow you to optimize your SEO for the best results:

  • You can set page title and meta description easily when you make a page
  • You can easily add alt-tags to your images
  • Your images will be compressed, making the load time faster
  • Shogun uses semantic HTML, resulting in SEO-friendly pages

Analytics

Shogun has its own reporting system, which is great.

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You can choose to view each page and how it is performing on different types of devices. You can check the following:

  • Sales Conversion
  • Add to Cart
  • Total Sessions
  • Bounce Rate
  • Top Clickthrough Destinations
  • Top Outside Referrers

You can directly compare one page to another, too. (The graph will show a different colored line to represent the page you’re comparing it to). This is really easy to use, and a great way of visualizing how well your pages are performing, without needing to use another analytics platform.

You can also see the results of your split tests here.

The downside is that the analytics are only available on the medium-priced plan.

Extra Features

Shogun offers a few more features, too. These include:

Syncing

Syncing allows you to copy content between your stores. For example, you could copy across whole pages, blog posts, snippets of pages, custom elements, and data collections. If you have two or more stores on a paid plan that share the same verified email address, you’ll automatically be good to go with syncing.

Advanced Settings

If you want to customize your Shogun pages even more, you have the option of doing so. You can create custom elements using Liquid, CSS, and JavaScript – this is great if you’ve envisioned an element that Shogun hasn’t created yet. You can also:

  • Use MailChimp forms
  • Add custom fonts
  • Make an anchor, which will point users to a certain point in a page
  • Embed third-party forms

Support

When it comes to support, Shogun has a pretty detailed knowledge base:

It includes guides on how to get started, tutorials, videos, and FAQs.

You can also view FAQs at any time on the main navigation area. You can leave a message to have a Shogun representative get back to you – they aim to reply within 24 hours. If you have the Measure or Optimize plan, you can use a live chat feature to speak to an advisor if you need support right there and then.

Pricing

There are three pricing plans to choose from:

Build

Build costs $39 per month and includes the following:

  • Drag and drop page builder
  • All page types
  • 30 + page templates
  • Design by screen size
  • SEO controls
  • Email support
  • 2 user seats

Measure

Measure costs $99 per month and includes the following:

  • Everything in the ‘Build’ plan
  • Analytics Suite
  • Multi Site CMS/page syncing
  • Content scheduling
  • Dev tools
  • Email and live chat support
  • 4 user seats

Optimize

Optimize costs $149 per month and includes the following:

  • Everything in the ‘Measure’ plan
  • AB testing
  • 6 user seats

They also offer a free 10-day trial: click here to find out more.

Pros

Here are the pros of Shogun:

  • Whole platform looks great and is very user-friendly
  • Templates look professional and beautiful
  • The drag-and-drop editor is very easy to use
  • The analytics are very informative
  • Split testing is a great extra feature

Cons

  • Split testing is only available on the most expensive plan
  • There aren’t many integrations yet

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make a landing page on Shopify?

The short answer is yes, but there are different ways to do it. The easy way is using a page builder that includes a drag and drop feature. After your landing page is built, you can easily add it to your store. If you want to know more check out our guide on How to Create a Landing Page On Shopify No Coding

How do you use PageFly?

As a Shopify builder page with a drag and drop system, PageFly is very easy and friendly to use. You can go through the whole process following just 5 easy steps: 1. Install PageFly page builder, 2. Create a new page (regular pages, home pages, product pages, collection pages, etc), 3. Configure the features, 4. Use the elements and, the last step, is to publish your page!

Is Shopify a website builder?

Yes, but Shopify is mainly focused on eCommerce websites which means that their tools and updates are focused on creating a more accessible online store for users. If you have other needs such as marketing or further site customization than you might be in need of another app integration.

PageFly or Shogun: Which One is Best?

To decide which is the best, we’ll take a look at both platforms in a few different categories, starting with the page builder itself.

Page Builder

Both apps offer a great drag-and-drop page builder. You can easily see what your page will look like on different types of devices, and both have a great selection of pre-made templates to choose from. Both apps make it simple to add products from your Shopify stores.

However, in terms of ease of use and user-friendliness, we’ll have to pick Shogun as our winner in this category. It looks nicer, and is a little more intuitive than PageFly’s page builder.

Extras

PageFly doesn’t have much to offer in terms of extra features, whereas Shogun offers split testing, which is obviously a huge advantage (with the caveat of this feature only being available on the most expensive plan). We’ll have to pick Shogun as the winner here.

Analytics

The obvious winner here is Shogun, as PageFly do not offer their own analytics. Shogun’s analytics suite is great – really simple to use, giving you a great visualization of your page’s performance.

Support

Both Shogun and PageFly have a pretty good system when it comes to support – we’ll call this one a draw.

Pricing

This is a tricky one. Shogun has more features than PageFly, which may justify the expense for you. However, the big drawback is that they don’t offer a free plan. PageFly, on the other hand, offers a very basic package for free, which may be enough for people who just want to create one or two landing pages for their Shopify store. For that reason, we’ll choose PageFly as our winner in this category.

Conclusion: Which is the Winner?

Both platforms are great if you want to build landing pages. 

PageFly is simple to use, and the templates look good. It could be a good option for you if you just want to build a single landing page, given the free plan.

However, in terms of user-friendliness, design, and content, we’ll have to go with Shogun as our winner. The whole platform is easy to navigate, and the extra features make it a really great app. It could elevate your online store to the next level – and there’s not much of a learning curve at all. If you can spring for the split testing, it may be worth giving it a shot – you might find it makes a big difference in the long run to your overall sales. Plus, the ability to further customize your pages with advanced settings is really useful, and the analytics suite is great and easy to understand.

If you want to create beautiful pages for your Shopify store, Shogun might just be your best bet.

Further recommendations:

How to Create Product Pages in Magento (Beautiful Pages That Sell)

Product pages are the unspoken heroes of e-commerce. They serve as the stage where the most crucial purchase decision takes place on your online store.

A visitor could decide to either abandon their cart or check out because of the influence of your Magento website product page. Unfortunately, many business owners are caught in the race for web traffic and forget to optimize these very crucial pages.

Magento has also not been easy to configure in the past forcing website owners to hire expensive Magento developers to do the job. The platform does require knowledge of coding to set it. Fortunately, Magento 2.3 has an easy to use Page Builder for easy page creation. There are also excellent extensions out there that make product page design easy.

The platform is a gem for B2B businesses that require robust, configurable, and customizable e-commerce solutions. It is especially beneficial for retailers with extensive product catalogs. It provides customizable features such as quick ordering portals and merchandising and onsite marketing. It also utilizes layered attributes and navigation that make fantastic product attributes and type definitions.

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Why you need optimized Magento product pages

If a website visitor gets to your product pages, then they are interested in what you have to offer. They might have come across your store via an ad, social media campaign, or through search. Your efficient site navigation then takes them to your product pages. They are now just a clock away from making a purchase.

If your pages are not optimized, your visitor will most possibly click away or abandon the cart. Unoptimized product pages are the bane of many an e-commerce store. If you want better sales results than your ordinary e-commerce shop owner, below are some tactics that you can use to create and optimize your Magento webpage.

Parts of a Magento product page

First, you need to understand what the components of a product page are. Every product page should have;

Branding on every product page

Your visitors might bypass your homepage and miss your logo. To ensure that you are easily recognizable, place your branding elements on your interior pages as well.

A product at the center of the page’s attention

Do not place it as an afterthought.

Fantastic copy

Ensure that your text flows with other elements of your product page to give everything a harmonious feel.

Design

This is a crucial element of your pages, and you can use it to create harmony amongst all items. Let your design be user-friendly and functional.

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Tips on how to optimize your product pages

Clarify your product page’s call to actions (CTAs)

Do not place your buy button out of sight. Your visitors should not have to look for it. Make your buy button colorful, bold, and big. Ensure that it is the only text on your page that has a background or fill color.

If you have other CTAs on your page, place them away from your buy button. Let them not steal the thunder from your moneymaker. As for the button’s text, let it be as simple as possible.

Use high quality and creative images

An e-commerce store is very dependent on images. Nevertheless, not all photos are created equal. Do not take your product pictures using your Smartphone. You need professional photography to impress your visitors. So, pay a little more for professional photo shoots or take a photography class and buy proper photography equipment.

Have good shots at all angles and put them in the context of use where possible. Pair your product image with its accessory image. Data shows that well-placed accessories can increase your conversions by 271%

Use social proof

Data shows that a consumer is more likely to purchase a product or service from your e-commerce store if other consumers recommend it. Consequently, 84% of all online buyers trust online reviews as much as they believe word of mouth recommendations from their friends.

You, therefore, need to encourage reviews on your website or blog by making follow-ups for reviews after purchase are made. Do not place long review sentences on your product page. Instead, place minute information such as several reviews and ratings above the fold, then place the reviews further down the page.

Videos

Did you know that 90% of all online buyers say that videos assist them when they are making their final purchase decisions? A video can display your product much better than multiple images can.

This is why 70% of all marketers agree that a video converts buyers better than other types of content if your products require more explanation that text or images can use a “how-to” video instead.

5-Killer-Examples-of-How-to-Write-Product-Descriptions_2.jpgCreate killer product descriptions

If you can infuse your product descriptions with imagination and emotions, you will attract more buyers. The description should be short and direct so as not to bore your buyers. Ensure that the language that you use on your descriptions fits your target audience.

Put trust signals on the pages

Trust signals are features that help increase your shopper’s comfort and trust when they are making their purchase decisions. Place yourself in your shopper’s shoes and understand their worry when checking out your product pages. It could be the cost or duration of shipping.

Ensure that you have links next to your call to action that address these questions. Enable wish lists for those visitors that are not ready to purchase immediately so that you can eliminate every obstacle to sales.

At times, simple additions such as live support option for buyers can give your buyers the privacy and comfort they need to contact you easily and fast with their product questions.

Make your Magento product pages printer friendly

Some of your customers might need to print a product page to show it to another possible buyer or to buy it later on larger screen sizes. You, therefore, do not want to constrain their access to information. Enable printing of pages to ensure that anyone can have the information on the go.

Perform A/B tests

It is impossible to tell how optimized your e-commerce pages are if you do not try various layout, copy, design, image, CTA, or video approaches. A/B testing is an ongoing process, so you will never be done with it because you will need to keep up with Magento e-commerce development requirements.

How to create product pages in Magento 2

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Magento has various product type fields with different configurations and properties. You can, therefore, use this platform to sell all types of goods and services. Want to know how to create a product page via Magento admin? Here is the process;

  1. If you already have a Magento installation, go to your Magento backend and access the admin section. To enter your first product, go to the Catalog tab then click Products.
  2. On Products, click the Add Product tab to access its drop-down menu. Click the option of Simple Product to access the page’s general configurations tab. To configure your product, enable it, which should give you access to configurations such as;
    • The stock keeping unit or SKU. The platform recognizes that a product should have a stock keeping unit or individual number, so it will assign one to your product. You can, however, edit it if necessary.
    • Product name
    • A drop-down custom attribute set menu
    • A product taxation tab for your product’s tax class
    • A price tab where you can set simple prices or access advanced settings for complex pricing requirements such as group prices suggested manufacturer price or special prices
    • The dimension of a product and its weight
    • The quantity in stock, which can be edited in advanced inventory
    • Visibility attributes
    • Product category
    • Country of manufacture
  3. Once you have chosen and edit the attributes of the products from their drop-down menus, click Save to continue.
  4. Below these attributes, you will find the Content tab. Here you can add product descriptions. This tab also has the store view’s Short Description.
  5. Add other content on the Images and Videos tab to attract your customers.
  6. Take the next step to improve the rankings of your product page. On the Search Engine Optimization tab, set up your product’s Meta Description, URL key, Meta Keywords, and Meta Title.
  7. Once that is done, you can now move to the target-marketing tab under Related Products, Up-Sells, and Cross-Sells. Here add product settings that target your e-commerce store’s customers.
  8. Under Customizable Options, add any other configurations on offer to increase conversions.
  9. If you have any other websites connected to your Magento admin panel, use the Product in Websites tab to assign them your product.
  10. After the configurations, now move to the Design tab of the product page. Under design, you can select the layout and its type of block product display
  11. Once you are all set in design, go to Gift options and enable it if you wish to
  12. Save the changes.

Brilliant! Your product is ready to sell on your e-commerce platform.

Other product creation options in Magento

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In Magento 2, you can also create products with different configurations beyond the simple product option. These include;

The Configurable Product tab that ensures that each product has a set of configurable SKUs that can be tracked in the inventory. You can access this tab from the Add Product menu then follow the same process that configures simple products.

In the Configurations section, you will find the Create Configurations tab with options such as Select Attributes, Attribute Values, Bulk Images, and Price and Summary. Set these options as desired, then click Generate Products.

There is also a Grouped Product option in Magento 2. You can use it to sell thematically related goods that can be purchased together. This is especially important for products that sold with their accessories. Simply select Catalog, Products then choose the Grouped Product option.

Add product’s general attributes then save. Scroll down and choose the Add Products button, choose the products that you would like to group then click Add Selected Products. In the next menu, indicate factors such as quantity, then activate the grouped products and save.

Other product page options include virtual, bundle, and downloadable product page creation, all under the Add Product drop-down menu.

Creating product pages using Magento 2 extensions

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You can also use a Magento extension such as the Shogun’s drag and drop editor to build your product pages. Shogun Page Builder works with Magento 2 and is a more cost-effective product page building option for Magento developers. You can use it to create fantastic product pages, with zero code use.

To use Shogun Page Builder, install it on your latest version of Magento. How do you do that?

  1. Access your Magento admin page, and then go to the System, then the Web Setup Wizard.
  2. Select your site’s Extension Manager and Sign In. Input the Shogun page builder’s Private Access Key and Public Access Key and submit it.
  3. Navigate to the Extensions Ready to Install tab and choose the Shogun Page Builder extension. Click install.
  4. After the installation, perform a Readiness Check to verify compatibility, then a store backup.
  5. After the backup, go to Setup, System Configuration, and then click Reset. Flush the cache too at Cache Management.
  6. Go to the Shogun extension via your Admin bar, Stores, Configurations, and Settings.
  7. Use your extension to create custom product pages or design new layouts using its intuitive visual builder.

Benefits of Shogun Page Builder

  • Unlike the Magento 2 Page builder, this extension has an A/B testing feature to increase conversions. The app also has robust page analytics and reporting features.
  • You do not need to learn Magento code to design beautiful product pages on it. This app is straightforward and easy to use.
  • It creates mobile-responsive pages that can be previewed on your editor
  • It has a wide range of customizable product page styling options and drag and drop elements as well.
  • You can use the Shogun Page Builder to publish content across multiple stores.

FAQs

What is the Magento page builder?

The Magento Page Builder is a visual drag and drop content creator inbuilt into the Magento Commerce 2 platform. It has features such as live preview, creation of new content pages, and form editors.

Can I edit my page’s product details with the Magento 2 Page Builder?

Yes, you can. Go to Content > Pages then select your product page. Choose Edit Page, perform your changes, then click Save. Go to Store View, located at the top left corner, and ensure that you have the right Store View selected.
Afterward, flush your Magento store’s cache to ensure that the changes are displayed on your front end. Simply go to System, then Cache Management, and select Flush. Refresh your site.

How can I display my featured products on my Magento store’s homepage?

Go to Content > Page. Select your page and then Edit. Go to the Catalog Products list to choose your Category. Choose the Insert button and Save.

How can I display “New Products” on my Magento 2 home page?

Access your store’s admin panel, and then go to Product > Inventory, and then Catalog. Click on your new product to edit it then choose the Set Product as New From feature. Tap the calendar; select the product’s display period. Click Save.

Conclusion

Create optimized product pages to ensure high conversion on your Magento website. Do not lose any of your customers to poorly thought out product pages.

You can use the Magento product page builder, third party extensions such as Shogun Page Builder, or hire a Magento developer to design your product pages. However, ensure that your pages follow the guidelines that we have listed above for increased sales.

Further read:

How to Build a Blog in Magento (Even if You’re a Beginner)

Magento is a powerful and flexible ecommerce platform loved by many startups and large businesses alike.

On it, you will find a wide range of payment portals, such as Checkout by Amazon, PayPal, or Google. It also very mobile-friendly, critical success features for any Magento ecommerce website. Data shows that almost half of all online shoppers use mobile phones for purchases.

The Magento platform has a wide variety of SEO tools to ensure that your online store ranks high on search engines. What most business owners love about the platform is that it makes it very easy for them to manage their online shops because it is very expandable.

You can, therefore, use it to oversee thousands of product sales without much hassle. Unlike many other ecommerce platforms, Magento is highly customizable, making it easy for you to add useful ecommerce functions such as blogging features.

Why your ecommerce platform needs a blog

In the past, many online shops overlooked the importance of blogs and only focused on their product pages.

With time, the truth has dawned on many such retailers. You might have the best product or services online but have very few customers. Blogs are one method that can enhance the performance of your online store.

Blogging can create an effective content marketing strategy for your Magento ecommerce website. This mode of online marketing has become so vital for business success that 91% of all B2B online marketers use it to attract customers. More data shows that 60% of their counterparts in B2C marketing are ardent content marketers.

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Benefits of a Magento blog extension

If your blog content delivers the answers to these questions, without forcefully marketing your products, you will build confidence and trust with your blog’s visitors. These visitors will eventually purchase from you.

  • Blogs can bring in more traffic to your ecommerce store. Data shows that an online shop with a blog gets 434% more of their pages indexed by Google than those that do not have a blog. An increase in crawled and indexed pages will bring you more organic traffic.
  • Blogs have become vital in the customer’s purchase making process such that 46% of customers in a UK consumer study, said that they visit blogs as part of their product or service investigation. The information in your blog can inspire your visitors to reach for the e-wallets.
  • An excellent blog’s return on investment can last for years, driving continuous traffic to your Magento site, nurturing profitable leads to your site passively.

How to install Magento blogs

Unfortunately, this robust ecommerce platform does not have its native blog functionality. Nevertheless, worries not; there are ways that you can implement blog features on your Magento ecommerce website. There are two main ways of integrating a blog to your Magento installation.

One is via the use of a custom Magento module or extension. The other option is via Magento to WordPress integration. Both options are not difficult to implement, as shown below.

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Installing a Magento blog extension

The Magento marketplace has a wide range of blog extensions that you can use to add blog features to your online store. They provide attractive and unique blog design and marketing features that may not be as rich as those of a WordPress blog may, but very useful nonetheless.

When you have integrated these extensions through your Magento admin, the blog feature will appear on your dashboard for you to manage it.

Below is a simple process for installing a Magento blog extension.

  • Log in into your Magento backend as an admin and activate Cron to run every minute. On the sidebar, access the Web Setup Wizard by clicking on System then Tools.
  • On the Web Setup Wizard, choose the Extension Manager and Sign In. You will need to input and submit the extension’s Private Access Key and Public Access Key as received from the Magento marketplace.
  • Go to Extensions Ready to Install tab and choose the latest version of the Magento blog extension that you would like to install. Click Install then perform a Readiness Check to verify compatibility.
  • Do not forget to Create a Backup of your store, which will automatically be in Maintenance Mode till the backup is done.
  • Once the backup is done, your store will go offline to prevent any shopping disruptions as you add the new module. Click Install, and when it is complete, go back to the Setup Tool, then System Configuration. Click the Reset tab at the upper right corner.
  • Flush Caches at Cache Management. You can access this via System > Tools.
  • Go back to your Admin sidebar and access Configuration via Stores, then Settings. You will find your extension in the left-hand side panel. Follow any other instructions from the module’s developers to wind the process up.

When the extension is fully installed, you will see the Blog tab on the Magento admin’s top menu.

Best Magento blog extensions

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Mirasvit Blog MX

Mirasvit is a free and powerful Magento blog solution that you can use to build a blog in your online store. It has beneficial blog features such as;

  • URLs and SEO friendly posts
  • Posts preview before a blog goes live
  • RSS feeds
  • Multiple level categories
  • Tag Cloud and Tags
  • Disqus comments
  • Pin posting features at the top of the page
  • Featured pictures for blog posts

Mirasvit Blog MX is fully responsive and easy to use due to its intuitive WYSIWYG editor. Through this custom Magento module, you will build enjoyable and easy to use blogs that avail customized content viewing such as latest entries, featured posts, or content categories.

It has an All Posts grid that allows you to edit blog characteristics such as status, header, author, Meta description, and Meta title. Through its WYSIWYG editor, you can edit the blog code to add your custom HTML code, images, or video rolls. This extension has a 90-day free support period, comprehensive documentation, and is open source to ensure that its users can customize it to fit their blogging demands.

Shogun Page Builder

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Shogun Page Builder is one of the most popular ecommerce page builders out there. It is made to enhance your page’s conversion rates and create an enjoyable shopping experience for your online store customers.

This extension has a wide range of customizable drag and drop elements that enable the building of pages such as landing pages, blogs, or product pages.

You do not need to learn Magento coding practices to use Shogun. The module has an easy to use user interface that creates mobile-responsive pages. You can use the module to build new blog layouts or use it pre-designed templates to ease your work.

Some of its fantastic blog features include;

  • Robust statistics that you can use to gauge the number of blog visitors, bounce rates, and other useful metrics.
  • On Shogun, you can design page variants with minimal differences such as the positioning of elements of colors then perform A/B tests. These tests will identify the pages or content that your visitors love best as a guide for your content creation strategy.
  • You can use the Shogun Page Builder to launch your blog’s SEO audit to ensure that it is well optimized for search engines
  • You can also use the extension to perform programmed posting so that you do not have to update your blog pages when there is too much web traffic.

WordPress Magento blog integration

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WordPress is one of the most popular blog content management systems in the world. The CMS powers over 60 million of all the 500 million blogs that exist worldwide. Its influence, however, is more considerable because it runs 60.2% of the world’s content market.

The CMS has a wide variety of blogging plugins, themes, sliders, galleries, and widgets to give you complete freedom in blog customization and creativity. WordPress has a low learning curve with a very easy to use user interface.

If you choose to create a WordPress blog to supplement the blogging needs of your Magento store, you will face the problem of maintaining two separate websites. You will, therefore, pay more for additional modules and have the inconvenience of hopping from one platform’s backend to the other.

You can, however, use Magento plugins that integrate WordPress to your Magento installation. Extensions such as the free FishPig module will allow you to use one single theme or dual themes on both CMSs. It also has useful modules such as a single sign-on module or one that groups both your blog’s and store search results.

Alternatively, you can use WordPress as a standalone blog for your Magento store. A WordPress blog on a separate domain can be linked to your Magento shop via a WordPress blog link. Consequently, you will have blog links on your header or footer. You can also integrate the website and blog via the cart to the blog module.

There are, however, many disadvantages to this practice. First, your visitors will not access your cart on the header while scrolling the blog. They will always have to click back to the Magento to make a purchase.

This can force some of your visitors out of the sales funnel. There are also other disadvantages for users, such as dual sign-ups to both websites and lesser search capabilities. This option will also deny your Magento store, the SEO benefits of an excellent blog.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I customize my blog’s layout in Magento 2?

Go to System > Configuration > Layout. Edit your design or content features then click Save. Go to System > Cache Management. Select Flush and refresh your site.

How can I create blog categories on my Magento site?

Access your admin panel then navigate to Content > Blog > Categories. Add a new Category using the available button, then click Enable Category.

How can I add my blog’s link to my Magento store’s top navigation menu?

Go to your Magento store’s backend, then select Stores > Configuration > Blog. Choose the Category Top Navigation tab, then navigate to the Display Blog Link. Indicate your blog link in the Link Text tab, and then select the Include Blog Categories field to enable blog categories.

Conclusion

The benefits of a Magento blog extension or a WordPress blog are endless for your online store. Choose the method that will help you to post better content consistently to increase traffic to your ecommerce store. Study the practices of blog building to ensure that your business is reaping all the benefits of content marketing.

Related Posts:

How to Create Landing Pages in Magento (2021 Update)

Magento is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms for growth-oriented retailers, entrepreneurs, and business owners. Magento works for all store sizes, be they small business startups, large existing organizations, or e-commerce shops migrating into its ecosystem for its many benefits. It is undeniable, however, that Magento has a steeper learning curve than you would find in other platforms such as Shopify.

In the past, it was challenging to make sense of Magento without the help of a Magento developer. Luckily for you, with the platform’s many readymade themes and extensions, you can have a Magento store up and running much faster. The platform has a large community rallying around it, so it is quite easy to have just about any e-commerce feature you would like on your Magento store. One of those must-have features are landing pages.

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What is a landing page?

A landing page is designed with a specific advertising or marketing purpose. These pages give the visitor the information that they need fast. It should also provide details on how to contact the visitor. A good landing page encourages action that will improve conversions. Home pages, product pages, and their categories cannot be substitutes for landing pages.

These pages work independently, stand-alone, and have their unique elements. The importance of landing pages has come to the forefront in the new customer satisfaction oriented retail culture. They offer the customer customized and targeted products in contrast to most other web pages that have diverse options for different customers.

Landing pages are therefore used to counter the “paradox of choice.” This is a phenomenon that makes it difficult for people to make a choice when the options presented to them are too diverse.

Main differences between Homepages and Landing pages

The Main Differences between Homepages and Landing Pages are:

  • Homepages have a multitude of links placed on their content, footers, and navigation menu, whereas Landing Pages have minimal connections to increase conversion rates.
  • Homepages are a hub that enables users to navigate to the broadest parts of your website and rarely focus on calls to action (CTAs), whereas Landing Pages are made to convey a specific CTA.
  • Homepages receive visitors at the top of the sales funnel; they are undecided about their choices, whereas Landing Pages receive visitors that are more likely to move deeper into your sales funnel since they are sure about what they want.

5 reasons why you need a landing page

  1. They’re great for conversions: You direct your leads to a page with a single focus where they can only take a specific desired action. If you’re able to convince them with high-quality landing page copy, you can get many subscribers.
  2. Landing pages support ads: Once you have an ad out there, it’s easier to convert leads through a landing page dedicated to giving more information on what the ad was all about.
  3. You get to distinguish your services: If your site has a ton of products and services, it may easily confuse your target audience. Landing pages will be only about that one thing that your prospect is looking for.
  4. They’re perfect for testing: You can easily conduct different types of tests on a well-crafted landing page.
  5. Excellent user experience: Since it’s a dedicated page that has one specific call to action, your reader is not confused or distracted by any other page elements.

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Different types of landing pages

Your Magento website can have two main types of landing pages

  1. Lead generation or lead capture pages that are data collection tools. They will collect information on your engaged customers, so they have a lead capture form. Here your customers are subtly asked to input their phone numbers, email addresses, names, job titles, or age range. This information can help you to tailor customized offers, ads, and email marketing campaigns.
  2. Click through pages with CTA buttons that guide your visitors to a page where they can complete the desired action. You will find this type of landing page more on a Magento e-commerce site or any other site with a sales bent.

How to use the Magento 2 page builder

Magento 2.3 has a robust page builder that you can use to create and edit your Magento e-commerce store dynamic blocks, blocks, and CMS pages. The tool has a visual drag and drop builder as well as some beneficial content management features.

It will make it easy for you to create and configure the design and layout of your categories and product pages as well as any dynamic elements you might want to add to them. You need Magento Commerce 2.3.1 to access this useful feature. If you have not upgraded your Magento Commerce version, now would be a good time to do so.

Unfortunately, the other Magento variants, Open Source 2.3.1does not have this feature. If you are using open-source Magento, you will need to install third-party page builder extensions. They work perfectly, too, and will display your page’s front-end interface inside your website’s backend, making it very easy for you to drag and drop elements as desired.

Inside the Magento Page Builder

The Page Builder offers a clear field to give ample space to drag and drop your page elements as you deem fit. It has several tool sets on your left t hand side, which include;

  • Layout sets that place rows and columns on your pages. It can also build tabs.
  • Elements set that adds buttons, headings, and text
  • Media set that will add maps, videos or pictures onto your page
  • Content set that adds dynamic or static content blocks

Landing page design on Magento page builder

The Page Builder makes it especially easy for you to create a fantastic landing page from the admin panel. You do not need to procure expensive Magento developer services for regular landing pages creation. To create a landing page using this useful tool, simply follow the instructions below;

  1. Log into your Magento admin, then go to the Content tab, choose Elements, then Pages. Press the Add New Page link, and name your page. Enable it to make it active.
  2. To view more design options, expand the Content tab then add the landing page’s heading into its field. Drag and drop all the landing page elements you would prefer on the clear canvas, via the Media, Elements, Layout, and Content toolsets. To edit your chosen components, expand the little gear sign to access their settings.
  3. When the landing page is set, you now need to work on SEO for Magento landing pages. Move to the Search Engine Optimization tab and infill the Meta Title, URL Key, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords fields.
  4. Now, your page is almost ready to go live on your Magento shop, but you need to define its view on the Websites tab. In the Hierarchy section, specify the ranking of your landing page.
  5. If you have any new landing page templates or themes that you would like to set up, do so in the Design tab and input the Layout Update XML. Save the page, and you are ready to start marketing with your new landing page.

Third-party Magento 2 landing page templates

If you are using Magento Open Source, or are unsure of your Magento web design expertise, you can download a third-party landing page template for use. Below are two of the best models available for Magento landing pages.

Shogun Page Builder

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The Shogun Page Builder App is perfect for extra Magento Page Builder customizations. You can use it to control the features of your content, elements, and page layout. With the Shogun page builder, you do not need to edit any Magento code. Simply use its intuitive drag and drop builder, which integrates perfectly with Magento 2 to create a stellar landing page in minutes.

Start by installing the Shogun extension into your Magento shop through the admin panel. Create your new page or use its pre-made templates. From the Shogun editor, access a variety of creatively designed email capture forms, sliders, countdown times, social icons, and other useful elements that will make your page as effective as possible.

Users love this extension all over the world because it does build not only great SEO landing pages but also has analytics reporting features to help you gauge your landing page’s performance. It also allows the running of A/B tests to assist in page optimization.

The Shogun landing page builder has a variety of SEO tools that include a responsive design, automatic image compression, and easy editing of image ALT, Meta titles, and Meta descriptions. It is used by thousands of businesses around the world, including MVMT Watches, K-Swiss, Chubbies, and Leesa Mattresses

MageWorx Landing Pages

MageWorx is perfect for the fast creation of SEO friendly and customizable landing pages for your Magento e-commerce shop. This Magento extension will help you to add copy, images, videos, and content blocks at the top or bottom of your landing pages.

You can also use the extension to specify page metadata and URLs for all your website’s Store Views. MageWorx is compatible with the Magento 2 and integrates with the platform’s SEO extension to create user and search engine friendly landing pages.

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6 Benefits of good landing pages

They will give your website an SEO boost

While landing pages are meant for conversions, functional landing page design calls for SEO optimized landing pages. If your Magento landing page is SEO optimized, it will rank higher in Google. This page will, therefore, attract more visitors to your website. An SEO friendly landing page will not only enhance your visitor’s user experience but will also make your website rank higher on Google since the search engine favors organic content.

They increase conversion rates

Since landing pages are optimized for conversions, they make the purchase process easier for visitors, increasing your sales. They also increase the engagement rates for advertising campaigns because they are tailored to address your buyer’s needs.

They will enhance your online credibility

Since a landing page is designed for a specific task and has a clear course of action, your visitors will recognize that you do understand what it is that they need. They also will see that beyond you understanding their problems, you have even thought about the best way to fix them. Besides, you can use testimonials on them as social proof.

They will increase brand awareness

Some of the most crucial elements of a landing page, such as its feel, style, copy, and content, are creatively crafted to ensure maximum effectiveness. As a result, landing pages are lovely and can go a long way in increasing your brand’s recognition amongst customers.

The strong brand identity of landing pages can make you memorable to users meaning that they will visit your Magento website more often or recommend you to other users.

They attract new website users

Landing pages will attract new visitors to your website from search engines and social networks. They can, however, do much more by collecting demographic data via capture or contact forms. Your marketing team can access this information, segment it, and use it to target these new leads.

They provide fantastic analytics data

Your Magento shop can use your landing pages to track and analyze the actual and wholesome data that they are capable of collecting. You can, for instance, collect data that informs you about the success of your marketing strategy. Use the information gleaned from these pages to optimize and improve your e-commerce marketing strategy.

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Elements of an effective Magento landing page

Having an attractive landing page templates is one thing while having an effective lead page is quite another. There is no manual out there that can detail the creation of a high converting landing page. Why? Every e-commerce platform has a unique selling point.

Nevertheless, there are some core elements or building blocks that can guide you in crafting the perfect Magento marketplace landing page.

Main headline

A lot of thought should go into your landing page’s headline. Perhaps you have not heard about it, but there is a 15-second span that dictates whether a visitor will stick on and read more from your webpage, or leave in a huff. Online visitors generally stay on one webpage for less than 15 seconds.

If your landing page has not caught their attention within that time, you will lose them to your competitor. To reduce your Magento website’s bounce rates, you need to ensure that your visitors find what it is that they are looking for in a glance.

A fantastic page header should, therefore, capture the attention, interest of a user and should be easy to comprehend. Your visitor should understand what it is that you are selling in a single phrase. A good headline should not have more than 20 words, and the shorter and sweeter, the better.

Supporting headers

A good headline might capture the attention of its audience, but it needs a persuasive subheading to engage them. The subtitle should be under the main header and should be more detailed than its predecessor should.

The basic rule of thumb with your subheadings also is the shorter, the better. There are Magento templates that break these rules by flipping the subheads with the headline. They, of course, will give the main heading a differentiating attribute such as large fonts or central positioning.

Reinforcing statements

These are optional, but you can use them to strengthen your unique product or service-selling proposition. They will give your visitors additional chances to convert. There should, therefore, offer any other information amiss from the main headers and inject a level of urgency of the call to action in place.

The hero image or video

In the war between text and images, images win out most of the time. Why? The human brain loves pictures. Did you know that the brain can process an entire image in less than 13 seconds? It loves this information mode so much that people will only remember 10% of what they read three days later.

They will, however, recall 65% of what they saw after three days. Your landing page users will be influenced faster and more effectively by the images on the page. For this reason, use high quality, relevant and large images to make the best impression.

A unique selling proposition (USP)

What is it that sets your service or product apart from your competitors? You should, at a glance, ensure that your visitors understand what it is that makes the offer on your Magento landing page unique. Let your explanation be benefit-oriented and transparent. This unique selling proposition will satiate the curiosity raised by your compelling headlines.

The explanation can target human psychology by working on the avoidance of pain or the pursuance of pleasure. Humans subconsciously seek to alleviate or to avoid loss or pain, and every product or service is meant to meet this purpose. You should, for instance, mention that your visitor would lose something of value if they resist your offer.

The theory of loss aversion supports this selling point meaning that your visitor will be willing to pay to avoid loss. You can also use genuine pain references as testimonials to prove your offering’s ability to alleviate this discomfort. You can moreover pursue pleasure in your explanation by showing how your product induces pleasure or how it could meet an emotional need.

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Social proof

To increase your Magento e-commerce store’s conversion rates, use social proof to influence your buyer’s decision positively. You can use case studies, logos of your buyer’s businesses, reviews from major e-commerce platforms, video testimonials, or interviews, and genuine quotes from your clients.

Contact details

To strengthen trust, place multiple contact points on your landing page or contact form to reassure your buyers that you are a legitimate trader.

A promise

People love to feel reassured, so use this attribute on your landing page to improve conversion rates. Coin a pledge that works for service or product and position it close to your CTA.

A call to action

The call to action feature is the most critical part of landing page design. Every other element on your page is there to ensure that your buyers pay attention to your CTA. Some of the best practices of CTA design include a large CTA with persuasive, explosive, and exciting compelling copy.

Online buyers are also very used to CTA buttons so, use them too. Use a color that contrasts your webpage’s background color to attract the eye.

Negative space

Your landing page should not be cluttered to ensure that your page elements and their relationship to each other are evident. Leave a significant amount of negative space to guide your visitors to your call to action. Exclude additional navigation or exit link that might cause your users to abandon the landing page.

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FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions

How can I edit a landing page on Magento?

Go to Content, Pages then select your landing page. Choose Edit Page, perform your changes, then choose Save. Go to Store View, located at the top left corner, and ensure that you have the right Store View selected.
Afterward, flush your Magento store’s cache to ensure that the changes are displayed on your frontend. Simply go to System, then Cache Management, select Flush. Refresh your site.

How can I display items from different product categories on my landing page?

Yes, assign your landing page’s preferred store view from the General settings tab.
Access the Conditions tab, and select your preferred product categories or subcategories that you would like on your landing pages.

Can I have different landing pages for each of my store views?

Yes, assign your landing page’s preferred store view from the General settings tab.

Can I import landing pages into my Magento site?

The Magento Page Builder has very flexible design settings and allows you to export or import landing pages via CSV. Simply go to navigate to the Admin Panel, System, and then Configuration. Access the Landing Pages tab and shift your site’s configuration scope to the website. This action should enable the import feature. Move to the Content tab, then navigate to Pages and select Import to upload your preferred landing page.

Conclusion

This tutorial on how to create landing pages in Magento is crucial to your e-commerce marketing strategy. Use it to build phenomenal Magento e-commerce landing pages and watch your business scale to new heights. Use the Magento Page Builder feature or the third party extensions featured, and landing pages creation will be a breeze for you.

Further read:

GemPages vs Shogun – Which is the Best Shopify Page Builder for Your Store?

One area that some people feel Shopify lacks is the page customization – luckily, there are many great apps out there that allow you to fully customize each page in your Shopify store, or even create brand-new pages from scratch. In our GemPages vs Shogun comparison, we’ll be looking at two of the most popular page building apps for Shopify.

On the surface of it, both apps are similar – they both have beautiful templates and an intuitive, user-friendly drag-and-drop editor. How can you tell which one is the best? We’ll be directly comparing the two, so you can see how they stack up against each other.

Main Differences Between GemPages vs Shogun

The main differences between GemPages and Shogun are:

  • Shogun has extra features like split testing and analytics, whereas GemPages does not have any extra features
  • Shogun has an in-depth knowledge base, whereas GemPages knowledge base is missing some information
  • Shogun only has two price plans which could be a bit expensive for some smaller businesses, whereas GemPages has three price plans and a slightly lower price point

What is GemPages?

GemPages has an intuitive drag-and-drop page editor, and enables you to make landing pages, home pages, product pages, collection pages, and blog posts. It also offers a range of stylish templates to choose from and has some built-in SEO tools.

The Main Features of GemPages

Here are the main features of GemPages:

  • Drag-and-drop editor allows you to build a variety of pages
  • Syncing with Facebook Pixel and Google Shopping catalog
  • Built in SEO tools makes it simple to improve your SEO as you create new pages
  • Fast loading times for your pages
  • Keep the pages you’ve created even if you uninstall GemPages
  • Great range of templates

Dashboard/Navigation

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Making your way around GemPages is pretty simple. You can see an overview of your pages on the home page, and the toolbar along the left is simple to use. There’s also a chatbot in the corner if you need help on a particular subject.

The whole interface is nicely designed and feels intuitive.

Page Editor

You can create a variety of pages with GemPages. Clicking on ‘Create New Pages’ will bring up a variety of subpage templates for you to choose from, including About pages, Product pages, and more:

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The templates look very clean and professional. According to the GemPages website, they are based on designs by successful eCommerce businesses, and are designed to give you more sales – user reviews do seem to suggest that their product pages perform well.

Once you’ve chosen one, you’ll be asked to give it a name, and then you’ll be taken to the page editor:

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You can then edit each section to suit you. Here, we’re editing a promotional page – this brings up a list of each product you have on sale, including how long the sale is going to last for. It’s really simple to play around with the layout – simply grab the element that you want from the toolbar along the left, and then drop it onto the page.

There are a variety of page elements to choose from:

  • Basic page elements – including rows, headings, text blocks, images, icons, buttons, and separators
  • Custom Liquid code elements
  • Banners – including parallax and hero banners
  • Stacks – including tabs, carousels, carousels, and accordions
  • Icon Lists
  • Integrations – including Google Maps, Instagram, and MailChimp elements
  • Videos – including popup videos, YouTube videos, and Vimeo videos
  • Booster elements – including social media share buttons, countdown timers, and counters
  • Form Fields – including text fields, email fields, check boxes, and submit buttons
  • Articles – including excerpts, title, and content
  • Collections – including collection banner, title, description, and toolbar

As you can see, there are a lot of interesting page elements to choose from. You can also search for a page element using the search bar at the top of the bar on the left-hand side.

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There are also the Product page elements, which relate directly to the products you want to sell on your Shopify store. These include:

  • Product
  • Product List
  • Related Products
  • Title
  • Description
  • Price
  • Quantity
  • Image
  • Image List
  • Variants
  • Swatches
  • Cart Button
  • View More
  • Stock Counter
  • Meta

Once you’ve chosen an element to drag and drop into your page, you can edit it, again using the bar along the left-hand side:

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There’s a good amount of customization here. For example, you can pick which effect you would like your product images to have (‘zoom’ or ‘hover’), change the image size and alignment, and more. It’s great to have so many options for your product pages, especially when compared to the product pages that Shopify automatically creates for you.

You can also create a blog for your online store:

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This works in the exact same way as the other pages – just drag and drop the elements you want onto the page.

You can also create a new home page for your store. Again, this works in the exact same way as the other pages – you can either choose from a template or create one from scratch. You can then click which page you would like to make your default home page:

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Simply click ‘make default’ to switch your homepage to the version you like the best.

SEO

When it comes to SEO, there are a few things you can take advantage of here. When you click ‘Publish’, you’ll be given a few options:

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You can set a custom URL and meta description here. You can also enable Lazy Loading. This is a technique that loads images as you scroll down the page, instead of during the first page load – this speeds up loading times significantly, which can help to improve your SEO, as loading time can impact your page ranking on Google.

Analytics

GemPages does not offer any extra analytics – so if you want deeper analytics for your pages, you’ll need to install another app.

Pricing

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There are three price plans available for GemPages:

Starter – $15 per month

This includes the page builder, landing pages, home pages, SEO tools, mobile editing, and fast CDN loading. It also includes email support.

Professional – $29 per month

This gives you everything in the Starter plan, plus some extras, including product pages, collection pages, blog posts, and premium templates. You’ll also get Speed PLUS+ (for fast loading times), sales-booster elements, and priority support.

Advanced – $59 per month

This includes everything in the previous two plans, plus 3 store installations. It also enables you to copy pages between GemPages accounts, and you get VIP support, too.

GemPages offers a free 10-day trial. Click here to find out more.

Integrations

GemPages offers the following integrations:

  • Google Analytics
  • Facebook Ads
  • MailChimp
  • Klaviyo
  • Oberlo
  • Reviews Importer Apps

Support/Knowledge Base

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We found the knowledge base to be a little sparse – there are some useful video tutorials, but we tried a few search terms that didn’t bring up any results. (For example, we tried to look up how GemPages can help with SEO – typing ‘SEO’ didn’t return any results. It would be useful to have a guideline about how to optimize your pages effectively using GemPages).

If you need extra support, you can leave a message for a representative to contact you using the chatbot in the lower right-hand corner.

The Pros of GemPages

  • Well-designed templates: the dynamic templates, based on successful eCommerce stores, are a great way to potentially increase sales of your products
  • Drag-and-drop editor: the editor is straightforward to use, and it contains a ton of great elements. There is a high amount of customization too.
  • Interface: the interface of the platform itself is easy to navigate.

The Cons of GemPages

  • Pricing: although the plans are reasonably priced, it seems a shame to lock away product pages in the ‘professional’ price plan
  • Knowledge Base: We wanted to find out more about some of the features GemPages has to offer, but a search of the knowledge base didn’t bring up the results we were looking for.
  • Lack of Features: There is a lack of extra features here, like page analytics.

What is Shogun?

Shogun is a page building app for Shopify, Magento, and BigCommerce. It allows you to build landing pages, product pages, home pages, and more – and it also offers some extra features, too.

The Main Features of Shogun

  • Drag-and-drop page editor allows you to build a variety of pages
  • Range of professional and stylish templates to choose from
  • Analytics Suite allows you to closely track the performance of your pages
  • Split testing enables you to test two pages to see how they perform against each other

Dashboard/Navigation

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Shogun’s interface looks very clean and minimal – it’s easy to find your way around using the icons along the left-hand side. The homepage gives you an overview of the pages you have already created.

Page Editor

You can create a variety of page types in Shogun.

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You can either start with a blank page or pick a template. The templates look very attractive, and there’s a wide variety of them, so you should be able to find one to suit your business.

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The page editor itself, like GemPages, works in a drag-and-drop style. Just click the element you want (these are displayed on the right-hand side), then drag and drop them onto the page.

It’s all very user-friendly and simple to understand, with clear iconography.

There’s a huge amount of page elements to choose from. Firstly, you have structural elements – these give your page a basic ‘shape’, and include sections, columns, slides, tables, tabs, and accordions. Playing around with these will enable you to build your page exactly the way you want it.

Then you have a few different types of page elements to choose from.

Content

These will make up the basic content of your page. You can choose to include the following:

  • Images
  • Videos
  • Headings
  • Text
  • Icons
  • Buttons
  • Separators
  • Countdowns
  • Maps
  • Forms
  • Custom HTML

Social

This allows you to add social sharing buttons. You can also add an Instagram widget to your page.

Shopify

Shopify blocks allow you to add content from your Shopify store. These include:

  • Product Box
  • Collection
  • Product Title
  • Product Image
  • Product Image Gallery
  • Product Price
  • Product Variant
  • Product Quantity
  • Product Add to Cart
  • Product Reviews

You also have ‘Structural Blocks’. These are blocks of pre-arranged content that you can customize – for example, you can add a heading and a button in one block.

Each element can be customized simply by clicking on them. For example, editing a background image looks like this:

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You can adjust the positioning of the image, the dimensions, the overlay settings, and more.

SEO

Like GemPages, there are a few built-in options here to help improve your SEO. You can set a custom page title and meta description for each page, and you can add alt-tags to each of your images. Like GemPages, Shogun improves the loading time for your pages – it does this by compressing images, and by using semantic HTML.

Analytics

One huge advantage of Shogun is the Analytics Suite. You can check the analytics for each individual page:

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You can check the analytics for one page, or even compare two pages at the same time.

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You can check analytics for all devices or narrow it down to different device types (for example, you might want to check how a page performs on mobile devices).

You can look at the following:

  • Sales Conversion – the total amount of placed orders from add to carts on the page
  • Add to Cart – the percentage of users who added the product to the cart from anywhere on the page
  • Total Sessions – total number of visitors to the page
  • Bounce Rate – the percentage of users who leave the page with no further activity
  • Top Clickthrough Destinations – where users are going from the page
  • Top Outside Referrers – how users are getting to the page

This is a huge bonus, as the analytics are clear and easy to understand, and it saves you having to add another app – everything is in one place.

Split Testing

Shogun also offer split testing on the higher price plan. A/B tests are proven to be effective at improving the performance of pages – it allows you to create two slightly different versions of the same page, and then run tests to see which page performs better (for example, which page ends in more sales). This is straightforward to set up.

In the page editor, you can easily swap between ‘Original’ and ‘Variant A’ using the different coloured tabs along the top of the page. This allows you to make small edits to each one, so you can track which one your customers like the most. You can choose an objective – Clickthrough, Sales, or Add to Cart – and choose when you want the test to start and finish.

If you have a test running, you will be able to see this clearly on the home page, as it will have the status ‘Currently Running Test’. Once the test has finished, you can view the results for yourself, or just have Shogun pick the winner for you.

Unfortunately, this is only available on the most expensive price plan. If you’re a smaller business and you’re on a tight budget, this might be out of reach for you. If you can afford it, however, it could be a great way to ensure your pages are reaching their optimal performance.

Pricing

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There are two price plans to choose from:

Build – $39 per month

This includes the page builder, all page types, page templates, SEO controls, design by screen size, email support, and 2 user seats.

Optimize – $199 per month

This includes everything in the ‘Build’ plan, plus multi-site content syncing, AB testing, analytics, dev tools, content scheduling, premium support, and 6 user seats.

Shogun offer a free 10-day trial – click here to find out more.

Integrations

Shogun offers integration with Google Analytics, Adobe Typekit, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest.

Support/Knowledge Base

Like GemPages, Shogun has a knowledge base that you can search through. It includes tutorials and videos to help you to make the most of the platform. We were able to find everything we were looking for, too, which was great.

You can also click the ‘Need Help?’ button in the lower right-hand corner when you’re using Shogun, which is helpful. This brings up the FAQ section and gives you an email address to contact Shogun if you need extra support.

The Pros of Shogun

  • Interface: the Shogun interface is very clean and minimal, and it’s easy to navigate
  • Page Editor: the page editor is user-friendly and offers a variety of page elements
  • Extra Features: if you’re willing to pay for them, split testing and analytics are useful features that could make a tangible difference to your sales

The Cons of Shogun

  • Pricing: it’s more expensive than some of the other page builders out there, plus the ‘Optimize’ plan may be out of reach of some smaller businesses
  • Feature Lock: split testing and analytics are locked behind the higher price plan, which is a shame

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have more questions about Shogun or Gempages, we might have the answer:

Can I design my own custom elements to use in Shogun?

Yes, using the custom HTML element, you can create your own page elements from scratch.

Is there a Shogun app?

Not at the time of writing, no.

Can I switch price plans at any time with Shogun?

Yes, you can do this by going to ‘settings’ on the left-hand side of the Shogun app. Bear in mind that if you downgrade to a lower price plan, you’ll lose some of the features – see the Pricing section earlier in this article to check which features are available on each plan.

What happens to my pages if I uninstall Shogun?

You can keep your pages even if you uninstall Shogun – you can sign up again at any time to edit them.

Is there a Gempages app?

No, not at the time of writing.

Can I switch price plan at any time with Gempages?

Yes – just go to ‘account settings’ on the left-hand side of the screen to change your plan. Bear in mind if you drop down plans, you may lose some features (see the ‘pricing’ section above to see which features belong to which price plan!).

Can I edit CSS in GemPages?

Yes – each element has a CSS code editor and Script code editor.

Is there a limit to how many pages you can create?

No – you can create an unlimited number of pages.

GemPages vs Shogun – Which One is the Best?

Now that we’ve seen each platform in detail, let’s directly compare each feature to see how they stack up against each other. Starting with the most obvious:

Page Editor

This is a very difficult one to call. Both platforms are very similar, with the same drag-and-drop functionality. Both offer a wide variety of page elements to choose from, and both are pretty user-friendly. We’re going to have to call this one a draw.

Templates

Both have a wide variety of beautiful, professional-looking templates. We’re going to call this a draw too.

Overall Design/Ease of Use

Both platforms are straightforward to use. However, the design of Shogun is a little cleaner and easier to navigate than GemPages, so we’ll give this one to Shogun.

SEO

Another draw here – both offer similar features, including custom URLs, page names, and meta descriptions. Both platforms try to improve page loading speed, too.

Extra Features

Shogun is the obvious winner here – although they’re locked behind the higher price plan, having analytics and split-testing available is such a great way to improve the performance of your pages. It could make a difference to your sales, and it means you don’t have to have multiple apps doing different jobs in Shopify.

Pricing

GemPages is the winner here. Although Shogun does have some great features, the jump between ‘Build’ and ‘Optimize’ is huge, making it out of reach for some smaller business owners.

Knowledge Base and Support

Shogun had more to offer in their knowledge base, with every search term we tried returning useful results – so it’s the clear choice here.

Conclusion: Our Decision

This is a pretty close call! Ultimately, if you want to create beautiful pages for your Shopify store, either app is going to work well. Both have an easy to use editor, both give you tons of page elements to work with, both have well-designed templates – and both open up a lot more customization than Shopify alone has to offer.

However, if you do have the money to invest in your business, we would recommend Shogun. Although the split testing and analytics are on the pricey side, they are valuable tools that will enable you to optimize the performance of your pages – which could lead to more sales in the long run. Plus, although GemPages has some great features and is very simple to use, Shogun felt a little smoother and more user-friendly – so it’s our overall winner today.

Further read:

Kajabi vs Clickfunnels: Best Sales Funnel Software? Decide Here [2021 Update]

Let’s start this review by understanding this: Clickfunnels and Kajabi are meant for different audience but that doesn’t mean you cannot make a choice here today.

The Main Differences Between Kajabi vs Clickfunnels

The main differences between Kajabi vs Clickfunnels include:

  • Kajabi helps you create a content delivery system for online courses and content, whereas Clickfunnels creates sales funnel automation geared towards getting you more sales.
  • Kajabi is for digital educators, whereas Clickfunnels is for anyone with a digital product or service.
  • Kajabi is a specific tool for course creation, whereas Clickfunnels can work for anybody.

With Clickfunnels, its features are geared to towards helping you with one task only: creating awesome sales funnels that get you the more and more sales.

But Kajabi is meant for a different purpose altogether:

Its purpose is to help you create a proper content delivery system with which you can earn revenue through your courses and content.

In this review, we’ll do a feature comparison of both Kajabi and Clickfunnels to see how they stack up. This will help you understand which sales funnel tool is better suited for your business. We’ll compare each tool’s core offerings, their CRM, and email marketing tools.

As we dive deep into this comparison, you’ll see that both these tools offer similar features, yet are meant for very different audiences.

But which tool is perfect for you? Read on to find out!

Clickfunnels: The Beginner’s Software For Building Sales Funnels That Actually Sell

To sell anything online, you need a sales funnel.

But building a sales funnel is no easy task. It consists of many pages like a landing page, an opt-in page, a thank you page, an upsell page and on and on and on.

To make all this yourself would require a massive budget and lots of time.

Unless you use Clickfunnels.

Clickfunnels Features

Here is a summary of the features Clickfunnels has:

Build any kind of funnel with just one click: Clickfunnels has a variety prebuilt, scientifically-proven-to-convert-funnels for hosting webinars, selling products and collecting emails

Automate your funnel with robust automation tools: Collect your leads, segment them in different groups and send them automated marketing emails and text messages.

Set up a Clickfunnels affiliate program: You can get other people to sell your products for you by paying them a small commission for each product sold.

Kajabi: The Educator’s Software That Helps You Sell Courses And Memberships Fast

If you are an expert on any topic – and can wow people with amazing and high-quality content, Kajabi is for you.

In Kajabi, you can easily create sales and marketing funnels where you can sell your courses to a hungry audience that wants to learn from you.

And that’s not all.

If you don’t want to sell courses – and want to create content such videos and blog posts at your own pace without bundling it up, you can also create membership sites and ask your audience to pay a recurring fee every month to access your content.

It’s important to note that while Kajabi is excellent for selling educational content, it’s limited to just that. If you plan to sell a wider variety of products, Clickfunnels is better suited for you.

Kajabi Features

Here’s a list of features Kajabi has:

Feature Rich Online Course & Membership Site Builder: Kajabi has a robust course building system with which you can set up the video course or articles and earn revenue from it, either by selling it for a fixed price or a monthly subscription.

One Click Funnel Creation With Pipelines: Pipelines is Kajabi’s version of Clickfunnels. There are pre-built versions of sales funnels and digital marketing campaigns you can use to sell your digital product. However, Kajabi’s sales funnels aren’t as powerful as Clickfunnels are. But they include prewritten emails while Clickfunnels funnels don’t.

Built-in CRM: Kajabi’s CRM lets see information about your customers, but not in as detail as Clickfunnels CRM does. You can see who subscribed to your courses or membership sites. In addition, you can segment leads and customers, send them marketing emails and automate your sales process.

Clickfunnels vs Kajabi: Feature Comparison

As you can see, both Kajabi and Clickfunnels have extremely similar features.

They offer website builders, pre-built sales funnels, CRM systems and email marketing automation tools – making them both an all-in-one sales funnel tool.

But this doesn’t mean you can just ‘eenie meenie miney mo’ your way to choosing one.

Both sale funnel building software still has their own strengths and weakness.

So now, we’ll go head-to-head and compare the following main features of both Kajabi and Clickfunnels and see how they stack up:

Let’s start with exploring both tools core offerings, including the website builder, which is the arguably the most important part of both these sales funnel software.

ClickFunnels Core Offering: Funnel Builder

Clickfunnels main purpose is to make it easy for you to build the best sales funnel for your business that gets you the highest sales possible. That’s why it gives you these features…

1. Ready-To-Use Funnels and Templates

Clickfunnels offers a huge number of prebuilt sales funnels.

You get funnels for collecting emails, selling products, hosting webinars, running memberships sites and more. Plus, Clickfunnels also gives you templates for landing pages, opt-in pages, thank you pages and more.

You can customize each funnel by adding new pages from the templates section or removing existing ones.

All you really have to do is edit the content within them with your own text, video, images, and offering.

2. The Page Editor

If you want, you don’t have to choose a preexisting funnel or work on a page based on a template. You can start with a blank page to create your sales funnel from scratch.

All editing is done inside the page editor, where you can add everything from text, pictures, videos, checkout forms, opt-in forms and anything else that a website has.

You can change fonts, divide the page into columns, add youtube videos as your page background and more.

Once you’ve built your pages – and your whole funnel, you connect it to your domain, WordPress blog, facebook ad or anywhere else you want and put your funnel into action

Kajabi Core Offering: Course and Membership Site Builder

Kajabi is target towards educators, and hence, it’s the biggest purpose is to help you gain revenue by selling educational content and courses.

Course Builder

Kajabi offers a robust course builder you can use to create a video course series or a membership site.

When you get started, Kajabi offers you three ‘blueprints’ to build a course curriculum:

1. Mini Course Builder

2. Online Course

3. Online Training

Or you can build a curriculum from scratch.

But let’s say you choose the online course blueprint. Here’s what you’ll be presented with:

You’ll see the course has been divided into categories and sections for your convenience. You just have to edit them to match the topics of your course.

Once done, you can then set the price of your course – which can either have fixed price that they can pay in full or as monthly payments. Or you can add a subscription model that gives them access to the course as long as they pay a recurring membership fee.

The Website Builder

Then you move on to the website builder and build the website by choosing a theme or from scratch. The web builder, just like Clickfunnels, is robust. You’ll be able to add anything from images, videos, to opt-in forms.

One cool feature about Kajabi’s web builder is that you can add prebuilt ‘sections’ to your websites like pricing, sales pages, opt-in form bars, testimonials and more. In addition, you can also add social cards, comment sections, countdown timers, video, text and other elements as well.

Actionetics: Clickfunnels’ Email Marketing Solution

Email marketing is what comes after you’ve captured leads from your sales funnel. It allows you to keep in touch with your audience and keep giving them valuable information and updates to any new products and services you launch.

To do that, Clickfunnels has a robust e-mail marketing tool called actionetics.

Is basically allows you to store information about your leads, segment them based on how they interact with your funnel and send them emails and text messages with valuable information, offers and more.

Here are the top features of Clickfunnels Actionetics:

Contact Profiles: This is basically the CRM part of actionetics. Here, you can see the contact info, social profiles and other information about your leads. In addition, you can see when they’ve interacted with your funnel and what they’ve purchased.

Email Lists: This is where you can segment your leads in different leads. You can categorize people based on what products they bought (or didn’t bought), which funnels are they interacting with, where they are located and more.

Email Broadcasts: In here, you can create new emails based on templates or from scratch, add text, images, videos and more. After you’ve ‘built’ your email, you can schedule it to be sent out at a specific time to whatever list you want. Or you can save it for later use.

Action Funnels: This is the best part of actionetics. Here, you can create action steps for your leads to guide them into different funnels. For example, you can automatically set up actions to send them a series of emails when they join a list, make a purchase etc. Then you can add additional steps to send different offers to members of that list. Basically, if you want to automate your e-mail marketing campaign, this is where you’re going to do it.

Pipelines: Kajabi’s Email Marketing Solution

Kajabi offers a similarly feature-rich email marketing service called Pipelines. This is where you can create a fully automated sales funnel that will convert your visitors into leads.

To start, you’ll choose any of the prebuilt ‘pipelines’ which include funnels for promotional offers, reports, sales pages and more. Or as always, you can create your own funnel and emails from scratch.

But to show you how the pipelines work, let’s take the promotional offer pipeline as an example.

The first thing you will see is that you have to do two things:

1. Upload the free offer: This is the document (or any file) your users will get in sales page in exchange for their email.

2. Your product: This is the course or content your customers will buy at the checkout page.

After you add this info, you’ll see the whole funnel has been created instantly.

  • The pipeline will start with the ‘promotional offer’ page where visitors can enter their email in exchange for a free educational document.
  • Next, they’ll receive two emails which will lead to your sales page.
  • Finally, if your leads click your CTA, they’ll be directed to the checkout page where they can buy your product.

All you have to do is edit the text within the funnels with your own copy, images and videos. Of course, you can add or remove pages and emails in your pipeline and customize it according to your needs.

And in just a few hours, instead of days or weeks, you’ll have a funnel you can put in action on your website.

Pricing: The Final Deciding Factor

Clickfunnels pricing starts at $97 per month. Kajabi pricing starts at $129 per month.

In the starting plan, both limit their offerings but are still reasonable.

Clickfunnels limits are:

  • 20 Funnels
  • 100 Pages
  • 20k Visitors a Month

Kajabi’s limits are:

  • 5 Products
  • 1,000 Active Members
  • 1 Site
  • 25 Pipelines
  • 25,000 Marketing Emails /mo

It’s worth noting that Kajabi offers all of its top features in the starting plan.

Clickfunnels does not provide the actionetics feature which includes its email marketing and funnel automation service in the basic plan.

However, if you’re going to be using these products long-term and aren’t strictly going to sell e-courses, Clickfunnels is a better choice.

Because as your online business grows, the basics plan’s limits won’t cut it and you’ll have to upgrade to a bigger plan.

Unlimited Plans Compared:

The top tier unlimited plan of Clickfunnels costs $297 per month. The top tier unlimited plan of Kajabi costs $899 per month.

But it’s worth noting that with Kajabi, you also get a mid-tier plan as well which costs $389 per month but comes with its own limitations:

  • 100 Products
  • 10,000 Active Members
  • 3 Sites
  • 100 Pipelines
  • 75,000 Marketing Emails /mo

Meanwhile, Clickfunnels’ top-tier plan has no limitations at all and is still less expensive than Kajabi’s top-tier plan.

Is Kajabi a CRM?

Yes, Kajabi can be used as a CRM (if that’s what you’re looking for) but keep in mind it was originally used as for membership sales, digital courses but now has many other features such as landing page creation and sales funnel capabilities.

How much does Kajabi cost?

The top tier plan of Kajabi costs $899 per month, but you get a lot for your payment.

How much does Clickfunnels cost?

The top tier plan of Clickfunnels is $297, but there are other upsells you can invest in if you want to increase conversions.

My Final Decision

Ultimately, if you’ll be selling e-courses, you should still consider Kajabi as it offers a mid-tier plan which is not too expensive. But if you’re in the long term and will be selling all kinds of products, Clickfunnels is the ultimate choice for your entrepreneurial needs. It’s more versatile, meant for selling all kinds of things (even courses!) and much cheaper than Kajabi.

Further read: