12 Essential Shopify Apps to Scale My Crochet Business: Tips for Selling Amigurumi Patterns and the Best Tools for Automating My E-Commerce Store

Hello my friends and welcome back to Simply Hooked, a crochet podcast. My name is Marcie and I'm a mom of two and the designer behind Simply Hooked crochet patterns. Here we celebrate the art of crochet and what it means to craft a life you love through your own God-given gifts. So if you've been following along my journey, you know that we are not just playing around with yarn, we are building a real business. And my most listened to episodes so far have been related to business so I know there are a lot of you listening that really value the sort of content and benefit from it in your own businesses. Which is wonderful because I love talking about it and sharing everything that I've learned in hopes that helps you grow your business as well. So I've been very intentional this year about stepping into my CEO era and I really love the sound of that. I may need to get a coffee mug that says that. So yes, I'm still designing crochet patterns but also I'm building systems that let my business scale without burning me out. And this is where automation comes in. So today I want to take a deep dive into some techy stuff about my website. I'm going to share 12 Shopify apps that I absolutely cannot live without. Now for those of you who might be new to this sort of thing, think of Shopify as the house where your website lives. It's a website host in the e-commerce platform that handles all the heavy lifting like security and payments so you can just focus on selling. So it's equivalent to WordPress or Wix. And the apps I'm talking about are like specialized tools that you can plug into the house and they add extra features like fancy discount buttons and among other things I'm about to mention. But these tools help me increase my average over value, increase my number of return customers and manage a vault of more than 100 patterns without losing my mind and so many other things. So if you are at a place in your business where you're looking beyond Etsy and you want to build your own website or perhaps you already have one, you just want to optimize it, you're going to want to hear this episode. By the way, these are in no particular order. They're all equally wonderful and important. So just make that clear. Okay, the first one is a file month. Now if you want to sell crochet patterns, if you're a designer that wants to sell patterns you're going to need some sort of digital downloads app. And file month is the backbone of my digital product delivery system. It automatically delivers crochet patterns and other digital files. The moment someone completes a purchase. So there is zero manual work for me. Customers get instant gratification because their download links appear right on the thank page after checkout and file month also sends a secure email with the download link so customers can access their files later, which cuts down on support emails from me. So on the backend for offers like my vault, my pattern vault that holds more than 100 of my patterns, it lets me organize them into folders, which is great. So I have like farm animals ocean life holiday patterns. So when people purchase the vault, they're not overwhelmed by just like a list of 100 patterns that are actually organized and easy to manage and access. And it also file month also includes security features like download limits and link expiration. So that helps protect intellectual property. Okay, number two, a Veda SEO suite. I just discovered this one about three months ago and my organic traffic has really skyrocketed since I did this. This is a great app. So a Veda SEO suite handles the technical SEO work that most creative business owners either dread or completely ignore. It automatically optimizes images by compressing them and adding alt text, which helps my site load faster and ranks better on Google. It also generates meta titles and descriptions for product pages. So every pattern is searchable without me manually writing SEO metadata for hundreds of listings. The faster site speed keeps shoppers from bouncing, especially on mobile and their support team is incredible. They have been so helpful when trying to figure out something very technical. But this has been a great, really a great app. I'm actually still working my way through. It gives you like a SEO score for every page and it audits every single page. So you can go through and just it's very tedious. I mean, you got to go through every page and like update the meta titles and descriptions. Make sure they're the right character links, add internal links and external links to your product pages. So there's a lot that goes into it, but it is worth the investment in time because it really does make a difference. Okay, the next one is another evada one. It's called a Vada Boost Sales Trust badge. And this app is all about trust and urgency. This is the app that adds payment icons like Visa and PayPal. So customers feel safe entering their payment details. Now Shopify does offer this. It allows you to add the payment icons on the product pages. But for some reason, the American Express was showing up weird for a long time and I thought this might look kind of spammy. So I'm glad that I found this. So I just omitted that feature from Shopify and just use this evada boost trust badge. Now also something this app does is it adds real time sales notifications. So you know in the bottom left or right hand corner of website, sometimes it'll say John in North Carolina just bought the dog crochet pattern or something. I used to think that those were, I just always wondered if they were real or not, but now I know they are. And it really does track real time sales notifications. It'll say like 45 minutes ago, Caroline in Minnesota, I think the hippo. So it's real. It adds social proof and it makes your store feel active and popular and everything is customizable. So the badges that you create can be your brand colors and it just adds a really cohesive field to your website. But that social proof is amazing. Something else this one does. I think it's, I'm pretty sure it's this app. It animates your add to cart button or something like that. I think it like it shakes it, it shakes it or something. But there's, I don't know, there's some sort of psychology behind this that if you make the add the cart button really catch the customer's attention. They're more likely to click on it. I guess. Okay. The next one is a blog. I love this thing. Bloggle replaces Shopify's basic blog editor with a beautiful drag and drop builder. So Shopify's blog builder that it comes with is pretty terrible to be honest. Now that I see what is possible, it's really terrible. So I certainly recommend bloggle. It is like 39, 99 a month. But again, it's one of those things, it's worth it to me because blogs drive traffic and now I'm able to make the blogs convert into customers because of the templates they have. So it's worth it to me. But I understand it's not for everyone. But it lets me create magazine style layouts for tutorials, pattern roundups, educational posts, how-tos, and I can embed product cards and buy now buttons directly in the blog post, which turns content into a sales channel. And it also gives an SEO score while I'm writing. So I know exactly how to optimize the post before publishing it. It also gives a conversion score, which is interesting. So like, I guess it has done the research and it knows what elements and a blog help it to convert to customers. And so it's very specific. It's like you have this header image and then you should have a summary with three bullet points and then a table of contents and then go into your blog and it says in the top 25 percent of the page, you should post a product grid to direct people to shop. It's very specific. And then bullet points, it's like you have to have at least three sets of bullet points. You need to have at least two H3 headers, not just H2 headers. You should have a video. So it just has a really good checklist and scorecard to make sure that all of your blog posts are just as optimized as they could be. And I'm so happy with how it looks. I mean, now I go to my blog pages and I'm not done with all of them. I still have several more to optimize. I go there and I'm like, wow, this is actually a webpage I would want to spend time on. You know, like someone's like professional looking blog. Oh, it also, you don't have to create content from scratch either. It lets you import the blogs that you've already written. It just lets you import them and then you just have to go in and make the edits to the formatting. But that doesn't take too long. All right, so the next one is called EA Sticky Cart. And this keeps the Add to Cart button visible no matter how far someone scrolls down the page. So you'll notice you go to some websites, you keep scrolling and the Add to Cart button is always at the bottom. It never leaves. You don't have to look for it. And so this really reduces friction, but because customers don't have to scroll back up to make the purchase. It also allows you to do pre-check out upsells in the cart, which is great. So you can, this is what helps increase your average order value. So if someone buys a $5 pattern and then in the cart, it says, "Hey, you want to add this I embroidery tutorial for another $5? It's normally $6, but you can have it for $5. Just add it now all, you know, stuff like that." And then I do it for my project planer. You'll see that in my cart, like I add a 5% discount. And then it gives customers the option to add it to whatever they've just purchased. But it's all to increase the average order value. And it works. It really does work. It's not pushy, it's subtle, it's customizable, it looks great. And oh, and this is also the one where on my website, it's buy three patterns and get 20% off. And this app allows you to add the tracker. I guess you would call it a tracker. So if someone had two patterns in their cart, the line would be like two thirds full. And then it would say like, "Add one more pattern and get 20% off." So it just, it kind of helps encourage customers to add more to their cart. So really good one. Okay, the next one is a fairly new one, but I do like it. It's called Catching Upsell. And that's K-A-C-H-I-N-G. So this one is all about increasing average order value as well. And what it lets me do, so remember how the previous app lets you upsell in the cart. This one lets you upsell post purchase. So essentially someone says, "Check out now." And then it takes them to a page where it recommends like three more patterns and it says, "I want to add another pattern for 30% off or 35% off." So it adds an extra discount. And then it's already captured their payment information. So they don't have to go back and like, re-buy it. It just automatically adds it to their order. People have been using it too. So I mean so far, it's working well for me. But that's like, it's so important when you have a crochet pattern business and you're primarily selling $5 patterns. You've just got to figure out a way to like increase the order value because you got to reach a lot of customers to reach your sales goals if $5 is all they're paying. So okay, the next one is page fly. Now, this is a landing page builder because again, Shopify is page builders. I mean, they're okay. They get you by, but there are certainly some features that it doesn't have. And so I actually have five, either four or five pages on my website that I have made specifically with page fly. And that's because it gives me, I have more creative control over customizing the page. Like the sales page for my Learn to Crochet course or my podcast page. I made with page fly because it looks better. It had more features. I could organize the layout and like the format the way I wanted. It also has its own analytics within it, which is nice. It has a ton of templates that you can use, but I love it when it comes to things like creating sales page for my online course. I mean, the shop of five pages just, we're not cutting it. I needed the extra stuff. I needed the fancy page because that's what converts, you know, aesthetically it's got a look code. It's got to be professional. And I needed to add all those elements that I have in there. Okay. Next is Luke's reviews. So Luke's focuses on visual reviews, which are gold in the crochet world. Users can upload photos of their finished products, which helps to build trust. So Luke's automatically emails customers and I can set the time. So I can say 14. I usually do, I think it's three weeks because because when someone buys a pattern, they, you know, they need time to actually make it. So it's either two or three weeks, but Luke's automatically emails them to request a review. And then if they don't respond, then it follows up after that with a discount code as an incentive to leave a review. And the reviews it's collected have just been amazing, but you definitely need the social proof. You need something that collects reviews. And I highly recommend Luke's for this. Okay. Next one is called stoke stock. I don't know if I'm saying it right. But it's the OQ. And this is the app I use when I am doing pre-orders, which I've used several times actually. It is essential for physical product, like new physical products when you want to launch a new product, but you're not sure how much inventory you really need. This is a great way to give customers an opportunity to pre-order and you just let them know ahead of time. Like this isn't ship, you know, this will ship in three leaks. But as long as they know that and they're fine with that, you know, they'll buy it. But that then gives you two weeks, at least to buy however much inventory you need to buy based on how many people have purchased. So it's nice. It's also nice because it pays you right away. So like it improves, increases your cash flow, but it also reduces risk of buying too much inventory or too little inventory. So it's just, it's like a weather forecast for your product, for new products. And if something sells out, customers can join a wait list and get notified when it's back in stock. That must be how you pronounce it stock. Anyway, so that's a good one. I enjoy that one a lot. All right. The next one I use is called Label. L-A-B-L-Y. And this is just, this one just adds a visual badge to product thumbnails. So if you go to my collections page, you'll see my bestselling patterns. Have a little badge in the right corner that says popular or might say bestseller. And this, these labels help guide new customers to popular products and make promotions instantly visible. So yeah, that's another way. You can use it to say, this is a bestseller. This is a limited edition. That's a new release or 30% off. But these labels are great. I mean, they really catch your eye. It is a simple but powerful tool to add to your shop grid. Okay. The next one is Search and Discovery by Shopify. Now, this is a free one that Shopify. I don't know if it comes with it or you have to download it, but it is a really good tool. It does a couple things. This is what allows shoppers to filter through your patterns. So I have 100 patterns. So I created filters for like birds and insects and jungle and safari. And so you can add tags to all your products. And then this allows customers when they go to page one and they're like overwhelmed and they're like, okay, you know, I just want a dog. I just want to see if she has a dog either they can either type dog into the search bar, which it also provides or they can look under the drop down menu for domestic pets. And then that's where they'll find all the dogs. So it does that. And then the other thing it does is it allows you, you can assign each product to have a complimentary product. Right. So people that buy my dog pattern often buy my purple teddy bear pattern. This is a no. I mean, this has been for years. For some reason, people always tend to buy these two together and I don't know why, but they just do. And so I'm able to go in there and add each of them as a complimentary product to the other one. And then it says on the product page, it says frequently bought together and then it lists the other pattern. You may see this on Amazon, but it's it's a nice way to again increase your average order value. Oh, something else it does. So in that search bar that it allows people to type in, it gives you analytics for that. I even had someone, I looked at the analytics recently and someone had typed in a rabbit and they couldn't find it because I realized I had three bunny patterns, but I didn't have the word rabbit. I only had bunny. So it showed so there was no conversion. because it never even showed the rabbit patterns. So I'm like, "Oh gosh, well, let me go ahead and add rabbit into the title so that it comes up when they type in rabbit." So super helpful for things like that. All right, the next one is Etsy Reviews. This app actually imports your Etsy Reviews into your Shopify store, which is huge if you're in the middle of a transition. If you just open a Shopify store and you don't have any reviews yet, because you just downloaded loops, but it's going to take time for it to actually collect reviews, you can import your Etsy Reviews, assuming you already have some. And this gives you instant authority and social proof. So it really helps bridge the credibility gap and shows your customers that you are an established designer with the track record of happy customers. And I actually use this one specifically on products. If I have a new product or a new pattern that doesn't have any reviews yet, I can add this to that specific product page so that it shows up on that new, so that it shows up on the product page. Because they'll see, "Oh, there's no reviews yet," but then, though, at least it will show all the Etsy Reviews. So it may not be specific to that product, but it can still help establish trust and credibility. All right, my friends. So those are the 12 Shopify apps that keep SimpliHook to running, like a real scalable business, instead of a chaotic side hustle. You do not need all of these on day one, but having the right tools at the right time can save you hundreds of hours and thousands of headaches. So if you are serious about turning your crochet or handmade hobby into a business, really think about these apps. These are system builders. This is the automation that allows you to scale, create more, and most importantly, rest more. Because the whole point of scaling is not to burn out. You want to have this perfect balance of growth, but not burn out. These are some of the apps that can help make that happen. If you found this helpful today, can you please leave a review for the podcast, it means so much to me, and it helps other makers find us. And as always, visit marciemade.co for my crochet patterns, my warrant crochet course, and for my brand new Hank the Hipper crochet kit, you've got to check that out. It comes with a children's book I wrote in 2016. I'm your friends, that is it for now, until next week.