We know first hand how difficult it can be to stay up to date with all the latest features from your tech stack. With the e-commerce world developing constantly, your Shopify apps are also bringing out new features. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed, but we’re here to help you make sense of it all.
Here at Blend Commerce, our marketing team has been researching, collecting and putting together a new blog series where each quarter, we take a look at the latest feature updates from our Partners and what these mean for Shopify merchants.
In this blog, we’ll be taking a look at:
Gorgias
Gorgias is an e-commerce helpdesk that strives to turn your customer service into a profit centre. Integrating with Shopify, Messenger, Emails and soon Klaviyo and LoyaltyLion, you can bring all of your customer service messages into one helpful place. We've written a great blog on how Gorgias can make your customer service simpler, check it out here.
Create Tickets on Mobile Apps
To aid with the management of your customer service, Gorgias has recently released an update that allows you to submit a support ticket from your mobile app. No more need to rush back to your desk! Submitting the form will create a new ticket in your helpdesk, ready to insert macros, files and assign agents.
Simply press the “plus” icon on the ticket list to enter the new ticket creation screen.
Source: https://updates.gorgias.com/posts/create-a-new-ticket-support-in-mobile-apps
Like and Hide Facebook Comments
Integrating with Facebook messenger can be extremely helpful for many Shopify merchants. Especially now that Gorgias has developed new rules that will allow you to automatically like or hide a Facebook comment from the platform.
To automatically like or hide a Facebook comment, you will need to create two new rules that perform the action “Hide or Like Facebook Comment” when the rule recognises a positive or negative comment.
Source: https://updates.gorgias.com/posts/new-action-in-rules-like-facebook-comment & https://updates.gorgias.com/posts/new-action-in-rules-hide-facebook-comment
Busiest Hours of the Week Statistic
For our Gorgias feature spotlight, we want to talk about their latest feature “New busiest hours of the week statistic.”
The chart is available via the statistics on the overview section of your helpdesk; at the bottom of the page, you will find it under the first response time graph.
We think this is a brilliant idea to bring into the platform, as Shopify merchants no longer have to guess when their customer service is busiest. Using this tool, merchants can find out exactly what days and what times tickets are raised in the Help Desk and can look at how their staffing can be changed or improved to meet these busier times.
Handling International requests
One of the reasons we think this feature is so great is for our clients who sell internationally. Due to different time zones, it can be difficult to provide customer service for those outside of your working hours. From this, these merchants will be able to see if there is an increase in tickets raised outside of these hours and may be able to attribute this to a particular country. Based on this, they could identify a need for a customer service rep to be available in different time zones, or configure automated messages to help these customers as much as possible.
Source: https://updates.gorgias.com/posts/new-busiest-hours-of-the-week-statistic
You can find all of Gorgias updates here: https://updates.gorgias.com/
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is an advanced email marketing platform that uses detailed customer insights to create developed automated Flows and Campaigns. Integrating with Shopify, ReCharge and POS systems, it’s now even easier to create a streamline experience on and off your store.
Measure Flow performance over and time range
As Flows are always working, they hold great opportunities to grow your order rates. Klaviyo wanted to make the performance as easy as possible to evaluate which is why they’ve always shown the analytic performance of each individual message within the Flow. Since then, they’ve recognised a need from merchants to expand past seeing data in the last 30 days, and have now introduced the ability to select your own date range.
After your click ‘Show analytics’, simply click the drop-down where it stays “Last 30 Days” and choose your date range. From the last 7 days to a Custom range, it’s now even easier to evaluate your Flow performance.
Source: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/time-range-for-klaviyo-flows
Measure Sign Up Form performance
Sign up forms are a great way to accelerate e-commerce store growth by collecting emails and phone numbers of new and existing website visitors. That’s why Klaviyo has introduced new analytics to allow merchants to quickly understand how each form is performing.
When you click on ‘Sign Up Forms’ in the left-hand navigation, you will notice there are now additional fields like form submit rate. This gives you a quick first glance at how your forms are performing.
You can also run advanced reports to drill down into device type, submit rate and even UTM source.
Source: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/measuring-signup-forms
Sign Up Form A/B Testing
For our Klaviyo feature spotlight, we want to talk about their latest feature - sign up form A/B Testing! Along with being able to see how they perform, you can also start testing form appearance, content, and even incentive types to see which one your website visitors like the most.
A/B testing is available in all Klaviyo accounts and can be accessed when you click on ‘Sign Up Forms’ in the left-hand navigation. There are two ways you can create an A/B test, check out the video below for a Blend tutorial and thoughts on what this means for Shopify merchants:
Source: https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/signup-form-a-b-testing
You can find all of Klaviyo’s updates here: https://www.klaviyo.com/whats-new
LoyaltyLion
LoyaltyLion is a powerful, data-driven tool for loyalty and engagement. It gives you the power to build strong customer relationships through a customised Loyalty Program that integrates with Klaviyo and reviews apps so you can reward your customers for the actions they take.
If you want to find out more about how LoyaltyLion can help growing Shopify stores, read our blog: https://blendcommerce.com/blogs/shopify/how-can-loyaltylion-help-a-growing-shopify-store
New integration with Plobal Apps
Streamlining customer experience when you have a loyalty program can be tricky. You want your online, in-store and app customers to all have the same experience and be rewarded for their actions. LoyaltyLion’s new integration with Plobal Apps, now improves the experience even more for mobile apps.
This new integration creates an easy to use interface, that shows the loyalty panel and rewards in a mobile-friendly format, that can be used within Plobal apps. By offering your shoppers exclusive benefits and a seamless loyalty experience across every channel they shop on, you can build customer relationships that last a lifetime.
LoyaltyLion Campaigns
For our LoyaltyLion feature spotlight, we want to talk about their latest feature Campaigns. At the end of the first quarter this year, LoyaltyLion announced the launch of their campaigns area. One of their most innovative features to date, this will give merchants the ability to use their loyalty programs to run more effective marketing, A/B testing and result optimisation.
The first campaign rolled out is called “AOV bonus points campaign’ which is designed to help increase the average spend of the customers by explaining if they spend over ‘X’ amount they will earn bonus points.
Using even more data
We are particularly excited about this feature as it allows us to use the data we get in LoyaltyLion and use it to improve and grow our client’s stores. Being able to experiment with the bonus points offered and specific data ranges can help provide even more insight into the best ways to help Shopify merchants build relationships with their customers.
We believe that LoyaltyLion campaigns can really make a difference by helping Shopify merchants run more effective and engaging loyalty programs, and have more tangible and focused business impact.
The AOV bonus points campaign is now available to all stores on advanced and above plans. We’re excited to see even more ways we will be able to use campaigns in the future.
You can find all of LoyaltyLion’s updates here: https://loyaltylion.com/uk/blog/category/new-features
PushOwl
PushOwl is an effective way to convert you, one-time visitors, into loyal customers with push notifications. Without the need for an email or phone number, you can use your customer’s browser to send them notifications about sales or new arrivals you have on your store.
If you'd like to learn more about why PushOwl is a must-have addition to your Shopify Store read our blog here.
New Reports Feature
Push Owl has recently launched a Reports feature on Dashboards to help merchants understand how their web push marketing performs. The Reports feature is currently only available for merchants on the PushOwl Enterprise Plan.
You’ll be able to find this new feature by navigating to ‘Settings’. Within settings, you will have a new tab called “Reports” and have a button to click to request a report.
This feature is also only available in a closed beta currently so PushOwl can address the needs of their customers. If you would like to be added to the beta, visit the link below to see how you can join.
Source: https://blog.pushowl.com/reports-feature-available-pushowl-beta/
New Segmentation Builder in Closed Beta
The Segmentation Builder was a big launch for PushOwl and helped merchants create smaller subscriber lists based on their specific criteria like behaviour, history and location.
A first glance suggests you’ll be able to find this new feature by navigating to ‘Segments” in the left-hand menu on the dashboard.
This feature has now moved into a Closed Beta so that PushOwl can focus on working with a smaller group of merchants, gathering and executing their feedback. If you would like to be added to the beta, visit the link below to see how you can join.
Source: https://blog.pushowl.com/pushowl-segmentation-builder-now-in-closed-beta/
New PushOwl Dashboard
For our PushOwl feature spotlight, we want to talk about the new PushOwl Dashboard! The new Dashboard creates a minimal, easy to navigate user interface, to give a better experience when creating push campaigns.
Watch PushOwl’s walkthrough below: https://youtu.be/qKexXkG84FI
Improved Customer Experience
In the video, Blend walks you through the new PushOwl dashboard and highlights the key differences from the old dashboard:
Source: https://blog.pushowl.com/walkthrough-new-pushowl-dashboard/
You can find all PushOwl updates here: https://blog.pushowl.com/
Reviews.io
Reviews.io is one of the leading review collection platforms and trusted by many big brands in the UK. As a Google Licensed Review Partner, Reviews.io gives Shopify merchants the ability to enhance the power of their customer’s voice to increase brand trust.
New LoyaltyLion Integration
The new, simple integration with LoyaltyLion will now allow Shopify merchants to reward their customers with loyalty points each time they leave feedback. By incentivising this process, Shopify Merchants will see a surge in review collection rates.
By rewarding them to review their experience with you, Shopify merchants can show customers that they’re important to their business.
Source: https://blog.reviews.io/integrate-smileio-or-loyaltylion-leverage-power-rewards
New Klaviyo Integration
Thanks to the Reviews.io and Klaviyo integration you can now support your email campaigns with relevant user-generated content. This can be done by embedding customer reviews from Reviews.io straight into your emails.
The Klaviyo integration also does more than just support your wider marketing campaigns. It also allows you to connect with customers at opportune moments and respond to feedback accordingly with triggered emails based on review scores.
Source: https://blog.reviews.io/listen-analyse-and-act-klaviyo-integration
New Gorgias Integration
The REVIEWS.io and Gorgias integration enable your customer support teams to take immediate action against customer feedback and queries, all without leaving the helpdesk environment.
Tickets are automatically raised against user-generated content, allowing you to follow up directly from your Gorgias dashboard without delay, removing unnecessary and potentially damaging friction.
Source: https://blog.reviews.io/improve-response-times-shopper-using-gorgias-review-integration
Collect Video Reviews
For our Reviews.io feature spotlight, we want to talk about their latest feature video reviews. Video reviews are a powerful way to connect with potential customers on an emotional level as they see peers engaging and talking about the product.
With Reviews.io, video review requests are easy to collect. In particular, we love their free SMS review invitation as they perform 3x more effectively than email requests.
Building Authentic Content
Here at Blend, we think video reviews is a unique feature to have. Video content and authentic customer feedback are two of the biggest tools Shopify merchants can have at their disposal and Reviews.io do a great job of making this an easy, streamlined experience.
You can find out more here on why Review.io is great at building trust for your store.
We feel that this is a real game-changer for Reviews.io and Shopify merchants. Specifically, if a merchant provides a video review of a product, we could see this being shown on the product page alongside images. This would be excellent social proof and we look forward to seeing our clients using this feature.
Source: https://blog.reviews.io/trusted-companies-hit-customer-goals-not-sales-targets & https://blog.reviews.io/how-use-video-reviews-promote-product-or-service
You can find all of Reviews.io’s updates here: https://blog.reviews.io/feature-announcements
SMSBump
SMSBump is a highly developed SMS Marketing Platform that uses Shopify customer data to create a personalised experience through Flows and Campaigns. Integrating with Klaviyo, ReCharge and LoyaltyLion, Shopify merchants can reach their customers in new ways with incredible open rate and ROI of text messages.
New Features Run Down
SMSBump has been extremely busy this year, releasing many new updates from improvement to segments and flows and introducing new features like QR Code generators and new sign up forms. Blend’s own Adam and Lauren have created a video on some of the new features and how they think this will help Shopify merchants.
You can find all of SMSBump's updates here: https://smsbump.com/blog/new-features. Be sure to check out our other blog on why SMSBump is important for Shopify Merchants. You can read it here.
There we have it! All of the latest updates you need to know from our Partners. We’re really excited to see what else our Partners release next and we’ll be sure to update you!
If you need any additional information or have any questions, leave us a comment below or email us at hello@blendcommerce.com and we’ll connect you to one of our partners or our customer service team here at Blend.
