5 must-have Shopify apps every merchant needs

Running a high-performing Shopify store isn’t just about great products and beautiful design - it’s about smart functionality. With the right apps, you can significantly enhance the customer experience, streamline operations, and ultimately, increase revenue to your store.

The Herd development experts have picked five powerful Shopify apps they recommend every merchant considers installing.

1. Shopify Search & Discovery

What is it?

The Shopify Search & Discovery app powers the search bar, collection filters, and search filters on your store. It’s designed to create a more intuitive experience for customers and includes AI-driven product recommendations.

What benefits does it bring?

This app helps customers find the right product, faster. With semantic search, predictive capabilities, and even typo tolerance, it understands customer intent - even if they spell something wrong, which is a bit of a gamechanger. Even better, you can also create custom filters, recommend product bundles, and benefit from insightful analytics that help optimise user journeys.

Key features:

• Autocomplete & instant search
• AI-powered search with typo tolerance
• Synonym and stop word handling
• Product recommendations and boosts
• Multi-filtering and custom ranking
• Supports multiple languages

Things to think about:

• Your theme must support Shopify storefront filters
• There’s a limit of 25 filters across the entire store, although Shopify frequently updates these limits
• Read more here: Shopify Documentation

2. Shopify Checkout Blocks

What is it?

Shopify Checkout Blocks gives you the power to customise your checkout experience - without needing a developer. From trust signals to delivery messages, you can tailor each customer’s journey.

What benefits does it bring?

A personalised checkout experience can increase conversion rates by 10-20% (according to Shopify's case study). You can improve branding, hide specific payment options, and even dynamically adjust the experience based on the cart contents.

For example: if a product violates Shopify Payments' T&Cs, you can automatically hide that payment option for that product.

Things to think about:

• Only available for Shopify Plus merchants
• Development stores have limited functionality - use a live Plus store for full testing

3. Intuitive Shipping

What is it?

Intuitive Shipping lets you set up highly customised shipping rules, perfect for stores with complex logistics that Shopify’s default settings can’t accommodate.

What benefits does it bring?

Need different shipping rules depending on order volume, product weight, or region? Intuitive Shipping has you covered. Whether it's shipping a single box or a pallet full of products, you can mix-and-match conditions, customise naming, and display tailored messages at checkout.

Things to think about:

• Ideal for merchants whose WMS or courier doesn’t integrate with Shopify’s standard shipping tools
• For simpler shipping needs, Shopify’s built-in options may suffice

4. Shopify Flow

What is it?

Shopify Flow is a powerful automation tool that enables you to create workflows and trigger actions based on customer behaviour or order events.

What benefits does it bring?

The possibilities are endless. Automate loyalty programs, streamline operations, or feed data directly into your marketing platforms. One real-world example? We use Flow to send draft order data to ad platforms when customers call in - improving campaign tracking and optimisation.

You can also automate:

• Rewarding repeat customers
• Tagging high-value orders
• Custom email alerts or discounts

Flow also guarantees execution - if something fails, it logs the error so you can fix and retry.

Things to think about:

• Think through your workflow logic carefully to avoid unwanted automation side-effects.
• Learn more and install here: Shopify Flow App

5. Shopify Combined Listings

What is it?

Combined Listings allows you to display multiple related products - like a t-shirt in different colours - as a group while keeping each one as a separate product. Ideal for improving merchandising and SEO.

What benefits does it bring?

Previously, products with different colours or styles had to be listed as variants under a single product. That limited how they could be filtered and shown in collections.

Now, you can list a red t-shirt under the “red” filter, and still let users switch between colours on the product page - no custom code required. Each product appears in relevant collection pages, but they remain linked visually and functionally.

Things to think about:

• Available only to Shopify Plus and Enterprise plans

Final thoughts from our developers

These five apps - Search & Discovery, Checkout Blocks, Intuitive Shipping, Shopify Flow, and Combined Listings - are gamechangers for Shopify merchants looking to grow efficiently. Whether you're scaling logistics, personalising user journeys, or fine-tuning product discovery, these tools unlock powerful functionality baked right into the Shopify ecosystem.

Need help setting these up or want to know which apps are right for your store? Get in touch - we’d love to help.