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This is a guest post from Tim Masek, founder of 1-800-D2C, your go-to resource to discover the best tools in ecommerce to build a successful business.

The ever-expanding app ecosystem moves fast — and that’s what drives my business  to keep up with it. I want to stay on top of the best apps, because the right stack can make a huge difference for a smooth running direct-to-consumer (D2C) business. Here are the 10 Shopify tools and apps that are shaking things up in 2022, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in eCommerce. 

1. Junip

Reviews are a must-have for any D2C business, and you absolutely need a solid app to gather, display,and analyze reviews. The perfect app is engineered to drive a higher review submission, has great design flexibility, communicates well with other apps, and isn’t too pricey. Junip checks all those boxes and more. The team behind the app is young and hungry — keep them on your radar!

2. Skio

Selling subscriptions is notoriously tricky for ecommerce business. Many merchants are still struggling to find the perfect solution to meet their ever-changing needs. Skio is rising to the challenge, giving the current dominant players a run for their money. They’ve already won over the hearts of many huge D2Cs and they’re only just over one year old. Without a doubt one to look out for.

3. Tydo

Tydo is a D2C darling — they’ve got a great presence from their popular “report cards,” which are concise snapshots of your eCommerce performance that you can schedule daily, weekly, or monthly. The information is neatly organized and can pull data from a wide network of apps. That saves you from going back and forth between a million dashboards. The team is about to launch some exciting new features so you’ll want tostay tuned.

4. Social Snowball 

Noah Tucker, founder of Social Snowball, reinvented what an affiliate program should look like by automatically turning every customer into an affiliate at checkout when they receive their referral code on the thank you page and via email so they can start referring friends. This subtle but radical shift has paid real dividends for their early customers (Gym Gum, Vibe, Sweet Dreams) and now thousands of customers are flocking to them. This is the year where Social Snowball gains mass adoption.

5. Wonderment

Wonderment is an order tracking solution founded by operators. Its tech is used by some of the most successful D2Cs out there today (Hydrant, Doe, House of Wise, the list goes on). On top of all that, they’ve just raised $6M in late January, so they’ll have all the firepower they need to take Wonderment to the moon.

6. Novel

Novel enables Shopify merchants to sell NFTs directly on their storefront, next to physical products. Their customers can check out using a debit card. No need for crypto wallets or cryptocurrency. They are in the early days of rolling their tech commercially, and they have real interest from cutting-edge D2Cs. Novel will be a player to define what ecommerce looks like tomorrow.

7. Pack

Pack is bringing headless ecommerce to Shopify in a unique way. Their tech gives your Shopify store all the benefits of being headless (extra speed, more customization) without any of the technical drawbacks that usually come with it  such as the development work. Last year was huge for them, bringing some massive D2Cs onto the platform, which sets them up to win big in 2022.

8. Disco

Formerly Coop Commerce, Disco just raised $20M to make social commerce even more accessible. Their first hero product was a way to enable your customers to discover other brands after check-out. With every sale, you’d get a commission and earn some credits to show up on other people’s checkouts. A neat way to drive awareness of your brand to other brands’ customers. With all this fresh funding, they’re about to release many more exciting products, all aimed to fight rising CPAs by leveraging the power of community. 

9. Superfiliate

Shhhh. This one’s in stealth, but they’re coming in hot. Superfiliate unlocks word of mouth growth for ecommerce merchants by enabling them to offer personalized shopping experiences for their best customers, advocates, and influencers.

10. Inviterate

Inviterate is in beta, but already buzzing with excitement. Their mission is to catapult us into the new wave of loyalty apps. Loyalty apps are still in their infancy, so expect this tool to be a gamechanger. Sign up for their beta for more updates.  

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