Nowadays, it's becoming more important to build your eCommerce brand on the Shopify store. Customers are increasingly looking beyond charges and products to determine the true impact of their purchase on your store. Users are more concerned with the company's owners, their represented values, and the organization's social or environmental impact on the globe.
Major retailers want to make a positive impact on the planet and their teams are frequently collaborating with third-party organizations, often including non-profits and charities that are best fit for improving your impact.
Several charitable giving apps are available to automate and simplify the giving procedure. Still, donation apps help with speed, efficiency, giving barriers, and overall flexibility.
Virtue app is one of the highest-rated apps on the Shopify store that helps in donating to charities from your sales.
What Is Virtue App?
Virtue formerly known as Pledger is a charity-giving app that allows your buyers to donate to a noble cause. The app allows you to select 1-3 causes from a list of available options. The Virtue app helps in building loyalty & sales by increasing conversions or AOV and leaving your customers feeling great about shopping with your brand.
Customer giving, product page widgets (banners, post-purchase popups or emails, etc), impact widgets, automated payouts, donation upselling, impact tracking, and customer donations are some main features offered by the Virtue app.
Why Do We Need Virtue App?
The Virtue app aims to make giving available to all of us. The app works with all types of brands, from beginners to Shopify Plus retailers, and provides all the necessary elements for starting the giving process. The Virtue app is ideal for stores looking to motivate and inspire their buyers as an aspect of their giving journey. It includes several causes and personalized storytelling features. The Virtue app helps with:
Efficiency
The Virtue app comes with several features that include automated partnership and provides different resources to directly use on your Shopify store. The app automates payouts and also tracks orders. Also, these apps charge monthly and are less costly than manually setting up payouts.
Flexibility
Using a Shopify App allows you to do several activities in your own way. These may include setting the way of your giving and support selection. You are also not restricted to supporting a single charity all year with the Virtue giving app.
Giving Barriers
Large companies often participate in donations on different eves but mostly the beginners' are not donating for a cause. Manually setting up campaigns may put restrictions on minimum donations that will be difficult for small business owners. However, these Shopify apps don’t have any minimum restrictions and even small companies can start donations.
Speed
It takes a lot of time to build partnerships with charities, especially for humanitarian needs. Processes are automated with the Virtue Shopify app. Your store can frequently go live after immediate installation.
Installation Steps
The Virtue app offers a simple and seamless installation procedure. Install and start fundraising in minutes for a social cause. Some of the highlighted steps are:
- Search for the Virtue app on the Shopify top right corner and click the Add app button.
- Proceed to the Install app button by agreeing to the data privacy policies of the app.
- Select the giving campaign from the available options (store, customer, and upsell giving).
- You can proceed to the next steps or skip them to go live, choose the package, and finally, your Virtue's dashboard screen will appear.
Features
Some of the highlighted features of the Virtue app are:
Customer Giving
Set your customer-giving options on the Virtue app. Choose how much you want your customers to be able to give by setting donation options. Add a customer-giving widget on the cart page so that users have the option to add donations to their cart before the checkout process. You can further customize the appearance by choosing a theme, text, background, and accent color to match your brand.
Product Page Widgets
There are several advanced widgets available for the product page that helps in post-purchase donations. Set an option for customers to give to the cause after they checkout by activating the customer donation widget on your store. Your widget contains selected causes and your store’s branded style. The fulfillment option allows you to automatically fulfill the customer donation product when it exists in an order.
Banners
Use the Shopify theme editor to add banners so that your giving can be promoted. Let your buyers know about the contribution they are making to an awesome cause by purchasing a specific item on a product page. These banners will appear under Buy Now button.
Post Purchase Popup And Emails
You can display a popup notification as a confirmation to the shoppers after donating to a cause post-purchase. Add logo files and apply different colors for pop-up customization. Also, send emails to customers about your giving.
Impact Widgets
Show customers the impact of their donations so that they will keep coming back to your store for the purchase and donate to a cause. You can set up a separate page and impact banner to tell shoppers about the donation's impact or add it to the existing ones. Share about the impact you have to make anywhere on the site through the Virtue app impact widgets.
Donation Upselling
The Virtue app is also equipped with social impact to upsell features. Make even more impact for your cause and increase sales through upselling with donations.
Over 20000 Available Causes
The Virtue app offers multiple causes selection for your store. Select 1-3 causes to align up with your store from the option of over 20000 available causes.
Impact Tracking
The app supports real-time impact tracking on your store that tracks the impact of your giving on the world and sales. Insightful analytics on the Donation Tracking Dashboard provides detailed data about different factors including total store and customer donations, total orders with donations, and percentage order donations. It also includes a graphical representation of AOV, total donations, total donations to causes, and orders with causes.
Customer And Store Donations
The app’s customer donations enable customers to give before and after making a purchase. Give from sales and build a memorable connection with customers through store donations.
In addition to these, automated payouts (cause, store donation, customer donation, total fundraised, total orders, payout date, and status), giving from all items or selected products, monthly giving limits, customizable donation amounts, themed assets, and customer engagement features are also offered by the Virtue Shopify app.
Virtue App Integrations
The Virtue fits seamlessly into Checkout and integrates with the following apps:
However, Integrations with other platforms like WooCommerce and Magento are on the way to launch soon.
Virtue App Pricing Plan
The app is free to install. However, merchants pay donations to causes and subscriptions. Virtue app is offering different plans according to your business needs. Pick a plan that best suits your store. You can pay monthly or annually by saving 20%. The first ten orders are free for all the plans. Pay as you give package is best for emerging brands having less than 76 orders with giving/month, and Impact Plus is better for having customization and user engagement features while Impact Unlimited is a great choice for stores expecting more than 390 orders with additional support and customization services. Some of the main features of all three plans are listed below in the table:
| Pay as you give | Impact Plus | Impact Unlimited |
|---|---|---|
| £0.25 per order with giving | £19 per month | £39 per month |
| No order limit | Upto 190 orders with giving/month | Unlimited orders |
| Support 1-3 causes | Support 1-3 causes | Support 1-3 causes |
| Product page banners | Product page banners | Product page banners |
| Chat support | Chat support and additional help | Chat support with a dedicated account manager |
| Store giving and switch causes anytime. | Store giving and switch causes anytime. | Store giving and switch causes at anytime |
| No customer giving | Customer giving | Customer giving |
| No impact calculator | Impact calculator | Impact calculator |
| No widget customization | Widget customization options | Widget customization options |
| No cause content and payout method customization | No cause content and payout method customization | Cause content and payout method customization |
| Knowledge base access | Knowledge base access | Knowledge base access |
In addition to these three packages, you can make a Custom package if you need something special that starts at £199 per month. The popular functionalities that you can add are custom widget positioning, multistore features, and white-labeled assets.
Advantages And Disadvantages
Some of the key pros and cons of the Virtue app are:
Pros:
- There is a huge number of over 20,000 causes on the Virtue platform;
- A better support system that is responsive and effective;
- The app offers several product page widgets and impact tracking;
- Makes charity giving an easy process;
- Simple installation process and easy integration.
Cons:
- The majority of the donations are UK based.
Virtue App Reviews And Rating
The Virtue app got an overall average rating of 5.0 on the Shopify store. Most of the reviews are positive i-e 32 out of a total of 33 reviews are rated five stars.
Users share their app experience in the form of reviews and ratings. Customers are highly satisfied with this software so let's have a look at some of the customer's feedback about the Virtue app:
| Rating | Feedback |
|---|---|
| 5-star | "Brilliant app and even better support. The team went out of their way to help us set up, answer all questions and ensure everything worked for our needs. It is highly recommended!" |
| 5-star | "A simple app with excellent customer service, that does just what I needed it to do - offer customers the option to donate to a chosen charity. It was very simple to install and user-friendly. I love this app!" |
| 5-star | "Great support. The app is really easy to use, integration was easy, and has helped our customers to support great causes." |
Support
The Virtue app is supported by Pledger Giving Ltd. You can send a message on live chat support, email mariya@virtueimpact.com or support@virtueimpact.com, and contact via phone number (+44 7495806974) for any technical guidance or assistance related to the app. Impact Plus and Impact Unlimited users also get additional help support with a dedicated account manager.
However, most of your queries can be pre-resolved by going through the FAQ section, documentation, and other forum sites.
Final Words
Create an immediate social and environmental impact on your store through the Virtue Shopify app. Join Virtue’s network to support over 20,000 UK charities available on the app including Ukrainian refugees assistance, mental health improvement, offsetting CO2, removing ocean plastic, and much more. Virtue’s donations can be used in place of discounts to encourage sales while securing your brand. With customer donations, shoppers can make an impact after making a purchase.
