#21 - How to build a successful Shopify App 🚀

If I had to start again from scratch. No community. No users. Not a lot of money.

Would I still be able to build a successful Shopify?

This idea passed through my mind. I'm writing this newsletter. I'm sharing on Twitter.

But can I do it again? Can I apply my own advice and start again?

And then I saw myself building a new Shopify App, recording myself during each step and sharing it with you.

Wouldn't it be fantastic?

Of course you'll say! But it takes time. So will I do it? I don't know. 🤔

But I had to share it with you so that you know I'm thinking about it.

In the end, isn't the purpose of this newsletter? It's my diary, right?

But when I started to think about it and a potential idea, I saw immediately how I'd do it.

The power of branding

The best acquisition channel you can get is not SEO, it's not Paid Ads. It's Referral. Word of mouth.

If 1 user brings 2 others. You won!

But why would people share it? Because it's a great product? No, it's not enough.

It helps, obviously, but it's not enough.

Look I took WideBundle. We grew so fast in the first 6 months. We grew so fast that I couldn't follow with customer support.

The product was good, but it wasn't great. So why did everyone share it?

Because if you don't know, Word of mouth is still our main acquisition channel today. More than 30% of people come from referrals.

And I'm gonna tell you the REAL secret. It's branding.

The branding of WideBundle was powerful. Did I know it? Probably not.

A simple and strange icon. An odd pink as the main color.

And 2 simple sentences that created this brand:

• Customer support is our main feature

• We'll talk to you and work with you as if you were a friend

And we then created: The Wide Family, The Wide Events, and the name of the company: The Wide Company

Look, the brand is powerful. People remember it! So it's contagious!

I'm thinking about this book: "Contagious". Incredible book explaining why things catch on.

You should read it.

And if I'm saying that, it's because of the "challenge" that I thought of: building a Shopify App from scratch.

I saw immediately that if I had to start something, I had to build a powerful brand that people would remember for life.

Now 3 simple things you can use to start your brand:

• Use a primary color everywhere. For me it was pink

• Set up your values and do everything based on them

• Don't do 50/50. Assume your positions. We talk to our users as if we were friends. If they don't like it, they can leave.

We're entering Q4. AKA, the best moment for e-commerce. This is the moment you'll receive many installations on your app.

And I just want to let you know that if you don't have any users right now. If you're not making money. Or if you're not where you want to be.

It's just a matter of time!

If you put in the work. If you believe in it. If you get up when something goes wrong. Then there is no room for failure. You can always win.

And remember something, when you don't succeed, you don't fail. You learn. You learn how not to do something.

So let's go back to work. And let's make some busineeeeesss.

You remember this email I sent a few weeks ago about a football test I made?

I told you I didn't know how to play. And they rejected me. They said I wasn't good enough to play in their team.

Well, they were right 😂

But! I didn't accept that. I worked for it. And tomorrow I have another test with another team.

All right, maybe I'm still not prepared. But if they don't want me on their team. Guess what I'll do? I'll train more and I'll start again with another team!

And if you have that mindset, how can you fail? That's how I think and that's how you need to think.

I once was a developer only. Not a marketer, only a developer. And I made many mistakes when building SaaS.

I saw many other people make these mistakes.

So I shared a list on Twitter of things you have to avoid.

Here is it:

• Do not focus on code too much, do marketing

• Don't make your code too perfect, do more marketing

• Don't build too many features, start with a few and get feedback

• Don't use a trendy language but use the one you know the best

• Meet with people, you need to network

• Ship your SaaS quickly

• Don't build something that already exists if you can reuse it

• Don't think that value = time spent working

• Don't do everything alone

• Don't wait for the $1B idea. It doesn't exist. it's just a $10K idea with incredible execution and management.

• You don't need to be the developer

• You have to ask for money, don't create free tools

• Don't think 1 more feature will fix your problems

11,000 followers on Twitter 🚀

We continue the growth! We reached 11,000 followers on Twitter, thank you! Let's go for the 20,000.

That's it for today,

See you next week,

Mat