#36 - Build A Successful Shopify App - 3 mistakes I made 🚀

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In 2017 I built my first Shopify App. I had just gotten into the Shopify business and was playing with the platform.I partnered with 2 people, Etienne and Simon, and they taught me many things about business. Etienne is still one of my mentors today and I will be forever grateful.Etienne saw something in me. Since 2017 he always told me I was going to make it.He said: You're hungry, smart, willing to, and don't give up. So your success is a matter of time.And in 2017 they were the founders of an e-commerce community I joined. I partnered with them because they knew I was able to build an app and they had an idea.It was simple:- 1 app to display a discount code based on customer's behavior- 50/50. 50 for me, 50 for them.- I handle the code. They handle the marketingBut in reality, it was different. I had only that, no other business while they already had successful businesses and were already making a lot of money.And obviously, they didn't care about this app business as much as I did so when we struggled with the revenue, they gave up. And I was alone working on it. That's why I started to learn marketing.Look, the app was generating almost $1,000 per month. I knew I had something and didn't want to let it down so I learned everything I could to grow it by myself. Without their help.But I failed. No matter what I tried I didn't grow past $1,000 MRR.Here are 3 things I would have done differently if I had to return to that time.

Not tracking my data

This was my first mistake but also my biggest one. When you don't track your data, you're blind. And that was my case.

I was trying hundreds of different things to grow past $1,000:

• New acquisition channels

• New design

• New features

• Different dashboard

• New way of communication

• etc

But nothing worked. Because my process was wrong!

I was:

• Taking a guess of what the problem was

• Taking a guess of what the solution could be

• Implementing it

• Waiting for some change

Here is what I should have done:

• Track my data to understand what's wrong

• Take a guess of what the solution could be

• Implementing it

• Track my data to understand if it has changed something

And we all do the same mistake of trying different things based on guts and not on data.

If you hear a weird noise coming out of your car, will you guess what it is, buy a piece and see if it fixes the problem?

No, you will first figure out where the problem is coming from. Then you will change this exact piece based on the problem. And after that only you can check again if the problem is gone.

That's the same with SaaS business.

Did I have a churn problem? Acquisition problem? Feature problem? I don't know! Because I didn't check.

Not trying different acquisition strategies

I was afraid of trying things. And later I found out I wasn't even afraid of failing but instead I was afraid of success.

Funny, right? But many people are actually afraid of success rather than afraid of failing.

• What if I have to handle 1000 users suddenly?

• What if I earn too much money and I have to deal with taxes? (What a great problem to have)

• What if ...

So many "What If" problems as I love to call them.But basically, we were selling the app mostly in the community of the founders they had built. I had nothing.

And I wasn't even in the Shopify App Store! (Back in the day you could build an app without releasing it on the store)

I tried to be on the store, but after 4 feedback emails from the Shopify App Team and as I still had to make some changes I gave up.

While in reality, you have a different acquisition strategy. First you have 2 directions:

• Horizontally: Releasing a new app, going in a new market

• Vertically: Adding a new marketing channel, getting more installs

And when you look at both ways, you can find dozen of methods to grow your app:

Translating your app into different languages, building a community on a social network, doing ads, creating another app to upsell your existing user base, cold email, etc...

Focussing too much on acquisition

I was obsessed with acquisition. It was the only number that mattered. How many installs did I get?

While in reality, if you look at the AARRR framework, everything is as important as Acquisition.

You need to focus also on Activation, Retention, Referral and Revenue. And only if you get all of them you have a working business.

But to me, only Acquisition was important. I didn't know that framework. I didn't know what retention or churn was, the activation, or referral. And I didn't even improve the revenue. I had only 1 pricing plan, and it was enough. I had not changed the price since the beginning.

But when you look at every SaaS business struggling, you can usually find the problem in one of those 5 points.

Marketing Action of the week

Collect your reviews on your app and store them in your database. Then using your support tool, compare the store name of the user contacting you with the stores that already left a review. That way you know if the person has already left a review and you don't ask this person twice.

And that's it for today's email.See you next week,Mat