#43 - Build A Successful Shopify App - Update 🚀

Heeeey founders!

I’m happy to have you for another weekly email! I remembered that I didn’t thank you enough for reading me soo… Thank you! It motivates me to create more and to give more!

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I realized something this week as we were talking with my team. The subject was: “Should we shut down WideReview?”

For those who don’t know, WideReview is the 2nd app I built after WideBundle. I built it in 2021 but it didn’t grow how I wanted.

The reason is I under-expected the time and effort it takes to grow a Shopify App. I’d say it’s easier to grow a Shopify App initially but it’s still a SaaS business.

I didn’t know how to hire or create some processes, so I had to learn all of that and if you’re already struggling with 1 Shopify App, adding another one won’t help.

And so, today WideBundle is at $39,000 MRR while WideReview is at $1,700 MRR. We are focused on WideBundle and don’t do any marketing on WideReview.

No influencers, no partnerships, no improvements, nothing.

So the question was, should we keep it? Or should we shut it down now to keep focussing on WideBundle?

And then I remembered something: Your actions should be towards your vision and goal.

My goal was to build 5 Shopify Apps. I even had a clear branding in mind and how the apps would work together.

And that was the bigger vision and when it comes to making a decision you have to think about what decision will help you reach your vision.

And in this case, it’s definitely not to shut down WideReview. Maybe it would’ve been better for the business or perhaps it doesn’t matter and in both cases, I’ll succeed.

But the thing is, it wouldn’t be my vision and this would have probably impacted my mood.

So when you have to decide, ask yourself: does it help me reach my goal and vision? If it’s no, don’t do it.

What’s going on?

Since mid-February, we started to get more installs. As I already explained, at the end of Q4 for apps like mine (discount creation) the number of installs will be lower because people needed discounts for BF or Christmas.

Then around February it goes up again and we can see it in the installation chart below 👇

And thus even if we have a bad position in the App Store 😵‍💫

And this is our goal right now:

1) Support

Ogi is working on support and I gave him all the documentation he needs to: create support processes, create helpdesk articles and train a new person.

So we just hired someone and this is how the training is structured

• Week 1: Training about our company, values, processes, app (mostly self-training as we have a self-onboarding system)

• Week 2: Training with Ogi where he will watch Ogi answer support tickets

• Week 3: Ogi will train the new person but this time Ogi won’t reply and will give some advice

• Week 4: The new person will work alone and we’ll check if the work is done properly

This is for the 1st month and then the 2nd month is like a test to see if the job is done correctly!

2) Marketing

Nico is currently focused on content. We still work on partnerships but there is a huge opportunity with content and I want it to be THE CHANNEL for 2023.

The main priority is our blog, we’re trying to find our voice and understand what our process will be.

We’ll also work on video content later in 2023.

3) Dev

We’re slowly trying to understand how we’ll implement Shopify Functions for bundles but for now, we’re working on improving the app’s code (will be easier to implement something new) and we’ll add a few settings to the app that our users need so we can reduce the number of support tickets

We have to do many things, and ensuring everyone is going the right way is exhausting.

In 2023 I want to reach another level.

This email mostly showed you where we’re going with the team!

I hope you liked it! I’ll keep you updated on all the different projects!

See you next week,

Mat 😁