#48 - Build A Successful Shopify App - Improve listing 🚀

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What’s going on?

We’re testing the new WideBundle code with our users. My goal here was to:

• Make the code faster

• Make it smaller

• Make it easier to read

I wanted to do it before adding new features to WideBundle. As you grow you’ll have technical debts, especially if you follow my strategy of “no worrying too much about the code” and that’s a good thing!

Some people will tell me:

“You see, if you had improved the code since day 1 then you wouldn’t have technical debts”

And let me tell you something, most people trying to improve the code from day 1 are people who spend most of the time coding and not marketing.

My apps might have technical debts but they generate some MRR! And it’s only a matter of: what do you prefer?

But when you’re growing and you reach a point where you need to improve your code to go faster then you should do it!

And it becomes easier when you have developers because they can focus on it while you focus on marketing.

Because even if we’re improving our code base we’re:

• Still improving our dashboard for churn and activation rate

• Still working on marketing strategies to grow

And my devs are working on the settings page. Because we want to add more customization to WideBundle and to do that we wanted to improve the settings page.

On the marketing side, we’re finishing our first video and blog content strategy.

And we doubled down on getting more partners and affiliates as we stopped for some time to focus on the partners we already had!

So if you have an app with a size similar to WideBundle, you can contact [email protected] so we can make a partnership together!

At the end of 2023, our goal for content marketing is for it to be our 2nd acquisition channel after Word of mouth. Let’s see if we can do it!

Double your installations overnight

Some people want complex marketing strategies or think there are some secrets to getting a ton of installs.

But sometimes, growing is just about finding what metrics are wrong and what you can improve.

Here are some of the metrics you should check:

• Ranking & number of keywords in the App Store

• Conversion Rate on the App Store

• Activation Rate & Onboarding Conversion Rate

• Conversion Rate free to paying users (or free trial)

• Churn

• Number of referrals

These metrics are simple and you don’t need to do something else if these metrics are not already improved.

For example, by focusing on Activation Rate, I could go from 7% to 40% on my conversion rate. It means that I didn’t change the number of installs but I changed the number of new paying users.

I didn’t try something new to get users, I instead focused on what I already had and tried to improve it.

In this email I want to talk about conversion rate on the Shopify App Store.

If it’s not already done: Add Google Analytics to your listing page and track clicks on the “Add app” button. And wait for a week to have some data.

Now if your conversion rate (number of people who clicked on your listing and installed the app) is less than 30% then you can make some improvements.

The lower your conversion rate, the better it will be for you!

Imagine going from a 5% conversion rate to a 20% conversion rate by making some changes… It means you’ll get x4 of your installs! So x4 your users!

If you get 5 installs per week you’ll suddenly get 20 installs per week, who doesn’t want that?

So here is what you should do:

The goal is to understand in 3 seconds what your app is about. Something you can do is share your listing with someone and after 5 seconds, ask them:

• What is your app’s name

• What is your app about

Because your listing should be memorable.

1) Clear and simple App name

Choose an app name that is simple and memorable, you can use existing words. And you can app your primary keyword.

2) Simple logo

Your logo shouldn’t be complex and we should understand it even if it’s small. And it doesn’t need to mean something. For example WideBundle logo doesn’t look like bundles.

3) Powerful colors

The colors are a great way to make your app memorable. One tip here is to use one powerful color (that is not used by many people) and then you should use that color everywhere so you clearly OWN that color.

4) A main image or video that shows your product in action

Merchants are busy so you don’t have a lot of time to convince them to install your app. That’s why you should show them quickly what your app is about and what the benefits are.

And if the value and the app can be understood without a video, I think a single image can be enough

5) Your title and description

Clearly show the benefits and the main features here. You should also include the keywords you want to rank on.

And benefits matter here! At the end of the day, merchants don’t care about your product, they only care about what the product will allow them to do!

6) Key benefits

In the key benefits, you should show what makes your product unique. Why merchants should choose your product over another.

It’s a great place to write what your users tell you about your product.

Use all the characters and rows you can.

Don’t forget that the conversion rate will increase with reviews and ranking. So highly focus on it with your current users!

And a great strategy to improve the conversion rate is to:

• Make a significant change to your listing

• Wait for a week

• Check your conversion rate

Did your change improve the conversion rate? If yes, keep it, otherwise, roll back.

Do this until you have a good enough conversion rate, then move on to the next metric to improve!

That’s it for today’s email!

I hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to share my newsletter with someone else: https://news.matdesousa.com/

See you next week,

Mat 😁