#52 - Build A Successful Shopify App - Word of mouth 🚀

Heeeey! How are you doing? 😁

This week we started releasing the new WideBundle code. Finally 🤩

We’ve been working on it for weeks and tested, tested, and tested again!

Now it’s ready. We’re slowly pushing the new code to the old users while all the new ones automatically use it.

The next step will be to work on support. You already know it if you’ve been following me for a long time but support is one of my key areas for growth.

This is how you:

• Understand your customers’ needs

• Find new feature ideas

• Fix recurring bugs

• Get more reviews

For a Shopify App this is essential!

So we release the new code and write documentation and then we’ll improve support.

Here is the process we’ll follow if you want to do it too:

1. Review support conversations one by one

2. For each, ask yourself: What can I change so I don’t get this conversation again?

3. If I can’t avoid this conversation, how can I reduce the time it takes to fix the problem?

And usually you’ll do it using these methods:

• Change your app’s code

• Change your dashboard UX

• Add messages or alerts

• Create a helpdesk article

• Create a support process with template messages

We currently get 30 conversations per day (and way more messages in total as discussions are sometimes very long)

Our goal is to reduce it to 20 conversations per day.

And we already know that we’ll: add features to reduce questions, especially customizations to reduce custom CSS requests, processes and code change + alerts in-app.

We first want to focus on it to go full-time on growth.

Most of the time, growing a Shopify App (or any SaaS business) is about improving what you already have.

• Improving the dashboard

• Improving your processes

• Reducing problems

• Improving your metrics

• Improving your prices

There is a problem if you’re constantly looking for new things. This is not how you grow a company.

I shared on Twitter a breakdown of our acquisition channels and I want to add more details here.

I’ll first detail each channel and then I’ll tell you more about the 1st one: Word of mouth.

So Word of mouth is when someone finds your app thanks to someone else through recommendation.

Shopify Recommendation is when Shopify shows your app to potential users when they were not looking for it: Recommendation in the admin dashboard, in articles, when merchants contact Shopify support, etc…

Other (Mix) is all the small %: A course, someone that added a custom channel that wasn’t there, app partnerships, etc…

Shopify App Store is obvious, it’s when someone searches for an app on the app store.

Youtube is all the videos talking about WideBundle.

Facebook is linked to communities because our strategy in the early days was to focus on communities. We even have our own private community. People sometimes recommend WideBundle in communities (especially French communities)

Twitter because I have a Twitter account (personal and for WideBundle) where I share about WideBundle so obviously people find it here. But it’s only 3% because usually I share how to grow a Shopify App and not how to grow an ecom store. I think Twitter could be higher if I was talking about e-commerce.

TikTok is the same as Youtube, we added a few videos with influencers and we’re currently working on our strategy for TikTok to do even more in 2023!

Linkedin is very small because I just started to do exactly what I’m doing on Twitter. I share a post every day about my company, struggles, etc…

Blog is like TikTok, it’s part of our 2023 strategy and we’re only starting with it! Our goal is to share value with our users.

How to create more Word of mouth?

As you can see Word of mouth takes a big part of the acquisition, more than 40%!

And I think every business should rely on Word of mouth to grow. If a business relies only on ads to grow there is a problem.

Here are the key components:

• Build great product

• Offer incredible support

• Work with communities

• Encourage sharing

1) Build a great product

That one is obvious. But building a great product is more than just giving value. It’s about making a product WORTH sharing with others.

People share things for different reasons:

• If it helps someone

• If it makes you feel cool

• If it makes you feel like an insider

(And some other reasons you can find in the book “Contagious” by Jonah Berger that is amazing)

So basically, find ways to make your product sharable.

2) Offer incredible support

More than the product, support can be a game changer. If you have a great product but poor support people will be mad. While if your product is good enough but you have incredible support, then people will talk about it.

We love when someone can fix our problems more than someone who can help us get something we don’t already have.

Fear of loss > Joy of winning

3) Work with communities

Communities are great for sharing products and usually a product shared inside a community will spread like the flu.

You can get that community effect by:

• Doing partnerships with other companies

• Doing affiliate marketing with influencers

• Participating in communities

To use communities, you have to be part of communities too!

4) Encourage sharing

You can increase Word of mouth by not being passive. Instead, encourage people to share your product with others.

You can for example build a referral program to incentive people to share your app.

Or you can add things to your dashboard as simply as a sharing button on social media!

The goal is to ensure you tell people to share!

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