#8 - How to build a successful Shopify App 🚀

Summer

We're now in July, and you need to be prepared. Usually, July and August are not great months. People take vacations and slow down a little bit before Q4.

We usually see fewer installs and more churn.

Most Shopify apps won't reach $1K MRR

I made a quick thread regarding mistakes people usually do when launching a Shopify App that prevent them from making at least $1K MRR.

If you haven't read it yet, you can do it below 👇

The key takeaways from this thread are:

• You don't focus on a problem

• You don't ask for money

• Your support is not your priority

• Your app is not different than others

• You are only building

We transformed a 1-star review into a 5-star review

When you get a negative review, it's never the end. It's the start of something. Users complaining are 1 call away from becoming your best brand advocate.

When you get one bad review:

• Check what is the name of the store

• Search it in your partner dashboard

• Check if you had a conversation with them on support and follow-up there

• If you didn't have a conversation, get the mobile number and contacted them through Whatsapp.

• Don't ask them to remove the review, ask them what is wrong and if you can jump in a call with them to fix the problems they have.

On my app WideBundle

We're still working on the new dashboard, getting feedback from users while we build it.

The goal is to always build something FOR users, not for you. So you need constant feedback from them, don't hesitate to get them in calls.

On my app WideReview

We're optimizing the cost of the servers, etc. That's why we're improving the images posted on the app.

Right now we're not focused on growing WideReview (lack of time) but no problem we'll grow it later!

On Twitter

I'm sorry I didn't have time to work on the "Magical Checklist for customer support", but I hope I'll release it this week!

Customer support is vital to the success of a Shopify App, so I think this checklist will be helpful!

$29,000 MRR

We reached $29,000 MRR for WideBundle and WideReview combined. 🥳 It's a great milestone and another step to the $30,000 MRR! I hope we'll reach it by the end of July.

But as I told you, Summer is usually not a great time to increase MRR. Yet, we are working on some improvements and hope to launch it by the end of the month.

How to find new app ideas?

I receive many DMs on Twitter from people asking how I find new app ideas. And I think I need to clarify a little bit and share with you my processes.

Start with a problem

The most important thing is that you don't find ideas. You find problems!

And when I say you find problems, I mean "finding" problems. Not "creating" problems.

And the difference is crucial because those who don't follow that spend weeks building a Shopify App and never get users. Because they built something nobody wants.

To understand why you need to focus on problems and not ideas, you need to think about WHY people use a Shopify App.

They don't use it because they like how you built it or like you.

They use it because they need to. They had a problem, and you fixed it for them. And by the way, there are many potential solutions to a single problem!

Your first customer

When someone tells me they don't know how to find their first customers I know they didn't follow this "problem" thing.

Because they had, they would already have their first customers.

If you don't create a problem but you found one it means you found at least 1 person with this problem.

If they have this problem, and you know they have it, they will be your first customers. And if they don't want to, I'm sorry to tell you, but it wasn't a problem worth solving.

How to find people?

If you understood, you don't want an idea, you want a problem. But we don't create problems, we find ones. And to do that, you need to find people with problems.

We build Shopify Apps so we need to find merchants.

When you know where merchants are you will be able to understand what problems they have.

So where do you find them? Where do I go?

And the answer is simple, everywhere! Go where they hang out!

• Communities

• Live events

• Meetups

• Reddit

• Twitter

• etc

Just go where they already are. It's simple as that! And to find places you need to think like a merchant. What are some of the problems they have? What kind of things would they type on Google? Where would they go?

Think like a merchant and you'll find other merchants.

And now?

It's not a secret, or a magic hack. You need to spend time talking to people. Understand where they are in their business, what they do, what they like, what problems they are.

And always ask why, go deeper into their response and at some point you'll notice that, for example, they use this app, but they don't really like it because blah blah blah, but they don't have any other solution because blah blah blah.

Congrats! You found a new Shopify App Idea! And guess what, this person will be your beta tester!

They don't have any other solutions to do what they want! Of course, they will help you build it! And they will use it even if your app isn't perfect, because it's the only way for them to fix at least 10% of their problems.

How did I do it myself?

• Hanging out in French Facebook communities

• Talking to everyone, replying to posts, talking to people by DM

• Noticed 3 people wanted the same thing and it didn't exist. They knew I was a developer

• Validate the idea with some other people

• Launched it