Building A Successful Shopify App
Posts
BSSA #104 - How To Launch On The Shopify App Store

BSSA #104 - How To Launch On The Shopify App Store

Mat De Sousa
August 21, 2024

Hello there! How you doing?

In this email we’ll keep going with our series “Growing a Shopify App From Scratch”

The goal is to have a complete course after I finish it.

Also, some vacations wouldn’t be too much. I’m traveling to Portugal!

As always, I want to meet people there. You can reply to that email if you’re in Porto or Lisbon. I’ll be happy to meet you!

Let’s dive in!

Before starting, let me share the dev company I’m working with.

Grodas

You know I love talking about stuff I use daily or incredible people.

You have already heard me talking about Mixpanel, right?

And you probably heard about Grodas. It’s simple:

Tell them about your project
They’ll tell you if they can do it and give you a proposal
Accept it and you get to work with devs directly who know what they do

They can even build using Gadget. There is no project manager or what between them and you (even if you could). These developers work for you.

They built WideReview for me. They now work on WideBundle (the same devs).

If you want to work with them or at least get a proposal you can contact them here: Send an email to Grodas

In today’s email we’re going to talk about:

Building in public my new SaaS Business
Update on my Shopify Apps
Launching on the Shopify App Store

Let’s go! 🔥

Building in public my new SaaS Business

If you don’t know, I’m building a platform to help Shopify App Founders find partnerships because the process takes too much time.

And I’m building it in public so you can learn from my mistakes and see me grow it from 0.

So far we’re:

✅ Finding the problem Shopify App Founders have

✅ Finding the idea to solve it

✅ Validating it with potential users

🔃 Finding a co-founder that can build it

Notice that I don’t even know the platform's name at this point. I don’t even know what features I’ll have.

The only thing I know is that people need something. So what do I do?

It’s simple, after I find a co-founder who want to build it with me I’ll just:

Talk to as many people as possible to understand what they want
Think about the MVP
Start building a landing page while building the MVP
Tell about the landing page everywheeeeere
Launch the MVP and get initial feedback

The main point here is that I’ll never stop talking to potential users. They are the ones who will help me build the best plaform. Because I don’t know everything.

I shared an application form for the co-founder position, and 43 people applied.

I selected 9 people I thought where the best (based on my own opinion). I looked for technical skills and experience, but also alignment on my work methods, etc.

I had a call with these people and selected 4 of them.

This call wasn’t really to see what they were capable of but it was mostly to see if there was a human fit on both sides.

Do I see myself working with that person? So it was a casual chat and we also talked about the platform and where I wanted to take it.

Now, I need to hop on a call with these four people to discuss the deal we’ll make (compensations, shares, and other stuff like that) and the initial phase of the project.

I just want to go as fast as possible! That’s the objective.

Update on my Shopify Apps

I’ve been pretty silent on my Shopify Apps WideBundle and WideReview.

With the team we’ve been working on some big features for them that will allow us to go after a different target.

I know a LOT of French agencies that needed specific features for their clients before using WideBundle.

These agencies work with big French stores.

Working with bigger stores means:

Lower Churn
Higher Price

And we thought we had to use this unfair advantage on the French market as it’s pretty big.

We had started with this market in the beginning with smaller stores and then we went after more countries.

But now we’re revisiting that strategy to do the same with bigger stores, and I think it makes sense at some point in the journey.

At the same time we were working on all the new updates that Shopify asked us to do 🙄

Like switching from Rest API to GraphQL

Or being able to support the new 2,000 variant limit.

On the marketing side we prepared the switch by going to e-com events and meeting more agencies, scheduling calls for when we release our changes.

I’ll give you more update at the end of 2024!

Launching on the Shopify App Store

In our series we’re gonna talk about the Shopify App Store because some people don’t know how to optimize it.

Read the previous section about our series by clicking here

Remember, it’s the first page your potential users will see after searching for your app. Or even if they’re coming from another place!

You have to make it attractive and catchy so people install it.

There are a few components you need to focus on:

Icon
Main images/videos
Title
Subtitle
Description
Categories

In the previous email we already talked about.

Icon

The icon is the thing people will see the most: in the app store, in their Shopify admin dashboard, when they install your app, when they look at your listing, everywhere!

So you better spend some time on it.

Here is how I handle it:

One primary flashy color
One simple icon

Don’t make it complicated, we need to recognize it even if the icon doesn’t explain what your app does.

I mean: does it for WideBundle?

The goal of the color is to make it pop on the app store

Main images/videos

Most merchants scan the pages. They will type your keywords, then click on your listing, scan the page, and go to the next one.

That is why catching their attention is necessary.

The thing they’ll check even before reading your texts is the main image.

If the main image attracts them, they’ll check the next ones.

And it’s only after that they will read your texts carefully.

How to choose between an image or a video?

It’s simple, since people scan quickly, if you can use an image, try it.

If your app is easy to understand, show it in a single image so people can immediately understand what it does.

If they’re satisfied they will check your other images with more details about your app and features.

But if your app is complicated and can’t be explained in an image, you can use a video.

You should also try a video after some time. The goal will be to track the conversions with an image and the conversions with a video to find the best one.

Now how to create a good video?

Remember that people scan. So don’t add a 10-second introduction because people won’t keep watching.

Go straight to the point:

Explain what your app is about
Explain who this app is for
Show your features
For each feature, tell about the benefits

Keep it simple and show your app on the video, not just a random animation

How to create your images?

Reuse the main color of your logo and show your app in action. You can also add a simple text to explain what your app does.

The next images is about actually explaining what your app does, your features, etc. Keep the same design as the primary image.

For example, here is a bad example:

Red color of the icon isn’t reused
We can’t understand what the app does with the main image
No text to add context to the different images

Title

You have a maximum amount of characters. Use them all.

Your app’s title can’t be generic with random keywords. You actually need to add your app’s name and you can then add your main keyword.

The title has the biggest impact on your keywords ranking so add the keyword you want to rank for.

If your app is small, don’t add the keyword every big app use. Otherwise you won’t rank on them.

It’s better to add a smaller keyword and change it as you get more reviews and more installs.

Some people (including myself) will beat the system by creating the app name that already includes a keyword

Subtitle

The subtitle’s role is to explain what your app does even before opening the app’s page.

Don’t add random keywords here as Shopify doesn’t like it. Clearly explain what your app does, simple as that. Use all the characters again.

Description

When you open the app listing you see a title in the description, a description, and a few bullet points.

Again, use all the characters you can!

The description is basically your tagline but with more details. Include keywords in there as well (different than your main keyword in the title) so you can rank on them as well.

Add benefits inside.

The bullet points are here to list your best features. Ask yourself: “Why would someone install my app?”