BSSA #59 - Build A Successful Shopify App 🚀

Hey!

I am currently in London and a few hours ago I talked at an event.

I talked about the “Build, Analyze, Iterate” method that I’ve been using for more than 3 years now on my Shopify Apps.

And I shared some golden nuggets! People loved it!

In today’s email I want to share with you how I would handle a difficult situation.

Let’s get some context.

Recently, someone asked in the Shopify App Founders group what we would do if we were in his situation.

He built a Shopify App in August 2022 and only received 30 installs. No paying users.

And it’s a situation many of us probably faced. So how to get out of that situation?

First of all, there is a problem there that if you’ve been following me for a few months now, know that you shouldn’t do.

Building something even before getting early users.

Look. You build something FOR your users. Not for you.

If you don’t even have early users before building, it means you are building something that YOU think is worth it.

But since you’re not your target user, you don’t know!

If you actually start with 5-10 early users, you’ll build an app that people need.

You will get early reviews so you’ll get some traction quickly.

You’ll get data so you know what you should build next.

Everything is easier when you start with early users! I know it takes time.

But what do you prefer? Spending 2 months finding your early users so you can then build in 1-2 months and grow like hell.

Or spending 2 months building and then spending 6 months trying to get 1 user?

This is just a reminder. Let’s go back to our situation.

We created this app. It’s working on the Shopify App Store. We only received 30 installs since August.

What would I do if I have to keep it?

1- Talk to every install

With 30 installs it means you still have 30 customers you can potentially talk to.

You should talk to the people right when they open the dashboard. Not by emails (people don’t reply).

This is how you do it:

• Whenever someone opens your dashboard you send a notification to Slack, email, etc

• You install Crisp (or any other tool) to get a live chat

• Whenever someone opens the dashboard you go to Crisp to create a live chat conversation with the user

You can then talk with the user right when they installed. Best moment to catch him.

You can then ask questions like:

• Why did you install?

• What made you hesitated?

• What don’t you understand?

2- Update your app listing

I would use the staircase strategy where I basically target long-tail keywords to ensure that I rank on many small keywords.

They don’t have a lot of traffic but at least you get some installs! Even 1-2 a week is enough.

You also need to create an app listing that is more powerful with great colors, showing the value of your product.

Look at other big apps how they do it so you can do the same.

3- Add a free plan

I know I say not to add a free plan. But I also said that you should do it only for some specific reasons.

And this is one of the reasons. You need data.

To get data you can add a free plan (this combined with the long-tail keywords is incredible). You will then combined this flow of install with the live chat notification system.

4- Add Mixpanel

You know my love for that tool. You need to use it in order to understand what the people are doing.

I already created a free course that you can use for that.

I don’t want to say something wrong. But I’m 99% sure that everyone who faced a similar problem never did the steps above.

So if you’re in the situation right now.

Why don’t you try?

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/

And let me know what you want me to talk about in the next email!

See you next week,

Mat 😁