Heeey! 👋

Happy New Year 🥳

I wish you the best for 2024! And the new year means change!

Here is what you can expect from this newsletter. I prepared specific topics we’ll cover during each month:

Mat’s Diary: My Shopify App Journey - My journey, learnings, experiences, milestones, etc. - Every Tuesday

Ask Me Anything: Shopify App Insights - I will share an AmA where I will pick a few questions and answer them in detail - The first Tuesday of the month

Shopify App Masterclass: Step-by-Step Guides - I will share a tutorial about something related to the Shopify Apps business - The first Tuesday of the month

Shopify App Stars: Stories from Other Founders - I will share the story and learnings of other successful Shopify App Founders - The second Tuesday of the month

Toolbox Essentials: Maximize your Shopify App Experience - I will talk about one specific tool that I use with tips - The third Tuesday of the month

Shopify Pulse: Ecosystem Updates & Trends - I will share info about the ecosystem that you shouldn’t miss - The third Tuesday of the month

Zero to Hero: The Shopify App Growth Blueprint - I will share all the required steps to build and grow an app from scratch with one step in each email - The fourth email of the month

Let me know what you think about these topics and the schedule!

Let’s go with the first email of 2024!

Mat’s Diary: My Shopify App Journey

My December 2023

Let’s say it, December was really bad.

→ We didn’t have many installs
→ We didn’t have many reviews
→ We lost a lot of ranks for every category or keyword in the App Store

I’m used to having low installs during that month. But not used to lose ranks.

So I’m starting to think that maybe “Built for Shopify” could be a good thing to start now that it impacts the ranking a lot.

The New Pricing

If you follow this newsletter, you know I’ve been testing the pricing a lot, and we have 12 days until the end of the test. For now, the results are incredible!

And we’ll wait until the very last day, but there are good chances we’ll keep that new pricing.

And if the results stay the same over the year + we still get the number of installs we were getting in 2023, then we’ll have some crazy growth!

My growth over the years

Now that 2023 is over, we can review my growth over the last few years so you know where you stand.

I launched WideBundle in May 2020.

• May 2020: $0 MRR

• December 2020: $10,000 MRR

• December 2021: $25,000 MRR

• December 2022: $40,000 MRR

• December 2023: $57,000 MRR

And for 2024, the goal is simple: $83,000 MRR ($1M ARR)

Just remember everyone has a different growth. I’ve seen people who started before me making less money. I’ve seen people who started after me making more money.

And I’ve seen people with small growth suddenly getting 100% or 200% growth. We all go at our own pace. You’re your own competitor.

Newsletter Goal

There are currently 1,700 people subscribed to this newsletter. For 2023 I want to take it to 10,000 subscribers!

Here is how I will do it:

• Increase the quality of that newsletter (with the different topics it will be more structured)

• Add the link to my newsletter after each tweet/thread when it reaches 10 likes (automatic with Typefully)

• CTA to subscribe in bio: Twitter, Threads, Instagram, Linkedin, Youtube

• CTA in every Youtube Video (In the video and in the description)

• CTA in the pinned thread on Twitter and pinned post in Facebook group

• CTA after each LinkedIn Post

• Tweet and Linkedin Post every time there is a newsletter sent with topics discussed

• Add CTA when someone downloads one of my free product

• Add CTA in every lead magnet

What do you think I should do to reach that goal?

Ask Me Anything: Shopify App Insights

Oops…We don’t have any questions for the moment because it’s the first email!

You need to fix that!

Ask me a question by clicking on this link.

It will get you to a Google Form where you can ask me what you want.

And I will answer it in detail in the first email of February!

Shopify App Masterclass: Step-by-Step Guides

How to Handle 1-star reviews?

Here is the process we use at WideBundle to handle 1-star reviews. Our primary goal is to transform the 1-star review into a 5-star.

If it’s not possible we want at least to remove it.

And if it’s not possible we need to get everything we need to improve our app

1- Dedicate one person to handling 1-star reviews

First of all, you need to determine who in your team will handle a 1-star review. It can be you, a manager or someone on support or marketing team.

Ideally, your support manager should do it.

2- Forwarding review emails

When you get a 1-star review you get an email to tell you. You shouldn’t keep it for you (except if you’re alone).

The best is to forward this email to the person in charge and also other important people in the team so everyone is aware of that.

We created a rule in Gmail to forward automatically emails coming from Shopify with the word review so that the team knows when there is a bad review.

3- React quickly

The best time to handle a 1-star review is before the review has been left. The second best time is right after the review was added.

With the new Shopify system that checks if reviews are legit, you don’t know immediately when someone leaves a review. It makes it even more complicated.

When you react quickly, the user still has your app and his experience in mind.

If you wait a few days to react, the user already forgot about your review so you won’t get a reply.

4- Contact the user on the best channel

To know where you should contact the user you can follow this rule:

• Did the user contact you on Support?

  • Find the store name in your partner dashboard to find the myshopify URL.

  • Find this URL in your support tool (add a system that adds the store URL automatically to every profile in your support tool)

  • If the user contacted you on support, then use that channel to send him a message

• Whatsapp available?

  • If the user didn’t contact you, the 2nd best way is through Whatsapp.

  • Look into the partner dashboard if there is a phone number and check if that number is on Whatsapp

• Email

  • The last choice is email. Because it’s slow, people don’t check it and don’t care.

5- Send the right message

There is a default structure you can use for your email:

→ Hey [User’s name], I’m [Your name], [Your position] at [Your App’s name]
→ I saw that you left a 1-star review. I’m really sorry for the experience you’ve had as we always try our best
→ You said in the review that [reuse their words]

Then if you can fix whatever they said in the review, tell them that you’re going to fix it and do everything you have to do.

Then you can ask the best question:

→ What should we do in order to transform this 1-star review into a 5-star?

You can’t ask them to remove or transform the review, but you can ask them indirectly.

If you fix the issue, most of the time, they will either change it to a 5-star review directly or they will remove their review.

If you don’t fix the issue, they will usually tell you what you have to do in order to fix it.

And if they don’t even tell you that, get as much feedback as possible to improve your app.

6- Follow-up

You should always follow up:

• If they didn’t answer the first time

• If you fixed the issue for them

• If they didn’t change their reviews yet

You can follow up 1 day after the first message if they don’t answer. You can follow up right after if you fixed the issue, and you can wait 6 hours if they didn’t change their reviews yet after you fixed the issue.

Something we also do if they don’t reply is to follow up on another channel too such as email or whatsapp.

We usually follow up 3 times if they don’t answer or more if they replied and we feel like we can transform the review.

If you enjoyed this email and you want to help me, forward this email to 2 different people!

The goal is to reach 10,000 subscribers before the end of 2024! 🔥

See you next week,

Mat