Heyyy!

How are you?

Before reading this email, if you’re on Instagram give me a follow: @mat.ds 

I post one reel per day with value!

In today’s newsletter we’re going to see:

• Mat’s Diary

  • I’ll be traveling and meeting you in 2024

  • In the process of getting “Built for Shopify”

  • My video content is starting to pay off?

• Toolbox Essentials #2

  • How I optimized Crisp for my support

• Shopify Pulse #2: Ecosystem Updates

  • My prediction about the future of Shopify Apps Dashboards

  • New App Comparison Page

  • How to use the new Video Generation by AI in your Shopify App

Are you ready? 👀

Let’s go!

Mat’s Diary

I’ll be traveling and meeting you in 2024

I want to meet as many people in the Shopify ecosystem as possible.

And to do it I travel and meet local people.

It’s always amazing because you learn a lot (and you increase your network)

For 2024 there are already 2 fixed destinations: Japan and Greece

I’ll stay longer in Japan because there are many cities I have to visit.

While in Greece I’ll stay in Athens!

I already have people I have to meet in both countries.

But if you’re here or plan to go there, let me know!

I’ll be in Greece in early March and in Japan in May.

If I were to pick some other cities/countries, where should I go?

In the process of getting “Built for Shopify”

So I started the “Built for Shopify” process.

Shopify introduced this badge a few months ago, and at that time, my opinion was clear: since we didn’t know the impact yet, it didn’t make sense to do it.

Getting the “Built for Shopify” badge is a time-consuming process, especially for older apps.

We already have:

• Many features

• Our own design

• Months or even years of coding

So changing the dashboard to meet new guidelines can be complicated.

After seeing the impact with the first apps doing it I had another opinion:

If you were a big app, you didn’t have to do it because you didn’t rely only on the Shopify App Store. But if you were a small app then it was definitely a good move.

You could appear above bigger apps in the App Store by doing.

And today my opinion changed a third time. I think the impact is bigger and will even be bigger in the future.

I even think Shopify is doing it like this:

• Introduce the badge as a “nice to have”

• Introduce the badge as “recommended”

• Introduce the badge as “big impact”

• Introduce the badge as “mandatory”

And I think we’re currently in the third stage.

So I applied for the badge and Shopify gave me 14 different points to fix.

They were pretty fast to give us feedback (3 hours after submitting)

When in the beginning it could take 1 week to get the first feedback.

If I do get the badge I’ll let you know the impact of it with real data.

My video content is starting to pay off?

In December I started a new challenge: Video content.

I posted my first long format video on Youtube and started to post daily on Instagram/TikTok/Shorts.

(You can follow me on Instagram here: @mat.ds)

During 3 months, I didn’t get any results.

My videos barely got 500 views and were shown only to my followers.

For TikTok it was even 250 views maximum.

But a few days ago something changed…

My videos started to be shown to non-followers.

And my last 2 videos on Instagram had more than 1,000 views with a majority of non-followers watching it.

It proves 2 things:

• Creating content is about being consistent

• I still have a lot to do before getting incredible results

But that’s okay.

First of all, when you start creating content, you should do it for a year before making any conclusion.

But most people don’t want to do something for a year without any results.

Now imagine this:

You’re guaranteed to get results but only if you post consistently for a year.

Most people would do it.

Well it’s the exact same thing. The guarantee isn’t possible but it’s mostly what will happen.

And I’ve been in the process for 3 months. What will happen at the end of the year?

When I did it for Twitter I reached 10,000 followers, got more partnerships and opportunities.

Toolbox Essentials #2

How I optimized Crisp for my support

Crisp has been one of my favorite tools since starting my Shopify Apps.

I repeat always the same thing: talk to your customers

And Crisp has been really helpful in doing it.

So here is how I set it up to give you ideas.

Step 1: Allowing the merchants to contact you