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New week means new email! 🔥

I hope you’ve been waiting for this one. We’ve got some golden nuggets inside!

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:

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Mat’s Diary

I received a Shopify Gift

I came back from Ski and this is what I found

A package by Shopify with some goodies in it!

We have a cap, pins, tee-shirts and even this wonderful Shopify Keycap

Someone asked me when can we “send mass traffic” to a Shopify App

I received this message: “My app got approved, do I need to do something or can I start sending mass traffic?”

And it’s always something that bothers me.

You don’t suddenly send mass traffic.

The game isn’t about: 1. Building 2. Sending traffic

This isn’t how you get users.

If you’ve been following me for months, you know the solution to attract 1000 users isn’t to actually attract 1000 users.

It’s to start with a few users and keep doing it.

This person:

→ Didn’t even know if the app was solving a real issue

→ Didn’t even talk to potential users

So, how do you expect users to use your app and stick to it if you have nothing concrete?

SaaS business isn’t about building

It’s about creating a relationship with your users. It’s about finding problems you can solve.

2,000 subscribers to this newsletter

We’re now 2,000 on this newsletter! That is amazing!

A newsletter is amazing because you control the audience. Not a platform like Facebook, X or Linkedin.

I know that approximately 50% of you will be reading this newsletter so I know exactly what my reach will be!

And no one can take my list.

If the platform I’m sending this email from has to shutdown, I can just send emails from another one.

So thank you again for being that many to follow my journey!

I hope my content is enough as I’m doing my best!

Shopify Editions has been released

Last week was Shopify Winter Editions.

Twice a year, Shopify shows us the 100+ updates that are coming.

It’s a great moment for Shopify Merchants but a terrifying moment for Shopify App Founders.

This is the moment Shopify can kill your business.

Except if you know this: Shopify will release what you’re building sooner or later in its simplest version.

So if you add complexity to your product, Shopify won’t be able to “kill” your business overnight.

I’ll cover the different updates and what it means in the 3rd email of the month (not the next one, but the one after) where we’ll see together what opportunities can be created.

My next FREE product to help Shopify App Founders

It’s been some time I didn’t release a free product!

I have a product to teach you how to use Mixpanel, how to do marketing for an app and how to structure your support.

You can find them by clicking here

And I want to build my next product…

It will be about creating the perfect Shopify App Listing!

So if you have specific questions you want me to cover, let me know by replying to this email!

Ask Me Anything: Shopify App Insights

Previous month I received a few questions that I will answer now.

If you asked a question but don’t see it, it’s because there were too many questions asked so I’ll answer them in another email!

If you haven’t asked a question yet, you can do it by clicking on this link.

I answer questions in the first email of each month.

1) “What are your recommendations for when and how to ask for app reviews?” by Mathieu

The best time to ask for a review is after aha moments. These are moments where the user is happy, has a win or something similar.

If you help your users make a sale, then after the first sale come aha moment.

If your user contacts support for a problem and you fix it, they have aha moment.

So after all these moments are the best time to ask for reviews.

It’s not related to time, it’s related to happiness. You don’t want to ask for a review right after frustration even if they’ve been using your app for 2 years.

And from my experience, the best way is after you help someone on support.

They contact you, you fix their problem, you ask for a review immediately.

And to ask for a review it’s can be as simple as: “Hey, if you didn’t leave a review yet, can you do it on the app store? It takes only 30 seconds” and you send the link to leave a review (and to open the modal automatically using “?#modal-show=ReviewListingModal” at the end of the url

2) “How to handle fake 1-star reviews from fake stores?” by Perica

If you have proof that it is a fake review, then get all the screenshots you can, videos, texts, and contact Shopify Support Partner directly from your partner dashboard.

Explain your problem and give evidence that it’s a fake store.

Know that fake reviews are now handled better by Shopify so it’s rare to actually have fake reviews.

And it isn’t because the store is new, that the review is fake.

But if you do know it’s fake, then you can do all the steps I mentioned above and Shopify may (or may not) remove it.

What I suggest then is: don’t pay too much attention to it.

Fake reviews won’t matter in 1 year or 2. It takes your attention away from your product.

3) “How to rank first on a specific keyword on the Shopify App Store? Our app has 300+ reviews, built for Shopify and 4.9 rating.” by Pragnesh

The first thing to pay attention to is your app’s category.

You can’t rank on specific keywords if you’re in the wrong category.

If you try to rank for “reviews” but you’re not in the review category, it will be close to impossible.

To know if you’re in the right category, look at the top apps for that keyword and check in which category they are. Those are the categories your app should be.

Then, a couple of things will be important:

And the most important will be the keywords. Add the keyword and related keywords in your app listing with priority to:

Title > Tagline > Description > Bullet points

Then no one knows exactly what the algorithm is and how it evolves.

But if you already have 300 reviews, it means you have users, so you can focus on them + use other channels to grow.

Shopify App Masterclass: Step-by-Step Guides

How do you reduce the churn of a Shopify App?

Churn is more important than acquisition.

If you have 10 users per month and 0% churn, you will beat the app with 100+ users per month and 90% churn.

You’ll also rank higher on the Shopify App Store (because uninstalls impact your ranking)

It will also increase the valuation of your app.

The first step to reducing churn is to understand your customers.

Most people think that you need to contact churning users to know what you have to improve.

But that’s the survivorship bias.

Instead, look at the users who have been with you for a long time and try to understand why they’re here, what feature they want, and what they want to fix.

By doing that, you’ll naturally attract more people like them and your churn will decrease.

Here is a quick process:

But then there are also other things you can do to improve churn.

Let’s differentiate user churn and revenue churn.

You can have a high user churn (30%) but low revenue churn (5%) if you have people leaving but some others paying more.

So if 10 users at $15 per month left but one user starts paying $150 instead of $15, then user churn is really high but revenue churn is equal to 0%.

So a good strategy is to make sure your users can pay more:

So introduce incremental pricing and more plans.

Another thing to understand is that small businesses churn more than big businesses.

So if you target SMB, expect high churn.

What you can do is go upmarket. If you raise your price and build features for bigger stores, then you’ll obviously attract bigger businesses even if you have fewer of them.

And churn will decrease.

That’s the 3 best strategies you can use:

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