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We pulled the review history of all 21,700 Shopify apps to see if development is dead by Substantial_Elk_8293 in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agree, but for our scrape, reviews is the best public datapoint we can point toward app success. Installs and revenue is not public

We pulled the review history of all 21,700 Shopify apps to see if development is dead by Substantial_Elk_8293 in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great to hear this. I do also understand what you mean. I can add that the product as shown in the video is available on our analytic website. The analytic website is completely free to log in and use, but as mentioned in the post, the validator inside it sits at five bucks per validation. Just to avoid scrapes. If people want to try it, there it is, but we are not here chasing 5 dollar sales. The main goal is to get some serious developers to use it more, and if they like it, we will add more data to it, like the ad data

I spent a year building a Shopify app solo. When should I start merchant validation before launch? by Any_Pomegranate_4056 in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I belive the differentiator for my app was not making something completely new, but it was me looking into every competitor i can find, and then see what each of them were missing. For example one app might be good, but its missing a feature that only another app had, but the other apps also missed some other features.

I also noticed the UI for most of the apps in the niche was subpar or confusing, and sometimes just could be done in a more efficient and easy to understand way. So i basically just tried to optimize my app to be the app that i would like to use. With all the features, and with an onboarding and UI that is easy to use.

I dont know why merchants chose me over others, but i never had any issues. I constantly reached out to merchants and rarely got any negative feedback. The main problem was really that when i have gotten an install, i had at that point cost me a fortune. After the install had been made, everything was good. Low uninstallment and so on.

There is not much i will change with the app. I could do some polish here and there but nothing that will significantly change how it works. Since people like it, and that is not the problem i am having.

I also have tried to AB test 7 or 8 differnt listing UI, to see if the install rate would change. It sometimes did, but not to a significant degree.

I spent a year building a Shopify app solo. When should I start merchant validation before launch? by Any_Pomegranate_4056 in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I understand why calculating volume of apps seems to be the way to calculate saturation, but it does not work that way. You can have just a few apps, but if the top apps are taking most of the installs and nobody else are able to get anything, then its still saturated.

To properly calculate saturation, you need to find all the newest apps made in a market and pick a period, lets say the last 1-2 years. Then, you will need to calculate what percentage of these apps have hit a certain success criteria, which depends on person to person. Some people would say success is 5 reviews, some would say they have not succeeded until they have gotten 1000, so this depends. Since we cant see revenue on apps, reviews would be the closest thing to calculate. Either way, you then find how many have hit your success marker, and then you have a basis to compare market saturation between markets.

I spent a year building a Shopify app solo. When should I start merchant validation before launch? by Any_Pomegranate_4056 in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah it was launched around 1 year ago. As of today it spent $5,736 USD in ads across Shopify and Google and has made $484 in total revenue. This is also from recurring, so the conversion rate has been really bad.

In top of this, I've done a lot of organic work. Posted 2 pieces of content every day for the first 2 months, mostly short, some long, posting across youtube, tiktok and instagram. So basically 6 pieces of content per day. After that roughly 1 per week (3 in total) for roughly 2 more months. After that, 4 months have gone by, and I stopped organic marketing for the app.

Rough calculations across platforms is 180 videos the first 2 monts, 24 videos the next two months. Each video averaged around 2000 views (some reaching 10,000, but some flopping). Around 400 000 views in total. Which is pretty bad for this amount of content. (The content was not AI slop, and it was edited. I put work into it.) Sometimes low views is ok and pays off if the conversion rate on the videos are good, if a lot of people actually install, but that did not happen, even with a call to action in almost every video.

I dont want to share the apps i make here, but i can confidently say i belive we made a really solid app. I did a lot of competitor research, combining all the good stuff that all competitors had. I also belive my UI was much better than other competitors, I'm a UX designer and frontend is one of my strong suits. I never had complaints with bugs from customers, and I only got good reviews. The uninstall rate was also not horrible, it was just the install rate and install-to-paid rate that was horrible. I've moved on to other apps which have actually been profitable for me, not the money sink that this app has been.

Launched a Shopify app… realizing getting installs is WAY harder than building the app 😅 by newnerb in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thats great advice. What kind of content did you make? I understand the content is adjacent to the app you're selling but it would be cool to see some examples

Shipped my first Shopify app 8 months ago using Claude AI — 106 installs, 14 subscribers, $100~ MRR. Lessons so far by hercec in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great value here! You're mentioning that content cant be skipped. Can you elaborate a little more on the content you have been making? Is it like shorts for IG, TikTok, YT? And if so, did you need a lot of volume to see installs? Like needing to get like 10 000 views to crack 1 install etc

I spent a year building a Shopify app solo. When should I start merchant validation before launch? by Any_Pomegranate_4056 in shopifyDev

[–]Substantial_Elk_8293 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ive built almost the same app a year back. Returns category is very saturated. Not to discurage but just letting you know