Growing a Shopify app is hard! Competition is fierce. Category giants scoop up most of the merchants. Dozens of smaller apps compete for the rest. With 10 new apps released every day, it constantly gets harder.
How do you grow your app?
You can create content and use influencers for your target audience. Good thinking, but many competitors do the same. It gets saturated.
Outreach to your target merchants can also work. Some of your competitors think so as well. Merchants get bombarded.
SEO? zero-sum game. You gain, your competitors lose. Your competitors gain, you lose.
Performance marketing? Expensive. For some of the top keywords, if you factor in the cost per click and conversion rate to paying customers, you get customer acquisition costs that are out of touch with lifetime values.
It’s tough to grow a Shopify app!
Funnel optimization is the best Shopify app growth hack
The above tactics have one thing in common: They’re about driving merchants to your funnel — what all apps compete fiercely on.
Most Shopify app developers only focus on the merchant acquisition part of growth. They ignore the conversion part. That’s a mistake.
For most Shopify apps, optimizing the conversion funnel is the most reliable way to grow to $100K MRR and beyond.
Merchants must navigate complex funnels. They start on a landing page or app card and continue through the Shopify app store page, setup, onboarding, subscription, trial, and monetization. Such funnels can easily exceed 20 steps. To become paying customers, merchants must complete all steps successfully. The median conversion rate is less than 1%.
Most Shopify apps convert less than 1% of their Shopify app store page visitors into paying customers.
At the other end of the spectrum, some Shopify apps consistently convert over 5% of their app store page visitors into paying customers. These apps have highly efficient funnels. They can outbid other apps and scale with performance marketing while maintaining positive ROI. These apps with highly efficient funnels grow to become the Shopify app category leaders.
These successful Shopify apps figured out how to optimize their funnel. Their conversion rate is 5x the average. If they figured it out, you can.
Most Shopify apps have the potential to at least double their funnel’s conversion rate.
If you have 10K app store visitors a month generating 100 new paying customers at a 1% conversion rate, doubling your conversion rate to 2% will turn the 10K visitors into 200 new paying customers.
Doubling your funnel’s conversion rate means that you double your new paying customers.
It doesn’t end there. Let’s say you spend $5K/mo on marketing, your marketing gets you 1K app store visits which convert to 10 new paying customers. If you double your funnel’s conversion rate, those 1K visits become 20 new paying customers. Each dollar you spend on marketing now gives you back twice as much.
If you double your funnel’s conversion rate, you also double the efficiency of all your exisiting marketing activities. If that happens, it makes sense to pump more money and grow some of your current marketing activities.
Not only do your existing marketing activities become more efficient when you improve your funnel’s conversion rate. All potential activities do too. Some campaigns that had negative ROI before, now become viable.
By doubling your funnel’s efficiency, you immediately double your new paying customers. In addition, you can increase the budget for your current activities AND launch new ones that have become profitable.
Almost every app’s funnel can be improved. As long as you can improve yours, it should be at the top of your growth efforts.
You can get 3x+ growth by focusing on your funnel.
Find the underperforming funnel steps
Because a funnel is a series of steps merchants must pass through, funnel conversion rate optimization works as a series of multiplications.
An improvement in any step affects the whole funnel by the same percentage. Improving 25% in step 2 has the same effect as improving 25% in step 7. In both cases, the funnel as a whole improves by 25%.
Multiplications add up quickly. Improving by 25% in 3 funnel steps doubles the overall conversion rate: (1.25)³x=2x.
Focus on the worst-performing steps to maximize impact. Target several steps where there’s significant poential for improvement.
To find the underperforming steps, you must know where you stand relative to benchmarks for each step.
Prys, a Shopify app growth platform, breaks down your funnel into steps and shows how your app compares to benchmarks of other apps for each step. You can easily see where to focus your optimization efforts and know the potential for improvement.
Fix the underperforming funnel steps
Finding which steps to focus on to optimize your Shopify app funnel is half the job. The other half is fixing them. While specifics depend on which step is targetted, here are some general tips:
Narrow down to small steps
It’s not enough to know that your post-install funnel needs improvement. Is it the monetization flow? Maybe onboarding? If onboarding, which exact steps?
Keep a holistic view
While narrowing down, also maintain a holistic view. If the problem happens on step 3 of 5 in your onboarding flow, maybe you could cut onboarding to 3 steps and eliminate the current step 3.
Make sure everything is measured
Whatever steps you can measure in your flow, do so. That’s particularly true for the problem areas. You need to see the conversion rate of each small step now, and when you test a new flow.
Watch merchant session videos on the problem steps
User videos can be a goldmine of insights – particularly for bugs and UI issues. Make sure you cover the relevant steps with a user session video platform. Watch session videos of merchants that abandoned the funnel in the problem steps. You’ll probably find out quickly why they do so.
Talk to your support team
Your support team can provide great insights into why merchants abandon your funnel in a particular step. Interview your team members and read relevant transcripts. Ask the team how they help merchants solve the issue, and how they propose to solve it as part of the flow.
Learn from your competitors
Don’t be shy. Some of your competitors deal with the same issues you do. Some of them figured out good ways to fix these issues. It’s all available for you to inspect and learn from.
Create an alternative
Take in all you learned and create an alternative. Do whatever you can to validate your new flow before coding it. It would suck badly if you build something that fails. The support team can be your first validators.
Work with experts
An expert Shopify app funnel optimization agency can help you quickly find the problem areas and create optimal solutions. Working with experienced experts can lead to doubling your funnel’s conversion rate in months.
Test the new flow
Run the new flow once it’s ready. Compare the data for the specific step (eg. step 3 of onboarding) and the broader impact (all of the onboarding). Supplement these metrics with merchant session videos and feedback from support.
Summary and takeaways
Optimizing your conversion funnel is your best growth hack. Doubling your conversion rate leads to tripling your sales. Here’s how to do it:
- Identify Underperforming Funnel Steps: Analyze your app’s funnel to pinpoint where merchants drop off.
- Focus on Optimization: Concentrate efforts on improving the conversion rate of these underperforming steps.
- Measure and Analyze: Utilize data to track the performance of each funnel step and test new solutions.
- Leverage User Insights: Watch session videos and gather feedback from support to understand user behavior and pain points.
- Learn from Competitors: Study competitor strategies and solutions to similar funnel challenges.
- Work with Experts: Collaborate with agencies specializing in Shopify app funnel optimization for optimal results.
- Test and Iterate: Implement and test new funnel flows, validating effectiveness before full implementation.
Need help with your funnel? Convert2x has been helping Shopify apps optimize their funnels since 2018.
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