Goran Culibrk

29 May

1. Sooo, the Shopify app flood is actually slowing down. Launches blew past 900 in a single week in early May. They've fallen every week since. The last 7 days: 485. My read: that spike was a backlog clearing out after Shopify's AI-assisted review, not a new baseline. Let's have a closer look.

4. Which is why the Built for Shopify badge matters even more. Still only 6.7% of live apps carry it (1,481 of 21,987). A slower flood doesn't make it easier to earn. The gap between established apps and newcomers just keeps widening. Full BFS breakdown on Sunday.

29 May

5. And finally, the part that won't ease up: ad costs. Fewer new apps won't drop your CPI. The merchants searching are a fixed pool, and the incumbents keep bidding on the same subtitles. I still expect Shopify to rework how we run Ads this year. Building got easier this spring. Getting found didn't

2. Top categories for the new apps this week: Analytics 51 SEO 26 Chat 19 Upsell and cross-sell 17 3D/AR/VR 15 Product content 15 Ads 14 Workflow automation 14 115 of the 485 have AI right in the name or subtitle. Fewer apps shipping, everyone still crowding the same lanes.

29 May

3. Here's the more interesting part. Reviews are sliding too. ~6.7k reviews a week across the whole store in March. ~5.9k last week, the lowest of the year. The pool merchants actually leave isn't growing Day-one traction is brutal right now. Going deeper on reviews tomorrow.

607 apps launched on the Shopify App Store in the last 7 days. 5 are already delisted. In March it was ~130 a week. It hit 900 the first week of May. The flood isn't slowing down. Let's go through what actually shipped.

I still thinks Shopify will have to rework how Ads run this year. Building was never the hard part. Distribution is the moat now.

We track every launch, category shift, review and BFS badge in Ranksy. https://ranksyapp.com

While 607 apps launched this week, the Built for Shopify badge stayed hard to earn. 29 apps got the BFS badge in the last 7 days. 6 lost the badge. Only 6.8% of all 21,500 live apps have BFS. This makes it the clearest signal a merchant can trust.

And the part that hits your budget. More apps, more bidders. I've already seen our CPI climb around 20% in the last 30 days. Too early to attribute it cleanly, but the direction tracks. One subtitle is a brutal place to fight for conversion.

Of the 607 new apps, only 17 have a single review. Just 4 cracked more than one: AI SEO Assistant - 3 FAQuly - 2 Impulsafy Email Guard - 2 Bundles, Upsell, BOGO, Volume - 2 590 sit at zero. Your back catalog of reviews is the hardest thing here for a newcomer to copy.

So why is it so hard? The review pool isn't growing. About 6,000 reviews get published across the entire App Store each week, and that's been flat since March. Last 7 days: 5,749. Week before: 6,230. App supply went up 4-6x. Merchant willingness to leave a review didn't move.

What categories those 607 apps landed? Analytics 43 SEO 33 Chat 29 Product content 24 Discounts 19 Upsell and cross-sell 17 Workflow automation 15 3D/AR/VR 15 Invoices 15 The crowding is where AI does the work. 117 apps have AI in the name or subtitle.

we've had traffic attribution in ranksy a while — but it stopped at the surface. "search" drove installs, never which keyword. and our channel names didn't match GA4's. so this week i rebuilt the traffic dashboard — proper GA4 channel grouping, and drill-down on any row:

and because channels now follow GA4's default grouping, a new one showed up: AI Assistant. 21 sessions from ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude → 4 installs. a 19% install rate, higher than most of our paid traffic. it used to vanish into "direct."

all live in ranksy now. if you build a Shopify app and you've ever stared at "installs from search" wondering which search — this one's for you.

every visit now maps to a real Shopify placement — installs + conversion per row. External (Reddit): 3,880 sessions, 0 installs. Search Ad: 457 → 148 installs, 32%. biggest traffic isn't your best traffic.

then click any row to drill underneath it. Search Ad → the exact App Store keywords, with install rate per term. "login" converts at 54%. "otp login" at 26%. the keyword behind the install — finally visible.

Just put our second app into Built for Shopify review. It took a couple of days for algo to pick up the new badge and we've finally seen the first benefits of BFS for Securify. I'll wait for a full month to see the actual impact. Third app is already in the pipeline.

21 May

72% of live Shopify apps have under 5 reviews. 46% have zero. The store isn't crowded. The top is. Below it, 15,417 apps almost nobody finds. Your real competition isn't the category leader. It's invisibility. What got you your first 10 reviews?

21 May

The full live-app review distribution is in Ranksy. https://ranksyapp.com

The Shopify App Store added 1,318 new apps in the last 14 days. The two weeks before that: 940. Launch volume is up about 40%, and it's been climbing for months. A few numbers that stuck with me:

If you track this, the dips are just weekends. Weekdays run 90 to 230 launches a day, then it falls to single digits Saturday and Sunday. So most "drops" on the chart are just the weekend, worth checking before you read into them.

What I take from it: the app land grab on Shopify is still speeding up. Whatever competitive set you sized up a month ago is already a couple thousand apps bigger today.

The Shopify App Store added 1,318 new apps in the last 14 days. The two weeks before that: 940. Launch volume is up about 40%, and it's been climbing for months. A few numbers that stuck with me:

May 8 saw 233 new apps go live in a single day. Back in March the whole store averaged around 159 a week. One busy Friday in May now beats a full week from two months ago.

Zoom out and it's wilder. About 2,300 apps launched in the last 30 days, against roughly 22,900 in the catalog total. So about 1 in 10 apps in the store today is less than a month old.

3 Dec 2024

Since moving here, I've noticed that the content I see is more calm. There are more builders and fewer (almost none) left and right posts—less violence and politics. And no WP drama. It's a fresh account, and I'm picky about who I follow, but it's a refreshing experience. I'm lovin' it.

3 Dec 2024

Holy shit. Just a week here and I’ve already started muting political words.

30 Nov 2024

Spending the evening building a DIY monitor light. I’ve had eyes on Xiaomi Light Bar for far too long but never wanted to spend money in case I don’t need it. Instead I’ve decided to build one with copper pipes. But as any product, before building it we need a prototype. This validates the idea.

30 Nov 2024

What are you using to track projects and tasks? For projects solo projects I’m all in on Notion. It recently I’ve started using asana in a team and oh boy. They improved a lot since the last time I’ve used them. Not just a task management anymore. #buildinpublic

30 Nov 2024

This morning, I'm working on short briefs. These will be sent via text messages or to the user's Slack. Things are coming up great. What brief do you prefer? #buildinpublic

29 Nov 2024

The briefs are working great. The process is stable. It's a good time to work on the prompts to improve the language and structure to fit our target customers. One change later. The API refuses to work with data that's been working before. Time to git revert and go back to the drawing board :D

go.bsky.appBuilding in Public 🔥🚀Join the conversation

29 Nov 2024

So, I've joined the wagon and built a new starter pack for Shopify App folks. You probably know most of the folks, but it's a good starting point for new people here to build their feed go.bsky.app/2Jp3p9r

Goran Culibrk reposted

Madza 👨‍💻⚡

@madza.dev

29 Nov 2024

Created my 'Building in Public' starter pack! 📦 Here is how to suggest new entries 👇 👉 Share your projects in replies 🔄 Like and Repost for visibility go.bsky.app/A8VkfwV

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