ShopLystr

Just finished replaying the history ShopLystr to myself and how I get here today. It's insane that it's been almost 2 years. I've got a product, but still have 0 external users.

I could have moved on to the next project idea, but I feel like I'd be leaving this one before I figured out that actual problem, making it likely I'll just hit the same problem the next time. I see many shopping list apps out there and I feel ShopLystr brings some new wrinkles to the table that some segment of people will love. I just need to figure out how to connect them with it. And this is really the most important problem to solve. Code be damned. None of that matters if you don't know how to sell or market.

I'm thinking there is some potential to partner with stores, but I need to be incremental. I'm accustomed to the weight of 1 customer using the app. I still need to learn how to handle 10. Then 100. Then 1000. And so on. The problems should change at each order of magnitude jump.

Perhaps I could reach out to some super small food, health, or travel blogs. They could create things like "Must-have items for your next travel season" and link their readers to that list of items that they can instantly use.

I've got some work ahead of me!

Thanks to a video I stumbled upon from Code Drip, I'm ready to get back into the saddle. I've added the ability to view your lists costs at your stores and am looking try my hand at promoting again.

However, it wouldn't hurt to get some feedback on the current state of things. Signed up for a meetup I found listed here and will be looking to talk with others.

Given that I wanted links to be the main distribution method for the app, I was heavily relying on simple web technology. On android, I am leveraging the pwa installation capabilities and on iOS, I'm leveraging the "add to homescreen" functionality. However, I still need to build in prompting around iOS since it doesn't provide that.

That said, I'm starting to think that some users won't really click with the idea of installing an app from anywhere but an app store.

I'm giving the Google Play store a trial run. However, I don't want to lose the ability to quickly iterate.

Tech tangent: I am releasing this as a Trusted Web Activity (TWA). A TWA is slightly different from a hybrid app using a web view (like Cordova or Capacitor). The default for most hybrid apps is to bundle up your assets and place them in the app meaning you have to update the app for every change. And app stores have terribly long tails for updates.

Additionally, the web view is a slightly different version of the operating system's browser, leading to weird one-off bugs.

However, a TWA is just your browser in an app with the full capabilities and access to everything. For example, if you are signed into ShopLystr in your browser, you'll already be signed in on the app from the app store. If you sign out on the app, then you'll be signed out in the browser.

This seems to be the holy grail of "write once, run anywhere". Meaning, I can meet customers where they are (erm...might be) in the Google Play store without much work or losing any capabilities that they would have had with a PWA install.

If I can find customers here, it will hopefully be a signal that will justify taking on the headache that releasing on the Apple App store will surely be.

I'm really bad at this.

I've tried a few different angles that had worked great for me on my indie comic account that had 0 impact here.

Rethinking my strategy. I'm realizing that conversations on indie comics are very targeted and will get interactions from passionate people. Shopping lists in general don't draw in this sort of passion.

There's a feature that I'd been thinking about for some time that I actually did see mentioned by people out in the wild. If I added the ability to save prices on a per-store basis and then let you choose your store at the list level, you would then be able to see which store has the lowest prices for your overall needs. Then, I'd be able to hit the "money saving" angle. I mean...who doesn't like saving money...?

However, this could also be my maker brain wanting to retreat to the safety of what I know. REALLY need to work on de-engineer-ifying my head...

The landing page is ready. I've implemented the ability to share lists, control access, and can take payments on Stripe. Now, I just need to ring the bell.

I now begin my work on twitter to grow a following and get people interested. Looking forward to collecting feedback data and finding out what works and what doesn't!

We've been using ShopLystr for a while now. It's a background project I pick up every now and then when my wife asks for new features. But it's stable, works cross platform and exactly matches our needs.

I'd decided to try and turn this into a product for others to use. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do know I need to be able to take payments...and that's really about it. Rolled in stripe support and made a twitter account.

Since ShopLystr is so useful for us, I know other will find it useful as well. It's just a matter of informing people. This is where I'll need to figure out marketing in some form or fashion.

I have an indie comic oriented website an twitter I run for fun and have managed to get a decent little following in a short amount of time for an extremely niche market. I'll be taking some of those learnings and applying them here.

I know the most important thing I can do is provide immediate value. I built in the ability for people to use ShopLystr without signups and also share links for anyone to copy. I'm thinking that I can enter people's shopping lists and/or recipes that they put on social media and share it with them. They click on the link, and, BAM, they've got a list ready to go or a recipe saved that they can add to a list at any time. Minimum friction.

As for payment, I'm hoping to find a balance where 70-80% of the users get by just fine with just the free tier. But I also don't want to pipe their data over to advertisers.

I'm thinking of restricting based on private saved lists. The thinking here is that I would be able to create lists of "featured" public saved lists or make them searchable in some way. That way, they'd be providing value to other ShopLystr users. I'd also be able to use that content for promotion on twitter.

However, I have no idea how much to charge for "premium" or even how much to restrict free users.

I guess I'll just have to take a swing at it and adjust on the run. I'll start at $0.99/month or $8.99/year.

My wife and I being the test users, we have accounts and are actively using the baseline app.

Considering how bad I am at remembering things for even "quick store runs" and even worse at writing things down, this is proving to be quite helpful. It's basically a marriage saver!

My wife had been asking for me to make her a shopping list app. Specifically, she didn't like the noise of the existing options and just wanted to avoid having to always recreate lists from scratch considering a good chunk of them are standard things she gets at some interval.

I decided to use it as an opportunity to try out Angular(2+ vs JS), Ionic, and Firebase.

2 month project, tops! 🙄