Newsletter #9: Partner Metrics, a unique online store and a throwback to Glastonbury 2019

Hi there,

I hope you're feeling good.

I just spent a few days in Saint-Malo, in the west of France, with my mum and my brother. We’ve enjoyed the beach, the seafood and we raised our glasses to celebrate a very cool milestone: after only 2 months, my newsletter just crossed 200 subscribers! With a 70% open rate. I’m so happy about it! Thank you so much for contributing to this.

In today's edition, we're discussing Partner Metrics, a unique online store and a throwback to Glastonbury 2019.

Let's dive in.

Work

I cofounded my first Shopify app in January 2021. We had 150+ clients and crossed the $1,000 MRR milestone.

At the beginning of the year 2023, I left the project, sold my shares and published an article documenting the whole journey: “Exiting my first Shopify app after 2.5 years”.

During those years of running a Shopify app, 6 tools really helped us:

• App Store Analytics

• Google Analytics

• Partner Metrics

• Shopify App Store Index (SASI)

• Loom

• Crisp

If you’re curious about how we were using these tools, I documented everything here: “6 tools to grow your Shopify app”. After I wrote this article, we also started using Mixpanel, which ended up being insightful as well.

The tool I would like to highlight today is Partner Metrics.

It was created by Björn Forsberg with the help of Daniel Sim.

Björn originally created this tool for himself, to help him get an overview of his multiple Shopify apps.

Among other things, Partner Metrics helps you track:

• Your revenue per country, which is useful to tailor your marketing and prioritize features

• Your average revenue per user, which is crucial to determine the maximum amount it’s acceptable to spend on ads to acquire new users

This tool is a good complement to the native Shopify Partner dashboard.

Great news: as of August 21st, 2023, Partner Metrics is now open-source!

Björn says it’s kind of a time capsule as it was created over about a week in 2015 when he was new to programming. But it does not matter. In fact, it’s even better because we can all contribute to organizing it and improving it.

I think it’s incredibly valuable for the Shopify ecosystem to get access to this code.

Learn more by visiting Partner Metrics's website and diving into their GitHub repository.

Inspire

My friend Yann Petitjean made me discover a very special online store.

I would like to share it with you because I think it’s a really original one.

This online store was made by Tom Wall for Post Jeans, his clothes brand.

Tom is a New-York based developer who does not like online shopping. So, for his own clothes brand, he wanted to do something different. The goal was to craft an online store people would love to shop on.

Forget about Shopify. Tom used Remix and Swell to build his store.

Forget about UX optimizations. Tom optimized for fun and enjoyability.

He put creativity before anything else and emphasized on materials so that we browse the store in an almost physical way. The website’s controls are located in a draggable rounded box, separated from their output. The buttons are large, rounded and have shadows. They feel quite gratifying to press.

What a unique shopping experience!

Learn more by visiting Post Jeans’s online store and discovering their Instagram page. Also, if you live in New York, you might want to check out their next event in September.

Explore

It’s summer. One of the joys of summer is music festivals.

I would like to take a moment today to take you back 4 years ago, when one of my favorite moments in all music festivals happened.

Glastonbury 2019.

The London rapper Dave - one of the most talented artists of his generation - is performing in front of thousands of people.

Between two songs, he asks the crowd if anyone would like to come on stage and sing “Thiago Silva”, one of his famous songs, with him.

In the first rows, a guy is standing on his friends’ shoulders, asking to be chosen. Seeing that he is wearing Thiago Silva’s PSG soccer shirt and that he seems to know the song’s lyrics, Dave chooses him.

His name is Alex. And the rest is history.

As the first YouTube comment says, “No one has been more prepared, in history, than Alex from Glastonbury”.

Enjoy.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for reading this edition until the end.

I'll talk to you soon.

Take good care of yourself.

Coralie