Hey everyone. After 5 months of building, I finally published my first app on the Shopify App Store today. The review process took about a month, and I hit an annoying snag with managed pricing along the way (happy to share details if anyone’s about to go through it).
The app’s called Stock Near Me. It adds a storefront widget that shows the stock of each variant across all your store locations, right on the product page.
Brutal honesty welcome, especially on:
First screenshot + tagline — in 5 seconds, is it obvious what it does and who it’s for?
Congrats on the ship. Without clicking through yet, a few honest notes from what you described:
5s test - “Stock Near Me” + storefront widget framing skews more shopper-side than merchant-side. Merchants buying the app aren’t “looking for stock near them,” their customers are. A tagline that flips the subject - something like “show shoppers what’s in stock at each store” or “cut hidden-stockout abandons” - reads merchant-first and lines up with the conversion the merchant is paying for.
$4.99/mo for a variant + multi-location storefront widget is on the very low end. If it actually reduces support tickets (“do you have my size in store?”) and lifts BOPIS conversion, that’s $50-100/mo of value to a 20+ SKU merchant. $4.99 leaves money on the table and signals “side project” more than “depend on this.” Even $9.99 starter / $19.99 unlimited tier reads more credible without scaring off the first few installs.
Will pull up the listing later today and add notes on screenshots + first-fold copy. What’s the install pattern looking like in the first 24h?
Looking at your listing with total honesty, your app name Stock Near Me is excellent and highly descriptive, but your tagline should focus heavily on the business outcome rather than just the technical feature.
Instead of a basic sentence describing what it does, make it punchier by telling brick-and-mortar merchants exactly how you make them money, such as Boost in-store foot traffic by showing real-time local variant stock.
Similarly, make sure your first screenshot isn’t just a basic backend configuration dashboard it needs to be a crisp, mobile storefront mockup showing your widget cleanly displaying local availability right beneath a product title so merchants can instantly visualize the customer experience in under five seconds.
Screenshots of the app look good. At least based on this screenshots, it’s very clear what the app does.
For the name I would expect something like “Availability By Store” would be easier to find on the App store but on the other hand, if you have good keywords in your app description it should be findable no matter what the name of the app itself is.
For pricing, key question: Are you actually detecting the user’s location and showing only the relevant stores? If so that’s great functionality. If a business only has a handful of physical locations, setting up something like this with custom code that shows all their locations is not too hard, but if they have a lot (like 20+) and you need to use geolocation to determine the closest ones to the user, then the pricing could go higher. But yeah don’t over price yourself until you get a foothold, your pricing seems good to me to get started but that’s just my 2 cents so take it for what it’s worth.
Really appreciate the thoughtful feedback — especially the point about side perspective. That honestly makes a lot of sense.
Also appreciate the pricing perspective. I intentionally started low to reduce friction for early installs and gather feedback, but I agree that pricing also sends a positioning signal.
As for installs, still very early — mostly focused right now on improving the listing, screenshots and messaging before pushing harder on promotion.
Thanks again for taking the time to write such a detailed response.
The point about focusing the tagline on the merchant outcome rather than the feature itself is something I’m definitely taking away from this thread.
And yes — I think you’re right about the first screenshot needing to communicate the storefront experience much faster. Right now it probably explains the app better than it “sells” the value in the first few seconds.
Really appreciate you taking the time to look through the listing and write this up.
Thanks a lot for the feedback — especially coming from someone in the ecosystem.
Good point about the naming/searchability tradeoff. I went back and forth on that quite a bit while preparing the listing.
And regarding geolocation: not yet. Right now the app focuses on showing configurable stock visibility by location directly on the product page, but proximity-based display is definitely something I’ve thought about for a future version.
For pricing, my thinking was similar to yours: start simple, lower friction, get real merchant feedback first, then iterate from there.
At this stage I’m also trying to learn and validate the distribution/marketing side of Shopify apps before continuing to add more functionality. I could probably keep building features forever, but right now I’m trying to focus on understanding how to actually get the first installs and real usage feedback.
Really appreciate you taking the time to review the screenshots and share your thoughts
Hey there @HaroldAA
Congrats for getting it live after the review process! That’s a great milestone. Depends on kinda makes value clear but would make the first screenshot immediately say “storefront stock by location on product page” without needing to read. Now has a vague to it. Tag line could be more punchy and outcome focused e.g. “Show customers real time stock by location to rescue lost sales”. The $4.99 price seems fair for SMB stores, however do consider adding a free tier or trial to mitigate install friction and to get merchants to see the widget in action sooner.
