Preparing my second free app: lightweight product tags & countdown timer – looking for feedback

[Zhou_C]

Hello everyone,

I recently submitted my first free app, a bulk edit tool, to the Shopify App Store. It’s currently in the review stage, so I’m waiting to hear back from the review team.

In the meantime, I’ve started planning and building my second free app. This one is focused on lightweight front-end product tags and a simple countdown feature. The main ideas so far:

Product tags on the storefront: small, clean labels like HOT, NEW, Pre-order, etc., to highlight product status or run simple campaigns on collection pages and product pages
Simple countdown timer: an easy-to-use countdown component for specific products or promotions, to help create urgency and potentially improve conversion
My goal is to keep this app lightweight, easy to integrate, with minimal impact on the theme, and provide just enough customization to be useful without being bloated or complex and no additional files are loaded that would impact the loading speed of the store frontend

Right now I’m still in the early design and planning phase for features and UX.

I’d really appreciate any feedback or ideas from other developers or merchants, for example:

What kinds of product tags or conditions would be most useful (e.g. based on time range)?
What level of style customization do you think is necessary (colors, position, text, icons, etc.)?
Have you used similar tag or countdown apps before? What were the biggest pain points?
Any suggestions or feature ideas are very welcome, and I’ll try to consider them early in the development process.

Once my bulk edit app passes review and goes live, I’ll also share more details and learnings from that experience.

Thanks for reading, and I’m looking forward to your feedback!

[lumine]

Both of those are crowded categories, so the thing that’ll set a free one apart is probably how light it stays. Tag and countdown apps have a reputation for injecting render-blocking scripts and causing layout shift, and merchants notice when their LCP jumps. If yours stays close to native theme performance, that’s a real selling point on its own.

One thing on countdowns: the honest ones do better long term. Timers that reset on every refresh get called out in reviews fast. Tying it to a real end point like a sale date or stock level keeps trust intact.

What’s the plan for rendering the tags, Liquid theme blocks or a script injection?

[Zhou_C]

Yes, timer will be base on the end time.

For rendering, only Liquid is utilized; this ensures a lightweight approach, preventing the loading of extraneous resources that could block the rendering process.

[order_ops_guy]

One edge case with countdown labels is when the sale ends but the product badge stays visible on collection pages because the tag is still there. It looks fine on the product page, but the collection grid can quietly keep showing Sale ending soon until someone manually cleans up the product tag.

[Zhou_C]

Actually, my design treats the timer as a feature of the tag. A tag can be configured without a specific time range, meaning it is displayed permanently. Alternatively, if a time range is defined, it can be paired with a timer to display a countdown. It is also possible to omit the timer display entirely; in this scenario, the tag is shown only within the specified time range and disappears once that period expires.

[Zhou_C]

Thank you very much for your suggestions . I will first take some time to consider how to design this application.

[Zhou_C]

My second free app has been submitted for review. It is a very simple and lightweight app.
Merchants interested in trying it out are welcome to participate. Please feel free to share any suggestions; I will carefully consider every one of them and incorporate suitable ideas into the app’s features.

Badges and Countdown on PDP

On other non-PDP pages

Product-level configuration

Global configuration

[kidsemsofbrace]

One potential issue with countdown labels is that, even after the sale has ended, the product badge may remain visible on collection pages because the tag hasn’t been removed. While it appears fine on the product detail page, the collection grid can continue displaying the “Sale ending soon” message until someone manually deletes the product tag.

[Zhou_C]

This issue does indeed exist; I will consider how to handle it and resolve it as soon as possible.

[Zhou_C]

This issue has been resolved and deployed to production.

[SectionKit]

There are already lot of apps with the same category. But if you play smartly and add labels to the client store with Ai, then this could be apart from the Ai crowd.

[Zhou_C]

I fully agree. AI is a hot field right now and can significantly boost efficiency. I plan to consider integrating AI in the future; however, since the application is free, I need to manage costs. Consequently, I might limit usage volume or introduce fees for usage beyond a certain limit at a later stage.