Promoting published Stripe Apps

Stripe Apps
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I had a meeting with another Stripe Insider today, dan.massey. Dan, like me, is a published Stripe Apps developer. We had a few issues that should be promoted to the Stripe Apps team. But in this post, I’ll focus on one issue:

  • Stripe users’ adoption of Stripe Apps seems to be on the low end.

When I spoke with Dan earlier today, we both had concerns that regular Stripe users weren’t educated on how Stripe Apps could benefit their use case. When I launched the Parcelcrafft Shipping app, I was disappointed on the number of app installs. Considering the use case of our app, we anticipated a runaway success story:

  • 70% of all Stripe purchases represent the purchase of a physical good that must be shipped.
  • There are millions of Stripe users
  • We need 0.001% of Stripe users to be revenue-positive.
  • Our app provides the only means to create shipping labels for Stripe’s customer’s orders in the Stripe dashboard (See my shameless self-promotion link at https://www.parcelcraft.com )

We’re offering our app to the public as a free beta, you’d think there’d be a greater awareness and uptake of an app that provides such a critical business function: the automated creation of shipping labels. However, we see low adoption rates and low Stripe-Apps awareness. We have a Google Ads campaign that snags an additional two clicks per day at the cost of $2.39 per click, with a 50% conversion rate. This feels like a failure: the very concept of a Stripe App should be more popular to the public conscious at-large.

The primary question to the Stripe Apps and Stripe Marketing team is this:

  • Are regular Stripe users aware of Stripe Apps?
  • Does a user find valuable links to recommendations to a specific Stripe App when viewing relevant documentation or a dashboard view?

I can answer: based on my research, using my brother’s very successful Stripe company and his input, the answer is no. He notches in ~$40K a month using Stripe and was unaware of the benefits of any Stripe App, until I built an app specific to his use case…His customers have orders…and he needs to ship those orders.

Dan and I thought that when developing our Stripe App, we’d be on the bleeding edge of apps available to users compared to offerings available in other App Marketplaces/merchants.

But the app installation stats don’t reflect this rosy prediction: We feel blessed when we get a single app installation in a day. As a developer, it’s disheartening, but we both believe there is an untapped potential for greater adoption of Stripe Apps in general.

Stripe Apps was released less than two years ago, and we both feel that the promotion of Stripe Apps as a whole isn’t all it could be.

Some solutions to this issue:

  • A direct mail campaign to Stripe Users
  • An email marketing campaign with app recommendations tailored to their use case
  • In-Stripe dashboard.stripe.com recommendations for apps based on their their URL
  • Prominence of Stirpe Apps within the Stripe Dashboard
  • Having an Editor’s Picks section within the Stripe Apps listing
  • Weaving in-app recommendations into the Stripe documentation when the topic is relevant
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Thanks Benson for this thoughtful feedback, and overall I agree, we think there are many more users that could benefit from Stripe Apps than know about them today as potential solutions to their needs.

I hadn’t seen the stat about “70% of all Stripe purchases represent the purchase of a physical good” before - that’s really interesting. Is that recent, and do remember where you saw that?

Can you say more about “Google Ads campaign that snags an additional two clicks per day at the cost of $2.39 per click, with a 50% conversion rate.” Is that 50% conversion your click-though-rate on your ads campaign, or your conversion to app install?

To answer your 2 questions;

  • Some users are aware, but many aren’t. This is of course true for every product, but the way we support app developers like you best is by generating more awareness with Stripe users.
  • Recommendations for Apps do exist today in Stripe documentation (for example for affiliate marketing and accounting apps) and within the Stripe dashboard as part or banner insights we provided to users. Particularly on the latter of dashboard placement, there is more we are working on.

I couldn’t agree more that “there is an untapped potential for greater adoption of Stripe Apps”

Your recommendations are great, many of which, including emails with app recommendations, dashboard recommendations, and curation with things like “editors pick’s”, are things we working now and hope to make more widely available soon.

I think some of these things will help you and other developers grow your own business via the Stripe Marketplace, and thanks again for being part of the ecosystem!

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@mkovacs-stripe, thanks for your thoughtful reply.

In response to your questions:

The “70% of all Stripe purchases represent a physical good” quote is hearsay. A Stripe Apps representative (on the marketing side) at Stripe Sessions provided me with this nugget in person at the Stripe Apps Booth. I don’t know if it’s true, but he said that.

On our Google Ads campaign, we’re unable to track conversions directly since the actual installation surface occurs on a stripe.com domain. However, we have done an A-B test (where one week we turn off ads and another week we turn them on), and generally, we have found that a click-through to our ad represents 1-in-2 odds that they will install the app.

I’m comforted by your response; I know the Stripe Apps team must be far more intimately aware of their adoption rates than I am, and I’m glad you have a plan to promote greater awareness.

I hope my feedback (along with the prompt from my fellow Stripe Apps developer) will give you at least two votes as you prioritize your goals.

Carry on!

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the 50% conversion of those that come through ads is great to see, and I think it means there are many more high intent users out there (which speaks to the broader point of your post)

Glad the post was helpful, and we appreciate the feedback - and the upvotes :slight_smile:

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