Listing your app on Shopify App Store — Points to Keep in Mind

Working on a Shopify App? This blog will help you know more about Listing and tips to follow.

Shopify App Store

Shopify is a great place for merchants to enter into e-commerce. Even small offline stores are looking for options to move their business online too due to the COVID pandemic. Shopify enables any such merchant to sell online.
That said, what makes Shopify stand out among other platforms is the range of apps that can be integrated into merchant’s stores with little to no hassle on Shopify.

Anyone can develop🦾 a Shopify app given that it is of use to merchants and add value to their e-commerce journey somehow. There are tons of resources and documentation to help one on developing a Shopify app.
We at Influencerbit developed the product and then moved to Shopify App Store to make it an easy integration for all Shopify merchants.
In this guide, we will go through the app listing information you need to provide as well as practices you should follow to comply with Shopify Requirements and get through your review process hassle-free⌚️. This blog will be relevant if you are working on a Shopify app currently and plan to list it, or planning to work on a Shopify app in the future.

App Information

Name and Tagline

A critical part of the app listing. Give sufficient time to this section. Title and Tagline are central to the impressions your app will be getting as well as your marketing strategy.

Name
- Maximum 30 Characters.

Tagline
- Maximum 62 Characters.
- App’s purpose should be clear from the tagline.

App Icon
- Dimension should be strictly 1200px x 1200px.
- Logo should have spacing from edges.
- There shouldn’t be a transparent background in the logo. (Be Sure to follow this guideline for App Icon uploaded in AppSetup too. If it doesn’t your listing will be on hold.)

Key Benefits
This is an optional section. But if you wish to add this, then take care of the following:
If images are added
- Images dimension should be exactly 1600px x 1200px.
- Images shouldn’t contain any text.
- Images doesn’t contain your application dashboard in any way.

Title

• Maximum 30 characters
• The title should be enough to understand what the benefit does.

Description

• Maximum 140 Characters.
• Don't add data and statistic that is unverifiable and hence doesn’t comply with Shopify regulations.
• Focus on your app’s benefits when rewriting your listing and avoid using terms like “the first”, “the best”, or “the only”.

Screenshots

These are very helpful in understanding the actual behaviour of the application.

• Dimensions of screenshots required:
  Desktop: 1600px by 900px
  Mobile: 900px by 1600px (Optional)
  Point of sale: 2048px by 1536px (Optional)
• 3 Desktop Screenshots are required. you can add more if you want.
• If the image contains any action or screenshot of the behaviour of your application, strictly add steps on how to achieve that in-app review instruction.
• Add relevant alt texts for SEO. (Maximum 64 characters)
• If your app works on Mobile and PoS include their screenshots too.
• Don’t use Shopify Logo anywhere.
• Use only the app screen in the screenshot, crop borders, menu and other tabs.

Detailed Description

Add a description of your application. List App Features, selling points and working of your application.
- Maximum 2800 characters. Minimum 100 characters.
- Description is needed in Markdown formatting. Try Stackedit
- Don’t include links, or format text in bold, italics, strikethrough or underline.

Pricing

Select the pricing system your app uses here.

You can choose between

• Free to Install
• Recurring Charge
• One-Time Charge

You need to use Shopify Billing API for any charges from Shopify merchants. If your app’s pricing couldn’t be handled via Billing API which is a rare case you can request an exception to use your own Billing.

• Try to design or change your plans such that they can be handled via Billing API if possible.
• Try to include a Free plan so that merchants can get started with your application easily. Also, Apps with Free Plans get better impressions on the app store.
• Handle Subscriptions and Charges Properly.
• Pricing Information must match with the one on your website and UI.

Contact Information

• Provide proper contact information ☎️ ✉️
• Shopify Review Team will contact you on the same for any updates required for app review.
• Support is a central part of the Shopify ecosystem. Provide a support email address and have proper support channels set up. Bad Support and Reviews can affect your app negatively.

Tracking

• It is good to provide a Google Analytics Tracking ID to keep track of the impressions your app listing is getting.

App Review Instructions

Following are some points you should verify before app submission.

• Be 200% Sure that your application has authentication implemented correctly, i.e., If someone installs your app the app should connect to the store with OAuth.
• Don’t Ask for the merchant’s store URL at any point. App Installation must go through the Shopify app store.
• Fix any errors so that there isn’t any during app review.
• Before app review, try installing your app on a new development store to confirm that installation is done correctly.
• If your app uses ScriptTag API. Update your app to theme app extensions to ensure compatibility with Online Store 2.0 themes. Refer to this help doc for more context. If due to some reasons you are not able to move to theme app extensions, you can submit a theme app extension exemption request and keep using ScriptTag API.
• Don’t use pop-up windows or new tabs/windows for essential app functionality like running OAuth or approving app charges. This protects the functionality of your app from being compromised by pop-up blockers.
• Payments 💸 should be done via Shopify Billing API only unless you have approval not to use the same.
• Your app must request approval for charges again on reinstall. Review how to use billing API to charge for reinstalled apps. Your application must request new billing charges if the application is reinstalled.
• Plans must not remain active when the app is uninstalled. The app must ask for charge approval again for re-installation and must be processed via the Billing API.
• Provide a Screencast URL 🔗 where all the steps involved in review instructions are shown. This helps the review team and your app review can get more smooth.
• Provide Proper Instructions on every step which needs to be followed to demonstrate any feature or behaviour.

Lighthouse App Performance

• Shopify Requires you to provide lighthouse app performance results as a part of app review instructions to verify that the merchant’s store is not being impacted a lot negatively by the installation of your app.
• Basically, You need to generate lighthouse performance reports for the store before and after installation of your app in mobile mode. You can use developer tools or extension for the same.
  Say, the Performance result before was 80 and after installing your app is 73.
• Now, App Performance Ratio = (73/80)*100
  OR (PERFORMANCE_RESULT_AFTER / PERFORMANCE_RESULT_BEFORE) * 100

App Performance Ratio should be greater than 0.9. That is, the store’s performance shouldn’t degrade more than 10% due to the app. 🚄

At the bottom of the app review instructions, provide the scores, link to their screenshots and app performance ratio.

Legal Requirements

There are some basic but important requirements for your app to be listed.

• Follow the GDPR compliant for merchants based in Europe or merchants with buyers in Europe.
• Provide Links to Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
• For Apps that store user data, subscribe to GDPR webhooks.
• Provide correct email addresses for contact information.
• Provide Emergency Developer Contact Information for your application.

Review Process

Shopify Review Team is pretty quick and positive. They will get back to you within a week or two with the status of your app review. If your app would require some or major changes before listing, they provide all the changes in a detailed manner so that it’s easy for you to work on the same.

After making updates, you just have to reply to the same email and the team re-reviews the same. At this time, they generally get back within 24 hours with the updates.

If something is unclear, try to get it clear with the review team on the same email or try searching the same in Shopify community.

When Review Team updates the status of your app to listed. Your app will go live soon.

In this blog, we went through various sections in the Shopify Listing. We went through various restrictions, requirements and good practices you should follow for a Shopify app. Everything in this blog is based on my experience in developing a Shopify app. For detailed requirements on the Shopify app go here. All the best on your Shopify journey😄.

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