| Source | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnF-zJhyUtE |
|---|---|
| Readwise URL | https://read.readwise.io/read/01kvyrwkkx3tr2yah5tf99m5f6 |
| Readwise ID | 01kvyrwkkx3tr2yah5tf99m5f6 |
| Date | 2025-06-26 |
| Author | Chris Raroque |
| Category | video |
| Cover image | https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MnF-zJhyUtE/sddefault.jpg |
[Music] So, a common question I get is, “What is my process for launching new apps?” If you’re new to the channel, welcome to the video. My name is Chris. I build productivity apps. Today, I wanted to share my launch framework that I use for all of the app launches that I do. I’ll share my framework, but I’m also going to cover questions like, “When do I know it’s time to launch my app?” later in the video, so definitely stick around for that. So, jumping right into it, the first step in my process is actually setting up a weight list page. And ideally, this happens way before you’re going to launch. In fact, probably before you even start building the app,
at least that’s when I do it. The weight list should be really simple. In my case, all I do is have one app screenshot and a place for users to enter their email so they get notified when I launch, when I open up the beta testing. Super simple. The reason I set this up, and I think it’s important, is because it helps me gauge interest to see how many people are signing up for this. Gives me a really good list of beta testers to test the app with as I prepare for launch. And then when I do decide to launch, it gives me a really good springboard of initial users to launch it to. In terms of the tool, I use something called Framer to build the landing pages. There’s a ton of free
templates out there that have this onepage email collection weight list form. So, I usually use one of those where I just make it from scratch in 10 minutes. I’m probably going to be covering the Framer stuff in a second video, so I’ll hold off from saying much there, but just know that that’s the tool that I use. Framer does have built-in form support, so you can do that out of the box now, but I personally use something called FormSpark to do the email collection, and it’s super simple to hook into Framer. So, you have the weight list in place, and you’re about to launch your app. Here are the things I make sure to do before actually launching it. So, this is kind of the second step in my checklist is analytics. And I’m talking
about analytics inside of your application. This is something that a lot of people usually push down the line because they’re thinking, I don’t even have users. What am I going to track? But trust me, in a few months, you’re going to deeply wish that you installed it earlier. So, just go ahead and do it. It takes like max 30 minutes and you lose nothing by doing it. The main reason to set up analytics is you want to see why users are churning very early so you can make product decisions. Without that, you have no idea if the app is actually working or why it’s not working. I already have a video on analytics and Post Hog, so I’ll link that in the description if you want to
check it out, so I won’t go in depth here. But analytics is very important, but often overlooked, so do not skip this. The next thing on my checklist is implementing a feedback board. And this is probably the biggest mistake that I made with some of my earlier apps was not doing this sooner. I’m talking about a feedback board where users can leave feature requests, upvote other feature requests. So you can see the top request floating to the top and you know what users are asking for. Most people skip this step because they think I already know what my users want. I can just track this in notion or something. But trust me, this is completely different.
I feel like I’m a pretty good builder myself and I can kind of guess what users want. I am consistently blown away by the things that get a lot of up votes on this feedback board. They’re things that I just would never have predicted. For example, in my app Ellie, there’s a list feature where you can create these lists on the left side and I use it every single day. All the users use it that did not exist in the product originally and I had no intention of building it until I saw how many people requested it in the feedback board. But this has happened so many times where I realized this is such a strong signal.
Every single app needs to implement something like this. As things start surfacing on this feedback board and you know what to build, once you start implementing these things, the chance of users turnurning starts decreasing dramatically. If you don’t have analytics or this feedback board, you’re just playing building on hard mode because you don’t actually know what users want. You don’t know why they’re turnurning. So very important to have something like this to prioritize your road map. In terms of the software, I’m using something called Cany to power my feedback board. Integrates really well with the web app and the iOS apps that I have. So users don’t need a separate account. They can just use their Ellie
account, for example, to log in, start adding feedback, start uploading things, super seamless. I know CI is expensive and one of my friends is building an alternative called User Jot. I’ll leave a link in the description if you want to go check those out. Doesn’t matter which one. Just definitely go implement something. The next part of my checklist is I implement an email system. And this is something that is extremely overlooked. Most of you guys are already going to have some sort of welcome email that’s being sent out, but that’s a pretty basic version. The thing that I’m recommending here is more of an email sequence system. It’s a system where you can programmatically send emails to
users at a certain cadence or manually. even if you’re not using it in the beginning. Just set it up because it makes your life a lot easier when you decide you do actually want to use it. So, some examples of when you’re going to want to use this. Obviously, sending welcome emails becomes really easy. It’s just when they sign up, trigger the welcome email. But a more advanced sequence could be when a user signs up and they don’t use your product for 7 days, send them an email asking for any feedback. Or another one that I actually do for my product Ellie is when a user signs up, I’m going to send them five emails over the course of two weeks just
outlining some of the lesserk known features of Ellie. And this has been a huge unlock because it reminds people to go use the app in the first 14 days. And a lot of people end up discovering new features that they wouldn’t have otherwise. So email as a way to improve retention and reduce churn is something that a lot of people don’t think about. It’s something that I probably learned a little too late, but I’m not making that mistake now. I set the system up as early as possible because even if I’m not using it now, I know down the road I will want to do something like this and I’m just making my life easier by
setting it up now. And the tool that I use is called Loops. They have a really nice UI. I believe they have a really good free plan as well if you want to go test them out. And the team and Chris from Loops are really responsive to issues. So, the customer support is really good as well. That’s what I use for email sequencing. Not sponsored. Just really like the product. Okay. So, once all the systems are in place, the next thing I work on is the app store listing. If this is an iOS app, which in my case all of my apps are iOS apps, you’re going to need to do an app store listing. And it’s something that a lot of people do not take seriously enough. Organic app store search is one of those things where if you’ve never launched a couple apps in the app store, you
usually think, “Oh, there’s like millions of apps. There’s no way that anyone’s going to find me when they search.” Not true. App Store search is very generous if you do it right. And it really starts with having a very, very, very good App Store listing. So, what goes into a good app store listing? The first thing is really good app store screenshots. This is something where I see a lot of developers not spending enough time on. I get it. You’ve been spending months building this app, spent a lot of time getting the app ready for launch. The last thing you want to do is work on app store screenshots. No one likes working on app store screenshots except for this Twitter page that loves
to talk about app store screenshots, but it is something you should take very seriously because it is the primary and first thing that a user is going to look at when trying to figure out, should I download this app? Is it worth my time or not? So, if you have really good app store screenshots, you make a good first impression, there’s a high chance that they’re going to download it and actually try your app. At minimum, I recommend spending 3 to 4 days on the app store screenshot. No one else is going to tell you this because they’re going to tell you, “Go launch quickly. You shouldn’t spend time on this.” Don’t listen to them. The return on investment of taking the time is really high and
it’s always almost worth it. Aside from the screenshots, the other stuff are pretty simple. It’s just a really good title, a really good description, and really good tags. There’s a lot of videos and resources out there that talk about that stuff and how to optimize your app store listing. So, I won’t touch on it here, but do the research and take those fields seriously, too, because it does impact your downloads. Reason I’m taking this so seriously is a lot of people don’t know this, but when you launch on the App Store, you actually do get an initial boost from Apple for I think it’s like the first couple days, maybe the first two weeks where you get a lot of free downloads and this free boost in the App Store
search just by launching the app. So, you really don’t want to waste this opportunity by having really bad screenshots and a really bad description. Really want to take advantage of this boost because I don’t think you get another one of these to be honest. So, I would take it seriously now just for that alone. Final step on the checklist is building an actual landing page. So, this is different from the weight list page that you originally set up that’s just collecting emails. This is a page that’s going to showcase the application and drive downloads to the app. If you’re an iOS app and you were already working on the landing page with really nice screenshots, hopefully your life’s a lot easier because you
have a lot of assets and files that you can use in the landing page. It is a first impression for customers. So, I usually spend at least a week on the landing page, sometimes even more. But it is something you can tweak over time. So, don’t hold off on launching just for the sake of getting a really good landing page, but at least put in maybe like a week of time into it. And I’m using Framer for the landing pages. I will do a whole separate video on how I use Framer, how I think about copy, all of that stuff. But for now, just know that I’m using Framer. So, a common question is when do I know that it’s time to actually launch my app? Because if you follow my other
videos, you know that I do some sort of beta test period where I release the app in stages to beta testers to test it. My rule of thumb is that I launch it when I have a high confidence that users are going to stick to the app. If during the beta test period, I’m noticing in the analytics that people sign up and just kind of drop off after a day, that signals to me probably not a good time to launch. But if during the beta test period, I see people sign up and they at least stick around the app for a few days, maybe this is a good enough time for me to launch and there’s no specific number I’m looking for, it is really just kind of a gut feeling. When I have a strong suspicion that that’s the case,
they’re going to stick with it. That’s when I decide to launch. So, what do I actually do when I’m ready to launch it? This really does depend on your product and honestly you as a person, like what you’re comfortable with. Me personally, I don’t really do any big launches. I kind of just announce it on my social media and then hope for the best, which isn’t the best strategy, but that’s what I’m personally comfortable with. So, that’s what I do. I usually make a YouTube video. I do a couple tweets, sometimes I post on LinkedIn, and then I email the rest of the people on the wait list letting them know the app is launched, and I just kind of hope for the best. But, if I was
to do a really big launch, what I would do is start posting about it the week four, start gaining momentum, start gaining interest. I’d post it on my socials. I would try to get friends and other people to post on their social media. I would do a product hunt launch. I would do a bunch of posts on online communities like Reddit and other internet forums. I would just try to get as many views and as many potential users to your landing page to your app store page as possible. This video really isn’t about marketing or how to actually do the launch itself. I just wanted to share my checklist and the steps that I go through when launching a new application. So, I hope you guys
found this one helpful. But thank you guys for sticking to the end of the video. If you enjoyed this kind of content, check out my Instagram and Tik Tok. I post almost every other day about building productivity apps. And obviously, if you like this kind of content, don’t forget to subscribe. Thank you guys so much for watching and I’ll see you guys in the next video. Oh my god, this is so [Music]