Value Study · B2C · value study app for painters
Reply personally to every support email and fix bugs right away
Many reviews name the founder; turned angry users into five-star reviewers
Workedcustomer-supportword-of-mouth
What they did
The solo founder replies to every support email and fixes reported bugs as soon as possible. Users learn it is one person, not a faceless company or AI, and mention him by name in reviews. After the influencer wave of complaints he fixed each person's problem and replied individually. He also advises replying to every App Store review publicly.
What happened
Many reviews mention his responsiveness; complainers became five-star reviewers and some started paying; his biggest form of advertising
- Stage
- retention
“my biggest way to advertise um is by just being very responsive, cuz if you if you look at the reviews, so many reviews mention how responsive I am”
“I fixed every single person's problem, replied to them, got them on board, um and then yeah, reviews turned into five-star reviews.”
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More from Value Study
All 23 Value Study tacticsMore from this episode
- Value Study: Name your app after the term people already learn in classSteady users for years with no marketing; trade-off is a hard-to-brand name
- Value Study: Rank for many small, specific keywords that only your real users search1,000+ keywords ranked; low volume but high conversion
- Value Study: Show what the app does in the first screenshot, not a menu
- Value Study: Win over teachers, who hand your app to a whole class at onceMain growth driver; teachers share with ~30 students at a time; founder says paid outreach to them struggled
- Value Study: Sell school licenses through a separate schools-only appDidn't work; no school took it
- Value Study: Turn the workarounds users show you into built-in featuresFounder says it worked; no numbers
- Value Study: Remove a feature people call confusing once a newer one covers itBackfired; many users who relied on it complained
- Value Study: Ask an optional 'Where did you hear about us?' with a free-text box31,000 answers; free text names specific teachers, courses and books
- Value Study: Ask which mediums users work in so the app feels made for them
- Value Study: Translate your app into several more languagesPaying users in the new languages; Dutch became common out of nowhere
- Value Study: Add a one-time Pro unlock to an app that has always been freeAbout £200 a month, steady; most users stayed free and missed key features
- Value Study: Announce 3 months ahead that the free tier ends; lifetime buyers keep accessClear spike in lifetime purchases before the switch; no review backlash mentioned
- Value Study: Drop the free tier and charge everyone a small amountSubscriptions and lifetime sales rose; revenue doubled in a year to $61K
- Value Study: Offer a lifetime plan next to the yearly plan50% lifetime, 50% yearly until the Android launch
- Value Study: On Android, replace the hard paywall with a soft paywall trialAndroid reviews recovered from very bad
- Value Study: Hire a cheap influencer with a big following in another language$4,000 in one week and a lasting lift; broken Android translations brought bad reviews
- Value Study: Run an ad in the main print magazine for your hobby nicheRoughly broke even; reached people who wouldn't have found it
- Value Study: Run Meta ads for a niche hobby appNo positive ROI yet; only dabbled
- Value Study: Add a tip jar to your settings menu$157 in tips this year, covering the developer fee
- Value Study: Test higher prices in the US firstSettled on a price about halfway up; no numbers
- Rank number one for your niche's main keywordsAbout $30K MRR; #1 for ~10 related terms
- Add Meta ads once organic growth in your niche levels offRevenue doubled or tripled; took time
- Raise your yearly price from $29.99 to $49.99Good so far, per a viewer; no numbers
- Show 2-3 screens of benefits and testimonials right before the paywallWon the client's test against the other onboarding version