Shopify app competitor tracking in Luseri
Luseri puts your App Store listing next to up to six competing apps you choose: rating, number of reviews, entry price and trial length, rank in your category and its change over four weeks, the Built for Shopify badge, and reviews gained over 30 days once a month of readings exists. It logs every change to their name, plans and categories, and to yours, and shows where they rank on the keywords you track. Everything comes from public App Store pages, read once a day.
By Arthur Renard, updated
See it in the demo
The Competitors screen of the dashboard, with example numbers. It opens without an account.
A side-by-side competitor analysis
The Competitors page is one table: your listing, highlighted, then each app you watch. Each name links to its App Store listing and shows the developer under it.
| Column | What it is | Read from |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | The average out of 5 shown on the listing, or None when the app has no reviews yet | The listing page |
| Reviews | The number of reviews the listing shows | The listing page |
| In 30 days | Reviews gained since the last reading at least 30 days old. It shows Coming soon until a month of readings exists | Two daily readings of the listing, a month apart |
| Rank | The app's position in your category, the one named above the table, as Shopify orders the full category list for a visitor who is not signed in. Ad slots do not count | The category pages, first 192 apps |
| Over 4 wks | Places gained or lost in your category since the reading four weeks earlier. It shows once four weeks of readings of your category exist | Two readings of the category, four weeks apart |
| Starting at | The lowest monthly price shown in the listing's pricing section, whether it has a free plan, and the trial it offers: the longest length written on its plans, a free trial, or no trial | The header and the pricing section of the listing |
| Built for Shopify | The badge, shown under the app's name when the listing displays it | The header of the listing |
An app that is not in your category, or sits beyond the first 192 apps of it, shows as Not ranked. Shopify asks developers to put all their pricing in that one section of the listing, which is why the entry price is read there.
Changes on their listings, and on yours
Each day's reading of a listing is compared with the one before on three things: the app name, the plans (each plan's name and price) and the categories. When one of them differs, the change is logged with its date, the old value struck through above the new one.
Competitors' changes appear on the Competitors page. Yours appear on the Keywords page, next to your positions and your category rank, so you can set a new name or a new plan beside what your rank and your views did in the following days. Each list starts with the most recent changes of the past year.
A change can only be seen from the first day a listing was read: Luseri cannot rebuild what a listing looked like before. A reading where one of the three elements is missing, for example a page that loaded badly, is not taken for a change.
For what to do with these changes, and the parts of a listing that matter for search, see how to optimize a Shopify App Store listing.
Their position on your keywords
You choose up to 20 keywords. Every day, the App Store search results are read for each one: your position and the position of each app you watch, among the first 192 results, as a visitor who is not signed in sees them, in the App Store language you pick for each keyword (English or one of 20 others). Ads do not count.
On the Keywords page, a table shows who is ahead on each keyword and how many places separate you from a better-ranked competitor. Open a keyword to see your curve and theirs over 30 days, 90 days or a year, with each app's position today, 7 days ago and 30 days ago.
Positions exist only for the days the search was actually read. There is no earlier history to fetch, and a day when the App Store refused the reading stays empty instead of being filled in.
The Keywords page also suggests up to eight searches you do not track yet, drawn only from the searches that bring visits to your listing over 90 days (from your Google Analytics) and from the words your competitors put forward on their listings: the end of their app name and their categories. It never uses the searches other accounts track, and it gives no search volume.
For each tracked keyword, a link opens the Shopify Community forum's search in your browser, where merchants often ask for an app like yours. The forum's terms forbid robots, so nothing is read there for you.
To pick the keywords worth following, see Shopify App Store keyword research and rank tracking.
How the App Store pages are read
There is no App Store API for this, so Luseri reads the public pages that any visitor can open without signing in: each listing, the category list, and the search results for the keywords you track. The robot that reads them gives its name, LuseriBot, in every request.
- Each page is read once a day, and the reading is shared: a listing or a search already read today for another account is not read again.
- It waits at least 1.5 seconds between two requests.
- When the App Store refuses (codes 403 or 429), the robot stops and tries again later instead of insisting.
Your own reviews are read too, from newest to oldest, to rebuild your rating over the past year. Competitors' reviews are not read: only their rating and review count.
How to set it up
- Create an account and connect your app from your Shopify Partner account, as for the rest of Luseri.
- On the Competitors or Keywords page, paste your listing's address (apps.shopify.com/your-app). The first reading of your listing and your reviews takes about a minute.
- On the Competitors page, paste the listing address of each app you want to watch. Six apps at most: remove one to add another.
- On the Keywords page, add the keywords you want to follow and choose the App Store language of each. The first position is read right away, then every day.
What it does not do
- It does not show competitors' installs, revenue or listing traffic. Shopify does not publish them, and they are not estimated.
- It sends no email or alert when a competitor changes its listing. You see the change the next time you open the page.
- It does not log changes to a listing's description, screenshots, feature list or badges: only the name, the plans and the categories.
- It gives no search volume or difficulty for a keyword. The search ideas on the Keywords page come only from the searches that bring visits to your listing and from the words your competitors put forward on their listings.
- It follows the apps you pick, not the whole App Store. Beyond the first 192 apps of a category or the first 192 results of a search, a position is not known.
Questions
- How many competitors can I track in Luseri?
- Up to six apps, shown next to your own listing. Any App Store listing can be added by pasting its address. Its rank is shown when it appears among the first 192 apps of your category; otherwise it is marked Not ranked.
- How often are competitor listings checked?
- Once a day. Each listing, category list and keyword search is read at most once a day, and the result is shared between all accounts that follow it.
- Can I see when a competitor changes its pricing?
- Yes. Each listing's plans, with their names and prices, are compared from one day to the next, and a change is logged with its date. Name and category changes are logged the same way.
- Can I see a competitor's installs or revenue?
- No. Shopify does not publish installs, revenue or listing traffic for other apps, and they are not estimated. You see what their public listing shows: rating, reviews, prices, categories and positions.
- How much does Luseri cost?
- Luseri is free for now, while it welcomes its first users. Its terms say that if it becomes paid, users are told by email at least 30 days before, and nothing is charged without their consent.