It’s Iz here. We’re celebrating Shopify featuring our little app on the Shopify app store, by launching on Product Hunt! I absolutely love Product Hunt, hunters, makers and the outer product community. I have been involved with the Product Hunt community for over 2 years now, I run the Product Hunt Meetup here in Sydney and helped with the creation of http://phglobal.co the Slack channel for the worldwide Product Hunt community. In the mean time I have been working on a side project for the past 1.5-2 years. It all started when I received one of my favourite Newsletters in my inbox. The newsletter asked the recipients to refer their friends. That got me thinking about referrals as a mechanism for building a vibrant email lists. Fast forward a few months and I had built an MVP for a friend’s Shopify shop. They were keen to build their email list as it formed an integral part of their sales funnel. Whenever they send their newsletter on a Wednesday, they get a spike in sales the following days. This was back in 2015. Yes it has taken me almost 2 years to build up the courage to get on Product Hunt! whilst I have helped many makers feature their products on Product Hunt over the past couple of years. I can see how putting your own product out there can be an uncomfortable process! We, as makers seem to be both proud and embarrassed by what we put out there! I worked closely with my friend, conducting many customer development interviews, experiments, many of which failed, and some were promising. Within 7 months of launching with my founding customer BeautifulBecause.com.au, they managed to generate $100k worth of orders from customers who signed to their newsletter. I chose ecommerce as the only segment for Gather, because the parameters were simple. As a customer you get a coupon code as gesture for signing up to receive relevant information about the products you like. Many of these retail products can be bought from many merchants, where price is simply one of the few deciding factor for a customer. Offering a coupon usually is the thing that becomes that incentivises the customer to go ahead and make a purchase. Outside of the ecommerce world, things get a little tricky and ‘price' isn’t usually the deciding factor. Today Gather serves all type Shopify stores sizes, large and small. Gather has two mechanisms for building your subscriber base: - Through a customer-friend referral mechanism - Through optin widgets These two mechanism form a powerful combination. Once you setup Gather it works for you automatically in the background. Today Gather has many customising features, like display rules, widget types and themes. Also one time use discount code that are unique to each customer. A good overview of features and the story behind Gather can be found here: https://hq.gathercustomers.com Most of these features have been prioritised for ecommerce only and has been incredibly valuable for Shopify merchants. I am sure we all have consensus on the fact that Email still remains one of the most effective channels for communicating with your audience. Simply for these reasons: - An email address is (in many cases) is independent of the service provider and forms out web identity - An email has a subject line, which can be a powerful trigger to draw readers to the copy - Receiving an email is a somewhat an intimate event and isn’t affected with distractions, like say the feed. Thank you so much for checking it out. I know you’re likely not a Shopify merchant and this product might not be of benefit to you, but I would love your comments and feedback on: - If you see a a good application to this outside the ecommerce world - Your views on messaging and email, and their differences. - Your views on referrals. Did you refer a friend to use Uber or Dropbox in the past? - General feedback on the idea and the product. Shopify is really making ecommerce accessible to many sellers, from startup mom and dads to large established supermarkets. The Shopify apps ecosystem is vibrant. If you’re a product maker, I would reommend you look into the app ecosystem, it’s a good place for new ways to extend Shopify’s functionality. If you like the concept here, I would really appreciate your upvote and a share. Best, Iz Single Founder - Gather (www.gathercustomers.com)

Quick update - Added fraud detection to referrals. This gives the merchant the choice to accept / block referrals if system flags it as high risk for a fraudulent referral.

Congratulations Iz. Have you thought about showing the popup not only on users' exit intent, but also on a sudden mouse movement after a long inactivity? During that inactivity, the user might have been researching the products in the cart, validating her purchase decision.

Congratulations Iz! I love Gather ☺️

Sounds great Iz. Will customers discover that a shop has Gather installed and game the system by quitting the shopping process just to obtain a discount?

Very clever - great work! "$100k worth of orders from customers who signed to their newsletter" loving these stats.