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How a Mobile App Drove $50k+ Revenues for SniperGang Apparel

SniperGang Apparel

This is a guest post by Reginald Bourdeau, Owner of Complex Graphics.

Not every day, a world-famous rapper comes to you and tells you that he wants you to build a website for him, right? I’m Reggie, the owner of Complex Graphics – a multimedia designing company based out of Miami. We help our customers with Web Design, Graphic Design, Social Media, and Printing Solutions.

Earlier this year, something exciting happened with my team and me, and I’m here to let you in on the story.

Sometime in January, we got a call from Florida Rapper Kodak Black’s marketing team informing us that Black wanted to move to the business side of things and start his clothing label, ‘ Sniper Gang Apparel.’ They wanted us to build an official website for the brand, selling apparel and merchandise and providing Black’s gig updates, news, headlines, music, and more.

We met the marketing team a couple of times to understand their website requirements, and within the first few meetings, we realized that it wasn’t about building an eCommerce website alone. They wanted us to design an integrated platform that would connect Black with his fans and followers and give them up-to-the-minute updates about all things Kodak.

We chose Shopify, one of the world’s largest eCommerce platforms, to build SniperGang Apparel, which officially launched in January 2017. The launch was covered by several top publications such as XXL Magazine, USA Today, and Billboard.

With Kodak’s immense popularity and solid marketing strategy, we started seeing a lot of traffic coming to the website. We were getting excellent traction, and Kodak’s merchandise was selling in huge volumes, with orders coming in from all parts of the world!

Paving the Way Ahead

In terms of Marketing, we were trying traditional marketing channels like Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Resellers, Email, Ads, Videos, PR, etc., to promote the brand and pull more traffic to the website.

However, Annie, the Marketing Manager at SniperGang Apparel, was keen on looking beyond conversions. One evening, she called us and said, “Guys, can we look at something new? Something more? Are there any more potential sales channels we still haven’t explored?”

Untapped sales channels? That got us thinking!

We were doing everything that eCommerce and music companies put together to promote their website, so what was it that we were missing out on?

Finding the Missing Puzzle

We knew this could not be a gut call, but it had to be more of a data-driven solution. We sat with our team of analysts and deep-dived into understanding our current data, such as channels used to access the storefront, total time spent by users, geo-locations of these users, and lots more.

Data revealed that more than 30% of our website traffic came from Mobile.

30%! Boy, that’s significant traffic. We realized that SniperGang Apparel needed a more robust mobile presence to leverage this traffic and get closer to our growth goals. Having worked to get remarkable initial traction, we had to figure out a way to drive more conversions through Mobile.

Knowing that commerce is now mobile-first, we thought of exploring alternatives that could help us quickly test Mobile as a platform and analyze if a mobile app would serve as a powerful growth channel for Sniper Gang Apparel.

Betting High on Mobile

We started approaching app development companies to build a custom mobile app for SniperGang Apparel. An average of 7 out of 10 agencies told us that they’d take 3-6 months to develop the app. More so, in terms of cost, they quoted $25,000 to $50,000, depending on the features required. Honestly, after building our website with Shopify, longer timelines and bigger budgets were not what we had in mind.

We wanted to quickly test if Mobile could be our next big growth channel, and we wanted a solution to help us figure that out with lesser time & effort.

Mobile App in Minutes?

While browsing for app development companies, I came across Plobal Apps, a DIY mobile app builder.

For all those who don’t know what DIY mobile app platforms do, these platforms help online businesses build their mobile app within minutes. They have pre-designed layouts & themes, which easily integrate with your website and create your app in no time without you having to write a single line of code.

On reading a little more about DIY app builders, I figured they seemed like the solution we were looking for. I skimmed through Plobal Apps’ product portfolio and client reviews on their Shopify App Store. After going through their customer reviews and excellent recommendations for support, Annie and I got in touch with their Sales team.

They gave us a quick product walk-through and showed us a preview of how our app would look like. That’s when we decided to buy in!

SniperGang Apparel Android & iOS apps went live in less than a week.

$$$$$ Cashing in on Mobile!

Given Kodak’s popularity, plus the website’s success, getting app installs for SniperGang Apparel was relatively easy. We used traditional marketing channels to promote the app to garner quick downloads.

We had significant traffic coming to our website through Mobile and wanted to capitalize on these visitors.

To drive app installs organically, we used the Redirectify Tool provided by Plobal Apps, which let us place a widget on our website to tell our visitors about the new app and to prompt them further to download it.

redirectifytool_banner

Within the first month of the launch, we got more than 5000 app users (both iOS and Android) and clocked in a whopping revenue of $10,000+

Following the same marketing route and a few Growth hacks provided by Plobal Apps each week, we started seeing consistent traction.

In 3 months, our app downloads increased from 5000 to 28,000+, driving a substantial five-digit revenue of $50k+.

 “Since launching our app we’ve seen a significant increase in our mobile sales and conversions.  The mobile app added a whole new revenue channel for us bringing in fresh sales month-on-month. Literally, everything you need is literally at your finger tips.” – Reginald Bourdeau, Owner at Complex Graphics.

Conclusion:

As a parting note, I’d like to say that if you’re running an eCommerce company, looking for additional revenue channels, and have about 30%  or more traffic coming in from Mobile, then you must take mobile apps more seriously.

 “Download the official Sniper Gang App for the latest news and most up to date content.” – Kodak Black

I hope our story inspires you and helps your business in more ways than one!

Feel free to comment below; I’d love to hear your thoughts/ideas.


SaaS platforms like Plobal Apps provide a fully native, feature-rich mobile app development platform that integrates with your online store, gives your brand a mobile app experience in as few as 5 minutes, and is far more cost-effective than most app development services agencies in North America.

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