With the diversity of our merchant base growing by the day, and a rapidly changing commerce landscape, there are always opportunities for developers to build creative solutions to diverse merchant problems. Each stage of a merchant’s entrepreneurial journey is a standalone billion-dollar industry—from sourcing products, marketing, order fulfillment, customer management, and more. The opportunities are there, but if you haven’t developed an app for the Shopify App Store before, where exactly do you start?.

We’ve got you covered. In this guide, we share the six stages of app development you need to know to build and launch a successful app on Shopify, with insights and advice from Shopify’s own developers and successful partner app developers who work with Shopify every day.