I Marketed My App for 18 Months Without Knowing If It Worked
In August 2024, I published ChantFlow on the App Store. It’s a mantra counting app for Apple Watch — you wear it during practice, it counts with haptics, that’s it.
For the next 18 months, my analytics looked like this: sales numbers. That’s it. Some days zero, some days one or two. No idea where they came from. No idea who was downloading it or why.
I assumed it was just how small apps work. You ship, you hope.
The Marketing Push I Couldn’t Measure
Last August I decided to actually try. I wrote blog posts, posted on Reddit, shared on Instagram and Twitter. Downloads ticked up a little. But I had no way to connect any of it. Did the Reddit post help? Which country responded? Was anyone even landing on the App Store page?
I just didn’t know. I moved on.
What I Didn’t Realize About Watch-Only Apps
When I started building an iOS companion for ChantFlow — dashboards, streaks, health data from Apple Watch — I wasn’t thinking about analytics. I just wanted to make the app more useful.
The iOS version got approved a few days ago.
Within 24 hours, my App Store Connect analytics tab came alive. Impressions, page views, conversion rates, sources, territories. All of it suddenly there.
And then I noticed the dates. The data went all the way back to launch day — August 2024.
Apple had been collecting everything. It just wasn’t showing it to me because I didn’t have an iOS app.
Looking Back at August
I went back to August 2025 — my marketing month — and finally saw what actually happened.
There was a real spike. Product page views jumped — people were landing on the App Store page.
And when I looked at impressions by territory, it was almost entirely India.
India is my #1 market by a wide margin — more than double the US. The app is a mantra counter, of course it resonates there. But I had no idea. I was writing Reddit posts without knowing who was actually reading them.
UAE, Singapore, Malaysia all show up too. The South Asian diaspora found this app and I didn’t even know to lean into it.
The other thing I noticed: nearly half my downloads come from App Store Browse, not Search. People stumble onto it while browsing Health & Fitness. If I’d known that earlier I would have focused more on my screenshots and less on obsessing over keywords.
If You Have a Watch-Only App
You are probably missing all of this. Not because the data doesn’t exist — Apple is collecting it — but because it won’t surface until you have an iOS app in the store.
It doesn’t have to be complex. Even a simple companion with a settings screen would unlock it.
I wish I’d known this at launch. Eighteen months of marketing in the dark. Though finally seeing it all laid out was a pretty good feeling.
ChantFlow is the app I built. It’s on the App Store if you’re curious.
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