A subscription app selling on the web · B2C · developer Jacob spoke with
Charge $1 for the first month on web instead of a free trial
Screens out fake cards; small net effect on conversion
Mixedpaywallpayments-checkout
What they did
A web2app developer replaced a credit-card-gated free trial with a $1 one-month intro period. Charging $1 validates that the card is real and costs money, cutting users on fake or bouncing cards who consume the service and then fail to pay.
What happened
Validates cards and helps some conversion rates, but host guesses the net difference is probably small.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Making Web2App Work: From Basic Landing Pages to Complex Sales Funnels — Nathan Hudson, Perceptycs“And that has the benefit of you've now validated this is a real credit card, and it costs money, which then you're just saving yourself the pain of like providing services to those users, and then like, you know, having a failed credit card.”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- Advertise a free recorded masterclass, not the app, then sell the app at the endAgency says it worked, especially long-form on YouTube; no numbers shared
- Copy your working in-app onboarding to the web before inventing a new quizAgency rarely sees a profitable in-app flow fail when mirrored on web
- Launch your first paid ads to a web checkout so money and data come back fastPayouts in days, not ~60; about $1K of spend can teach you something
- Measure Meta app ads with AEM instead of SKANMuch more accurate; big accounts fully migrated
- Give each creator their own web page with tracking links instead of an App Store linkGuest calls influencers and affiliates 'amazing with web'; no numbers
- Run web sales ads and free guides to reach people who ignore app adsReaches new user pools and keeps data on non-buyers; no numbers
- Send sign-up, trial and purchase events from your web funnel back to MetaStandard practice; value-based bidding tried with no results yet
- Put screens between quiz questions that prove, reassure and show how the app works
- None to Run: Write a blog post that ranks for 'alternative to Couch to 5K' and links to the appBecame the app's main traffic source
- Elevate: Soft launch a rough version on Android and watch replays of every user~500 downloads a day; learned a lot without needing scale
- Dipsea: Test a money-back guarantee instead of a free trial on the webExperiment in progress; no results shared