Understanding When to Use Web2App and How to Do It Well — Thomas Petit, Independent App Consultant

0:00hello I'm your host David Barnard and my guest today is Thomas pedit an independent consultant focused on subscription app growth across acquisition activation and monetization over the past decade Thomas has worked with hundreds of clients and help manage nine digits in ad spin with a positive return on the podcast I talked with Thomas about how to find success with web to app the value and challenges of owning the transaction and why avoiding App Store fees isn't a great reason to experiment with web to app but might work out anyway Hey Thomas Thanks so much for coming back on the podcast I think it's your third or

0:41fourth time we'll just have to make it an annual tradition yeah my pleasure always happy to be back and uh you you have a great audience and uh I I I really enjoy the the other guest and the the rest of the podcast so I'm really happy to bring my small contribution here yeah well you're you're episodes are some of the more popular so it's selfish of me to to get you back on since uh people seem to really enjoy your insights and you know for those who haven't heard Thomas before you know he's been Consulting for what almost a decade now and worked on multiple

1:14subscription apps and worked with so many different teams and what I love about Thomas and other folks who work across a lot of teams and I've said this a lot on the podcast so reiterating for those who've heard this but you know he you just get so much experience and and you see what works in one app and then you try it in another and it doesn't work and it really gives you a deeper understanding of some of these topics to be trying these things across so many different apps versus maybe some bias that comes across when you've only ever worked on a single app and so it's great to get your insights

1:46uh you know as you work with so many different apps um so this year it's 2024 and one of the topics I'm getting asked about a ton and just see more and more conference talks about see more and more tools popping up um is web to app so first I find that like term confusing so let's just Define what do what do we mean with web to app because there even are like multiple ways multiple kind of paths that that people use Under the Umbrella of webt so what what is webt what do we what do we mean by that there definitely a definitely a wide umbrella like there's

2:25lots of subtopics in there I think the the the low down is a a lot of app developers they're the most of the marketing is driving straight to the App Store where regardless if it's paid marketing or or else and different channels and I guess web to app is the way developers would bring this traffic first on some kind of web page that can be more or less sophisticated can be very simple just a landing page that then drives to the app store or can be very sophisticated have the the whole arding and maybe the payment maybe the sign up maybe even part of the the

3:05actual app experience some features on the web but in the end they still want to drive to the app at some point and I guess it's a very good place that we start there because one of the reason that it's it's becoming such a hot up I mean it's not new but it's definitely more in the raer of everybody is that there is Big opportunities in driving traffic on the web rather than on the stores that are a number of limitation if only just the layout you can't show whatever you want to people who interact with uh whatever content you put out there whether it's an app or not so more

3:42flexibility more channels but in the end most of the time developers are interested to get user in the app because uh the native experience might be better in a number of case uh but also because it offers retention levels that website just don't like in particular being on the home screen even if you could put a uh a screen a shortcut nobody does or having the push notification even if they exist on on websites it's just not the same power like it's clear that retention long-term retention is is higher to handle uh in an app and the experience is great it doesn't mean that the experience has to

4:23start with the app and I think that's what the web to app Encompass yeah I like that you started there because one of the things I have heard from a lot of folks is that they they feel like they need to build a a full-fledged web app to even experiment with web to app um and and and right off the bat it's like no it can be as simple as just a landing page like you said where you're able to collect attribution more uh deterministically on the web so you know I mean I think for a lot of apps it would be tough to make that funnel work

4:58you know dropping people onto web page and then just immediately sending them to the App Store um but for some maybe maybe that does work but it but it does kind of span the gamut from that kind of landing page where you craft your message more directly and specifically maybe more interactive Maybe video and stuff that you just don't get when you drop somebody onto the app store and then it goes all the way to like providing a much more sophisticated experience or even a a full-fledged web app um and and one thing to kind of pause here too is that I think you know it just it's so contextual like it just

5:33depends so much on the app the experiences and even some of what you were saying about um retention it that's probably not true of every app like some apps might act depending on exactly like Photo room I've actually been using photo room more on the desktop than I do on my phone because I use it specifically for subclub like I'd use it for removing backgrounds of guest photos and things like that and so you know everything we talk about everything is so contextual but I think that's an important thing to bring up even as we're just starting this conversation is that that everything we we talk about in

6:09web to app is going to be so contextual that you what's working for one app things we maybe even suggest may not work for you um so I think it's a great place to start of like the the breadth of of context the bread of of options for web to app um I think that the next place to go with that is is why like why why do webt and we kind of hinted a little bit but like why don't you list out some of the reasons and we can kind of dig into some of those yeah I I'll intervene back uh on on on the breath

6:42before I go to the why the sort of the the context behind it is exactly where where I was going to go in the sense that I've seen I've seen different apps succeed or fail with completely different setups on web to app uh I I know of a gaming company that has one of these very very simple learning page it's just like and it enables them to like do attribution differently explain also the game in a way that the in the in the store they couldn't like because the the the graphic is full screen and so on like but then this simple landing page scheme didn't work for a number of

7:22my other apps and then you've got the whole like it's not just a landing page or fully developed on boarding there's many ch Shades of Gray in between I can remember one project in particular where we're like okay what if we put the sign up or we don't what if we put the payment or we don't and the answer was always is it depends like so there's context depending on what your app is doing like for example n as a as an onboarding on the web that is 50 screens I bet if photo room was doing that it wouldn't work at all so highly depends on on on what you're doing um sometimes

7:58you can just showcase the AA moment very fast like and and that's typically the case for for photo room H sometimes you really really want to drive to the payment because that's that's your main reason to go to to the web because you want to charge there it doesn't need to be one way or the other and I think it goes Way Beyond the app itself and the vertical you're in but actually the context of how that user I've heard about my app and if I take for example blinkist which was one of the Pioneers in in web2 app and I remember copying the tactics back in

8:322016 so they're like sort of eight years ago they were already doing work to up and blink is does a lot of other things but they they parly cracked uh presence on tabula and out Brin what I call pay content marketing but those sites the context of these ads that is placed typically next to um news content or similar they drive to a page that looks like an article and brings like it's a completely different way of doing web to app because they KN they understood how to adjust to the context of how their ad was placed what are the user expecting when they're clicking on this and what

9:10they want to see and I bet if they were pulling just the full web em booding that they do have for this context it wouldn't work and then when the traffic is coming from Facebook uh the experience that you have in the website of of blinket is completely different from the one if you click on an outbrain ad so the the cont goes definitely by by vertical what works for gaming wouldn't work for for dating or for Fitness but also uh you have to adjust and in a perfect world is you have these different tools and experiences journe user Journeys available and you find out that yeah for this particular ad

9:48placement this this journey just works the best and and I think that's where the Pioneers ended up in the sense of of course it's easier to just have one web flow and drive everything to it but you're probably stalling compared to the opportunity you could have of if somebody's searching me on Google or if somebody's clicking from a Tik Tok or if somebody like you is is looking for photo room uh desktop experience because it's from sub Club you have to offer them something different and actually in the case of photo room I think they put like at least 10 free tools on on the website that are in the app and at the

10:26beginning I was like I don't know why they're doing it I don't have enough internal information about this but I was like wow this looks really cannibalization because I'm doing something on the web without any kind of log in anything just really one off and I'm lost but in the end if you look I do believe it's it's beneficial because they're playing the long game and see you you memorize it you know the app is there if you need it you know there are other features in there and I think for them it's like a very long game acquisition Channel where actually you have experienced the feature on the web

10:58but one day you might need more and you know the app is there with more it's just they don't need the conversion instantly they can like I believe it's a it's a long game in this case that not everybody can do that and not everybody can offer the full feature on the web which they manage to do very nicely uh but I think it does reinforce a lot like yeah context context context of what you're doing what's your strategy and how why why is the user Landing there and actually adjust to it it's just like there there's many ways of apprach this so let's talk about

11:33why people are doing it like why web to app and I mean again like we've already hinted at it but um what are the kind of primary motivations and then then how do we see that play out and then we can kind of take them one by one that that's a good one because I've I mean I've said it before but I believe people are going web to have for the wrong reason but then eventually on the way they discover that there is an opportunity that is not necessarily the one that that they imagine two two of the very clear reason that people are oh we want to do web to app or we need to

12:08do web to app is one the store fees like the commission that Apple and Google are taking on on subscription or I APS or 15 or 30% depending the case and then when you process this payment on the web ER you'd pay something around 3% via stripe or similar so 3% 30% there's a 10x Gap and you you see a lot of post explaining web to up like oh you can save all of the fees it's not technically true like because there is a fee and the Gap is not as big as people think I believe this reason is not a good one uh there is less fees but actually the the whole

12:48funnel looks very different and you can't fully expect the same conversion rate the same retention rate like every every metric would move typically when you're trying to charge on the web is much harder to get people to pay uh because there's not the trust factor of Apple because you have to pull your credit card er because like there are many reason that makes that uh people will just the uix you know in the app is just great like okay subscribe for trial yes face ID whatever and you're in which is a huge Advantage for but then even after the transaction a lot of people are like oh I have a cost of acquisition

13:27of of 50 on the web web and 30 in the app or whatever or vice versa I'm like yeah but the customers are not worth the exact same like the renewal rates are going to be different the refund rate is going to be different uh the fact that you own the transaction because you're the one processing it for me is a big plus of doing web to up and people are like the fee the fee the fee I mean there is a value in owning the the customer relationship rather than delegating it to Apple um so see but there's also a lot of work the transition I think a lot of people

14:01kind of underestimate the the um involuntary turn because you know people are incentivized to keep their credit cards updated with apple whereas like each customer that you have that individual transaction with you need Dunning like you need to be able to email them and say update your credit card when it expires and like it's yeah there's also a lot of work in owning that transition but there's value in it and so that but it's trade-offs and I I think that's where there there maybe has been some naivity in the conversation around web to app of like oh yeah save on fees save on fees but then not like talking about

14:36the practicalities like you are here of like everything's a trade-off you'll probably experience lower conversion but maybe you'll have higher retention you may you know save on fees but you're GNA have to like Implement a lot of infrastructure around Dunning and other things and so it's like everything's a trade-off and you need to really understand the depths of some of that before you go just jump on the web to app uh uh Trend or whatever yeah absolutely you know a lot of people saying calling the fee a tax you know is the Apple tax is the 30% and I I'm not really known for defending the Platforms

15:11in general but I I I do believe there is real value behind the commission like the visibility that the App Store is giving you the fact that they're processing the uh the tax for you the fact that they're processing refunds and like the billing errors and so on there there is real value it so maybe some people can argue that this value is not the gap between 30% and 3% and and I would agree and I think if Apple had lowered the fee to 10% many less people would be doing less to up because the value is really big so and and many people who move to web to

15:45up underestimate the amount of work that it is going to represent to maintain this this I mean there is a value in owning this relationship but it it it translate into into work definitely yeah one of the more subtle things too is that both Apple and Google I think accept over 200 forms of payment across so like you know even stripe or paddle or or a lot of these Alternatives that people are using on the web you don't have 200 different payment options and like you know somebody in you know Africa wants to pay with the the the carrier billing and apple supports that it's like Apple and Google have gone you

16:26know they understand billing in all these countries both from like the retail presence and their and how big the app store is at volume and they year in year out are adding more and more options in those localities in those in those localities in those different countries to uh allow the payment uh processors and the and the how people like to pay in those countries and so even subtle things like that that you know you think oh I'll just you know again save the fee but it's like the they do a lot to earn the fee U maybe not 30% like you said and then if you're a Netflix it's like

17:04you have a big enough team where you can start expanding into all these different payment options in those countries and you do it in the order of like what the highest value countries are the US is obviously the easiest it's just credit card and stripe and Apple pay even um but once you start you know making once you're as you get bigger and the opportunities are bigger in these smaller countries then having 200 different payment options it's actually really important and and very valuable yeah and I think that that's the reason Google has put in particular I mean Apple too but Google has made an incredible effort to to expand payments

17:38and it's it's extremely relevant given the the penetration of under in in markets where alternative payment system are are much pretty much the norm rather than than an exception and it's true that from a US perspective or even in some of the Western Europe countries like yeah everybody have great card why would I want to support anything maybe PayPal and that's it but there are many countries where it's not like this at all like and even even culturally is not like this it's not only like banking access but really like oh I'm used to pay with this system and and that's it and then every country has like their

18:14own like er I moved to Portugal last year and I I was very surprised at the amount of transaction that people are doing through a system that's called MBA that I've never heard before or elsewhere and for them it's just normal it's just easier and you increase the potential that if if you support this that people are going to pay but then maybe netx can but which developer can go and say okay Portugal has MB and then India has this and then Spain has bom and then in Argentina they want car building and then there they have this prepaid car that are very big like no

18:49it's very hard to get there and and it will affect your conversion so I don't think there is also value and it's it's where again contextual comes back you know in terms of of the vertical in terms of the user Journey but also in understanding actually that user are maybe better off converting them in the app because of where they're located because I'm not offering this and and you have this this situation where you have to decide almost in real time based on test usually but like oh I've identified that this this segment of user I'm actually better off go moving them to iip even if the fees is there

19:27but but this particular group of user probably not because they can pay with Apple pay on the website and the friction to the conversion is going to be minimal and and so for me it's it's never been too much about should I charge in the app or on the web the answer is nestly both is in which case you're doing it and through which Journey which makes it a lot more complicated obviously to figure out but that's how you also discover new new maximums for for different segments yeah I I think the the best advice I've heard on this too is like that the absolute highest level um way

20:03to sort those two is if you have any understanding of the level of intent and kind of to your point earlier like if somebody is searching your brand on Google then they probably have pretty high intent and you can funnel that to the web and not expect as high of a dip in conversion um promotions if you're offering you know 50% off send those people to the web they have very high intent you're offering a huge discount um you know I think those kind of things um at a very high level make a lot of sense but then like you said once you then start testing there's a lot more

20:42Nuance of who to send where which and then it's contextual like you know we can give advice but every app needs to to try and and see what works in their particular context and for different personas so the fact that every app needs to test this on their own actually leads to maybe the next biggest and maybe the most important reason to consider web to app is attribution it's like in order to do these tests you need to be able to like understand the users better and you definitely have an advantage on the web for that tell tell me about attribution and web tab yeah so

21:18we started saying the first one is avoid the fee and I did develop that I don't think it's a good reason but you still should go on the web and the the attribution is definitely the other reason like people being frustrated by SKR Network or limitation on what I call measurement I never said tracking but uh of tracking and uh and uh yeah oh on the web we don't have this restriction let's go on the web I think this is not entirely true in the sense that it's not as simple as on the web you can do whatever for attribution and especially the transition from being on a browser

21:52on the web and then people would get to the app and you have to reconciliate this is not as straightforward as it seems there are also restriction that do apply on the web that Safar is blocking third party cookies and that I mean a lot a lot of like new restrictions it's not as straightforward as people think and they often discover like oh attribution is actually not perfect there either here's the news attribution is never perfect so yes there are things that you can do on the web that have too many that have limitations on in the app and especially on on the Apple side uh

22:29but it's not as simple and as straightforward as people think and even though over time like things got better I think the Pioneers here had a lot of surprise on the way when they move to attribution and even I sometimes you discover like specific setups from people I'm like oh wait a second what do we do in this case like it's not like it's it's like the easy way of okay I moov to the web I have attribution back and we roll like it's kind of a quite complex topic where attribution also becomes not fully comparable which is a tricky one because then you want to

23:01compare your different Journeys together and then attribution is not there's a lot of progress that has been made and uh in particular at networks uh implementing conversion apis that do cross the barrier between browsers and and app a lot better than it used to but it's not as straightforward as there's always work around they always have been but they're not as simple as people think so for me going because you're frustrated of a SC network uh is not a great reason because you're also going to face restriction in eventually it leads people to experiment with where to up and they discover that there are opportunities that there are obstacles

23:41with attribution but there are opportunities so it doesn't really matter why people go that route uh but for me it's never going to be about the fear or about attribution and and a lot of the reason is exactly what you explained before about contextuality is that that kind of user can be converted on the web at a very high rate because they're coming from Brand search or maybe virality or a particular coupon or whatever but there are also reason that people never go to web to app for initially and that actually have massive benefit and one one uh one that I quote quite regularly is audience expansion uh even on

24:19Facebook like Facebook doesn't show to the same people your ads if they're directed to the store or to the web based on how people interacted with with the different kind of ads before based on propensity that they judge that at this point of time that user may convert better here and there and in the end of the day I want both so I'm better of running and and I know those running web to app at scale it's never like they're spending 100% on on on web acquisition or 100% on the app it's always an and never or uh because of these kind of Mechanics for audience expansion but

24:54also sometimes a specific Channel like for example uh on Google search you have to buy it together if you direct into the store together with some YouTube and display inventory but maybe you want to manage your own keywords uh on the web but then when you buy search on traffic you can't be buying it for only iOS you have to buy the twoos so like it's kind of H so you can do that on YouTube specifically for example so YouTube is a very interesting case where you have to buy it bundled uh in the case of of the stores but then you have a lot more GR

25:28it if you're buying web inventory from YouTube directly because then you can specify the device you can block channels you can say okay I don't want I don't want to be shown on these channels you can select some audiences that you wouldn't be able to do on on Google app ads but then Google app ads also work and I I have one particular case on on YouTube where we're running YouTube ads that go to a web flow and we're running Google app ads the UAC ads and they tend to attract a slly different audience but also not necessarily be shown on the same channel or not be shown at the same

26:03time so here for me definitely like audience expansion I had another case that for a while when ATT come up uh Pinterest went out completely of the store acquisition like they removed their ad product that was directing to the store because they didn't want to adjust to uh Apple new system so you could only direct to web pages eventually Pinterest has bring back their app product but for for for a while if you wanted to advertise on Pinterest you had to do it on the web and maybe for some people Pinterest is a bit of a secondary thought and like not really big but actually the audience on

26:38on pest is very big and extremely valuable like majority iOS very big penetration in the US especially among let's say 30 to 50 years old women which is like a highly thought after audience for many subscription apps and so now Pinterest has bringing it back so my case is maybe less convincing than before but like it it does talk to audience expansion whether the network has the two option or not uh for me this is the two reason that audience expansion but also offering the best Journey at the right time to every users and that can only be done by having different ones uh so yeah it's never

27:16going to be zero or 100 but rather a mix of of Both Worlds so before we move on from attribution I I would like to actually talk through some specific examples of how it works and why it works and and I'll go first so the the example I'd love to give is uh Greg Stewart was on the podcast uh he runs an app called ladder actually one of our more popular episodes if you haven't heard that go go back and search for for Greg Stewart ladder on the podcast in the way they're using web to app I I I think it's like one of the great examples

27:54of H how and why attribution can be improved through web to app so what they're doing is they're sending um a lot of their traffic but to your point not all their traffic to the web from ads on Instagram and Tik Tok and what they do is that they do a survey and and I think he told me on the podcast that by like question six of the survey they have a really good understanding of like what Persona that is and like How likely that Persona is to pay and so by question six they're able to send feedback back to the Tik Tok algorithm back to the Instagram algorithm to say

28:43hey this is a really high value user send me more like this and that that quick feedback from the ad being shown to hey this is a high value user is really really strong in optimizing those algorithms to find more people like that um but interestingly and and Greg and I were just having drinks a few weeks ago he lives here in my area and uh we're talking about doing a follow-up podcast because they they've learned a whole lot more in the in the year since we did that episode and and one of the things he was telling me is they most of their revenue is still iOS so they're not

29:23actually charging on the web but they're doing the survey on the web and then their their attribution is super fuzzy in that they don't have perfect tracking to your point earlier they don't have perfect tracking from the web to the the actual app installed to the payment but because that survey is so dialed in and getting that feedback so quickly that's the leverage for them in web to app it's not reducing the fees it's not um perfect attribution through the whole funnel um it's not payment on the web it's it's it's just being able to get the feedback to the algorithms more directly and more uh

30:06deterministically in that short window to optimize the algorithm so like that's an example of a web to app flow that has a very specific reason and a very specific leverage Point that's working really well for them in their context of a fitness app where you can ask a bunch of questions where user intents is high and like you know the Ducks are in a row for it to work but that's why it works do you have any other examples like that of very specific web app flows and here's how they do it here's why they do it here's why it works um we've kind of hinted at some of them but I'd love to

30:42get some like more concrete tactical like here's how it actually works yeah sure um like the example you you're you're giving is very good because at the end of the day like a lot of a lot of a lot of acquisition is driven by paid and a lot of paid is driven by Instagram and Tik Tok uh and there are basically only two levels to make acquisition work one is get better creative that catch the attention of people and stop them on the feed and make them want to experience whatever you have to for them and the other one is the quality of the signals that

31:14you're sending back it's not about my campaign structure is better and I've got a hack and I've got the like there's no hack like the hack is is sending better signals early of differentiating quality like early is really important like um and that that makes me go towards the end of what I had in in mind is when SK Network came in a lot of gaming folks like in subscription were sort of gifted because a lot of the at least the free trials but a lot of the subscriptions start on the on the first day of experience so when SC Network came in we had this restriction that the

31:51signal had to be send within 24 hours and and for subscription I was like okay I've got 70 % of my subscription starting on Day Zero so actually is not a major blocker even though I'm blind on the trial conversion and I'm blind on the what I call the late conversion the ones that don't happen on day Zero but in the gaming space it's very rare that the transaction happen on day Zero and you need like this day seven or day30 de cohort development to understand the quality and with this restriction of of of at and the SC Network a lot of gaming folks actually redesign their day Zero

32:26experience so that they have the signals that they can send back early enough to to Facebook and this is a a really good case where marketing actually had to tweak Force tweak the product into I need to get a hint and it's not about making people pay on the first day it's about qualifying different segments of propensity to pay in the future so so they they they tweaked a little bit so I think this was a great example but you asked for for something very specific so I'll move there um the the fitness space is one of the the typical that move to web toab because you have like the level

33:00of intent where you can ask this very long flow of questions and you can qualify people very well that's why n has like 50 screens and it still work and in other context it doesn't work I I have a I have a it's it's a funny case because I I work with two apps in the same space like there there's sort of a couple therapy uh a couple therapy app but rather on the premium side of it sort of it's pricey but it's very high quality it's not like gimicky or anything and it's the kind of things were're actually moving directly to the store there is a bit of friction in the

33:37sense of do I really need that like not only it looks expensive but also it looks the very serious answer straight on and what what we noticed early on is that in acquisition that that was going to be a major blocker because what they show in the in the ad is not necessarily super catchy and then the problem is hard is not necessarily something you want to do at any point so it was a major obstacle but then they realize they can drive a flow where we can start in a much softer way more like a miname and something that is not so let's say stressful than thinking that your

34:14relationship is failing but rather taking on the fun side and actually we brainstorm about oh let's do another app that would be very simple and much more gim like gaming and we can make fun ads and then it's going to be cheap because everybody's going to click to play and our monetization scheme is actually that this is a lead provider for the main app where we're going to have a minority of users that were already qualified that we can lead there they eventually decided not to build a second app but to do this flow on the web and it makes a lot of sense because those sort of mini

34:44games uh it's very flexible to build them on the wayb so some people do quiz can be a mini game can be like sort of a playable game but it can very often leads into quiz where instead of putting the questions of a fitness app it sort of funny quiz and you want to complete it so those can be a lot more catchy to put in the ad but then people complete it at a high rate because it's very easy and slowly slowly you move into where you're actually going that if you had put it it in the first place straight up might not have worked I had one success

35:14case with with this which was in the brain trining brain sorry brain training space uh which eventually become very normal to do this so the extreme version of it would be a sort of this this very aggressive ads of what's your IQ or or have you do you have a higher IQ than your neighbor and then they start making like very easy question quiz there is a sort of a mini game that you start oh you actually look like you're 5% over everybody but let's figure it out or let's train yourself to get to the 20% and then they lead you to the app where they have all these kind of mini games

35:51and eventually the monetization there was there in their case the web to upflow not only that doesn't need the payment to be there but certainly would be counterproductive because the whole thing is about uh really engagement and about sort of warming up the audience like uh many ads that are directing to the store they're made for very straightforward funnels where you see the ad you want it you get into it you go to the onboarding and you're going to subscribe straight up after 10 minutes but a lot of use case do not fit this journey and this is where the web offer a much more flexible experience of

36:29having a warm up before before you even send to the store where there is a big drop off in conversion because people are looking at your screenshot and making a decision and they need to confirm and so on like uh or maybe uh in the kids app space for example you'd have like this parental gate to install an app but maybe you can show the kids the content that you have whether it's videos or games without having this and once this sort of first touch Point has been made and sort of oh yeah this is really interesting then then bring sort of the friction step that can be a sign

37:00up that can be a download is a friction step and obviously a payment is a friction step so it can be web to web is a very good way when you have a product that is hard to sell in an instant like obviously I don't know I I sit for the room I I want to remove my background I'm motivated I download the app I start the freight Tri because I want to remove the logo a perfect case to have like direct to store Journeys but some of the harder case were typically in finance also like uh lot of like there's a lot of friction in in at many steps of

37:35making the decision but also plugging my cards like a lot of things and some of just just need to be warm up before they go to these high friction points and I think those are very good use case to go web to yeah that's really great and one one thing you kind of dropped in there which I hadn't thought about until you mentioned it is that there's maybe even and I I think it's improved over the last decade but the there's still kind of a perception that apps should be cheap and so maybe that's another place where like when you do have a very expensive product you're able to

38:07position it better in some ways on the web where people just don't expect an app to be hundreds of dollars or you know $50 a month or things like that and that may be another great place to experiment with web to app is being able to better position and better filter for purchase intent of these something that is much more expensive I have something very specific here is that not not all of them and my couple therapy app actually is not this kind because is very much something that is personal and b2c but I have different apps that have like sort of a somewhere in between b2c

38:44and B2B use case like uh small teams smbs and there is one thing that is very limiting when you pay in the App Store is the billing when you're a professional and even even as an employee like oh yeah I need this for work but then it's my account on my phone how do I build a company or we're small team and and and I've seen I'm thinking about one in particular but I'm sorry I don't want to quote it h where they actually had this restriction because they had lots of small teams that were like we want to use your product together but we can't pay it

39:19through and we want to pay for it and we don't care about the price and it can be 1050 or 100 that we still want it but we need it to go through the billing of whatever HR wants and there is a process and whatever that can be handled on the web but cannot be handled when you use iaps and this is a very good case to go web to app not because the fee is lower just because this is what the customer need they need to have an invoice that is not in the name then in the name of the company and so on so yes maybe for

39:48Price your product but I can't see how many price your product can have this component of it's not only for me but it's in the the in the context of a professional use or semi-professional use because sometimes the lines are very blurred this day of of prosumers or and so on where billing becomes important and yeah I don't want it I don't want it on my app store account because then I can't deduce the tax or I can't charge it to my client or whatever the situation is yeah I've been man I've been bugging Apple for years about this apple specifically I don't think Google handles it any better either but and and

40:25I run into this all the time I have a revenue cat Apple account specifically because there were like two pieces of software that I needed from the Mac App Store and I had to go set up a whole account put my Revenue cat credit card in now it's like orphaned in there like I guess they'll can like if I ever leave Revenue cat they'll cancel the card and it'll just startop billing or whatever but it's like so confusing and such a pain in the butt to do that and then even on my personal App Store account there's apps that I buy for work and for the last you know 16 years years that

40:57I've been uh building apps it's like this is my profession and I specifically buy apps and subscribe to apps to learn from them and so man it's so tricky and I mean I probably I I end up charging a lot of my app store stuff to my business card because most of what I do on the App Store but then sometimes like the kids purchase a game and then it ends up on that car like it's a freaking disaster like trying to manage all that so yes exactly L right I wish the app stores handled this sort of thing better offering you know multiple credit cards

41:33on a single account and the option to like switch between them when you're billing and like so many things that they could make better on the the b2c uh uh B2B use case specifically um so yeah another another really good concrete example of a reason to to use webt yeah I I I have one that is not B2B but maybe it's a good time like to also mention it like I I I started before like when we mentioned the fee like owning the transaction is important sometimes for the investors or whatever but sometimes just for optimization purpose and I remember one case in particular where we

42:10we were charging a number of subscriptions through the web like we had a mix like some subscription came from iip and some came on the web and we disc so at some point people churn like no matter how good your app is you're you're going to have uh payment sh uh sometimes voluntary payment sh like uh people want to unsubscribe and whenever people had like so when it was in the App Store well people want to have subscribe they go to the settings they unsubscribe which is there are more problems than that but we had this flow when people had had pay on the web that

42:41whenever they were going to unsubscribe we're making it very easy to them but then there was one screen before they confirm which was like okay so you can't confirm it's this button but here's a cont offer and we refund you half of what you already paid and you keep the subscription live but we keep the other half and there was a massive amount of people who were about to churn they were like oh yeah that's a great deal I'll take it and this is something that I can't do on the app store because I don't have the flexibility of owning the transaction and and and doing whatever I want so I'm

43:16not I'm not forcing people to own the transaction so that they can do like very tricky unsubscribe flows which I I think is terrible but be illegal in most countries pretty soon I mean the even work out laws around that yeah but in this case I think it was a win-win you know the users who decided to get half in refund and half as a discount they were super happy to continue and us it was Revenue that materialized that would have vanished so I think everybody was happy in this case yeah no that's a really fantastic example I never heard of anybody actually offering to refund

43:49like the whole you know next year 50% off can be a huge incentive but then actually refunding that's that's a that's bold but yeah I can see how that worked I I you I haven't seen much but I remember when we made the math for us it was beneficial but and also we had like really good feedback about it like not only it was financially interesting but those people who churn they kept a very good image of us because we told you want to you want to stop stop no problem like click that button that's it but they were surprised positively by it and eventually we had a quite decent

44:30retention on on this segment yeah that's so cool um see you hinted at it but one of the other reasons we were going to talk about for trying web to app was Channel expansion so you you've hinted at that a little bit but I wanted to go a little more in depth about why web to app is important when you are expanding channels yeah I think I mentioned it briefly but you as you scale up like advertising sometime you just hit Plateau like and there is there is a certain volume that depends on every app because of the the audience obviously where there just a diminishing return on

45:11on every additional dollar that you're putting in there and I mean if you're starting and you haven't hit like limits like this I would question if you should put so much effort into expanding towards web to app as you haven't let's say exploited all you can in the easier route but there is a moment where having even on the same network like campaigns that run on both is beneficial because because the maybe the user can go to the store but maybe they they they need like this sort of warmup that we talked before and it can for me it's mainly because it's different users that that

45:50are going to click on one and the other but it can perfectly be one user in a different moment of their time and Facebook is actually really good at noticing or predicting like oh that user at that time is going to convert better on that flow and this is why when when you look at at the in Facebook in particular you look at your potential audience reach so maybe you've selected I don't know I want to advertise in half the states only to women everybody over 21 years old like not not interest targeting but like simple targeting like this and and it's iOS only and then

46:25you've got like okay there's 50 million people or there's 20 million people fitting your your targeting description and then you run that campaign for a while even at very big scale people spending five digits a day and like oh over six months my total reach is two million people out of an audience of 20 million just because Facebook doesn't want to show the ad Those ads to the rest because they think they're not suitable they're not they're not going to convert or because of whatever reason maybe they're preserving the inventory for others having web ads even when you run it on similar creative just the fact that the

47:04signal that you're sending back is different is going to trigger Facebook to show it to different people and typically a lot of the apps I work with we're not using the same creative on the web flow as we're using on the app on the this the call to action is different the wording is different the experience weer is different so we also adjust the creative a little bit and and we end up having a total brid that is significantly higher that if we running only the web the web campaign or only the app campaign and this is where for me it's really a case of I want to do

47:35both because the audience expansion is not oh there's more audience that is going to click on the web than on the app no it's just there's more audience when you run the two in parallel there are people that never click on app install ads on on meta and meta sees it so they stop showing ads to them uh for insource because after they seen 50 ads towards this store and they haven't click on one Facebook preserves this inventory for something that is more likely to generate value elsewhere and but for me this is a this is one of the core reason going to web to app like

48:09just because I'm going to reach more people and because I'm going to have the opportunity to convert users that would never have even seen my ads if I were doing it only on the direct r or or if I was doing it only on the web for that purpose the the exact same logic Works uh on the other side as well yeah and then it opens up new channels too right like blinket you talked about tabula like doing doing sending people from tabula into the App Store probably is I don't know if it's even possible or like you were talking about Pinterest for a long time didn't even have um app

48:46install ads um so Channel expansion is important too not just audio expansion on the existing channels which that's really interesting I never heard anybody talk about that um but but yeah tell me more about some channels that you're able to experiment with and even maybe some specific channels you've seen be successful um that just wouldn't even work sending them to the App Store yeah so for me the the the three very big ones here they're Google search er YouTube and tabula andrain that I I I group together actually the merger was consell I think they they were they should have merged and they didn't but doesn't matter I I I merged them because

49:25the let's say the the logic is very similar and so on those sort of so Google search and YouTube you just can't buy it the same way on the app side and uh it is it is those are very good if you want to only if you want to separate brand search from competitor search and generic search and actually show them something different a different USB you just can't do that on the on Google adad so uh there is a very good reason also to control your budget a little bit more and so on in the case of outb and tabula at some point they did add like an app

49:59uh product where whenever you were clicking there it was actually going to the store to my knowledge that product didn't work very well at all I don't know if it even still exists or not I'm not I'm I'm not sure but I remember perfectly that during a long time it was just there but nobody was using it and I mean we tried back then when it like we were a group of three Berlin startup that were very big clients of both SBR and tabul so that was blink uh eight fit where I was and babble which is also has a very significant Budget on on the web

50:34I'm not sure I should be saying it but then then other client is Babble is spending the vast majority of their ad spend on on web acquisition even actually I interviewed the senior VP of marketing uh and he he talked very specifically about how much they're doing not app specific and so that'll be the podcast that precedes this one actually okay so I'm not revealing anything confidential let's go check that podcast this is perfect but uh yeah and I remember we were chatting like so the three of us about oh have you tried the new product and for all of us three it was like this product just didn't

51:08work maybe it was the early days what I strongly believe is that sending to the store just doesn't work in the context of outr and tabula ads because of the nature of the ads like people are not expecting to land on the store and we're like trying to get more and more obious like putting screenshot in the creative and saying it's an app and download the app in the text and like because our conversion rate in the store to install was really low on this and there was no there was no amount of forcing the creative to prepare the user that was going to the store that was going to

51:41work and in this case it's clear that a web funnel is a lot more suitable than going to the straight to the store like it's just the nature of the placement makes it there there are other smaller cases but I think they're less relevant one because they're smaller and two because over time they did add the app product so that was the case for Pinterest that bring it back that's the case for Reddit as well and I do believe that Reddit is a little bit more like outand and tabula in the sense of sending the user straight from Reddit to the store you're going to have to be very

52:15creative about what you're putting in the in the ad for it to work the the context of Reddit is so particular that the ads that work typically don't look like an ad that is going that is going to convert immediately like and there I I'm pretty convinced that the flexibility of showing different steps to the user and having sort of a a transition between the ad and what you're actually selling is of extreme importance it's not like I'm on the Instagram feed and seeing something and I'm used to clicking and I know I'm going to go there and you you have you you can see how Facebook grew their ad

52:54product really nicely because they manag to have like this sort of uh Habit of user of they know and especially for gaming like uh there lot gaming ads were particularly efficient on on on Facebook and Instagram for for a very long time because the context was there but try putting a gaming ad on on Reddit or Pinterest that's not going to work for sure um so I think in this case it's really the the context of the ad itself no matter what you do like what you do also matters but it's really the context of the ad that matters so yeah and this audience expansion and channel expansion

53:29for me it's threefold like audience reach that is better doing both some channels just don't offer the same product or the channel doesn't work because of the ad context and those are three very good reason that I never hear people say they're going web to app for that is just they go for the fee they go for the attribution and once they have it they discover that oh there's also gold over there let's go grab it so so the last topic on on web to app uh I want to bring up is is crossplatform is it you know on a lot of platforms you can specify that if they're on an

54:02Android device they go to the the App Store I mean to to play store if they're on iOS they go to the App Store uh but that's not always the case and then there's also a lot of cases where maybe the best experience of your product is on a Kindle Fire or a uh set top box of Roku or Apple TV or whatever um and so I think the crossplatform angle of web to app is another kind of undermentioned reason to to build these web to app flows yeah I guess it's not the biggest one because uh that's not for everybody and a lot of smaller developers very

54:42focus on on the App Store only or App Store and Play Store and for good reason also for for Focus so maybe a bit more sophisticated or or edge cases I have I have one app in particular where for us the Amazon app store is actually uh a very important platform so it's not as big as as as the app store for us in terms of Rue but it's not it's not small at all and I was actually very surprised because I never I never worked with the Amazon app store before and I was like okay there's 50 million active users with an Amazon tablet not even with the

55:15phone just the tablets in the us alone like uh and there are countries where it's actually not very big and in Europe we're not seeing a lot of of those Amazon tablets but there are countries where it's very big in Latin America for example it's quite significant and many because it's a bit of an edge case for many like many platforms just don't offer this possibility at all of sending to the Amazon app store some and we discovered that have the option and it doesn't work because nobody's maintaining it and like so it's infuriating so obviously in this case like uh having sort of a a browser is

55:50interesting sometimes a little bit so it could be like uh specific platforms like this mentioned the Amazon store could be also with with Huawei that has a very big reach uh personally struggle to monetize anything there but the the rich is so big that for some apps with network effects it might be of of very high importance to be present on the yway store and not sent to the Play Store because some devices just cannot have the Play Store at all uh and then there are other other other platforms as well you mentioned rocku there's always but there are also cases where just you can't so typically for example on Google

56:30app ads you cannot select the version that you're after and maybe your app is just not compatible with some device and it's not obvious in the Play Store and and you're going to have traffic that is going to turn at the install stage and and it's frustrating Google says they control that Nott true but mostly in the subscription space we do see that older version on Android tend to correlate with lower subscription rate and like oh if only I could run my campaign only for Android 10 plus which you can do on Facebook but you can't do on on on Google ads and then on the web you have

57:08this option if you advertise on YouTube you can say Okay I want Android 10 plus or whatever sometimes it's even more than that I mean when we often say oh yeah those under device they don't convert but actually if you zoom in like there's big fragmentation but if you look at the latest Google pixel phones or the expensive some phones or expensive xiaomi phones that are now worth 800 1,000 and more that are really good phone that are competing with the iPhone in terms of quality if you zoom in on that segment the conversion rate they're actually not very different from from from iPhones and and you're like

57:41okay I want this inventory but I don't want the rest of the inventory because I don't manage to monetize anything on it or just because I want to be differently on it I can perfectly have a campaign that is building okay here only for the Google pixel and whatever Samsung that has been published in the last two years I'm going to bid X and for the rest of device I still W that but I'm going to bid Y and this is something that a lot of networks don't enable us to do because it doesn't go that I mentioned Google but then not the other one Facebook does enable pretty good uh

58:13targeting there but uh there are many platforms that don't necessarily enable you to do this uh so I think it's a bit more of an edge case compared to what we mentioned before but then sometimes the edge case become critical case for a given app because they have a very specific audience or because I don't know uh because your game is so demanding in terms of performance that you know the experience is going to be terrible below a certain level of device and then so we talked about crossplatform but even within a platform and I think the topic are are a bit related it can make a lot of sense to go

58:46web to web because you have a bit more control on this yeah are you I I just my ignorance but in in the Google I guess Google Google Chrome or whatever browser they would have installed that the the webt um or the the the web experience would be on are you able to in the browser actually see what version of Android they have or or at least infer it to where then you you split that traffic where you send some to like in the example of a game maybe your primary game does have you know High requirements and you send all the people with a a newer device to the Play Store

59:24to that game and maybe you send the others to a more casual game that doesn't have the requirements are you able to to get that granularity on in in the web um so yes you are it's actually a very interesting use case that you're that you're showing there like uh it's going to make me think about it like uh when you have different product I think it's it's a very good uh tactic rather than because you you have it twofold you have it on targeting on the network side where you say oh I only want this device or oh those device I'm going to send them there and those device I'm going to

59:53send them there so you would usually have to have two different campaigns it's not like you can do that within a campaign and tell Facebook send those here and send those there but you can do it on various levels one you can do it through URL parameters and actually sending this traffic to like so that would be transparent for the user but you can send the traffic towards the server the networks they don't like when you do redirect because a lot of scammers are are exploiting this but actually you could do it straight of sending all all the device towards a URL that DET tect the device and actually

1:00:28split the traffic what is a lot more common is that once people have landed on your on your landing page you have access to the device details like it's not it's not considered as personal information because there's an aggregated so on it the fragmentation is so big that you arrive there's a longer list of device with one or two people having this device but uh yes absolutely you have this information it's not a it's not a hidden information it's not there might be times where in the future where this information get withheld because it can be you and it is being used to help the accuracy of

1:01:05fingerprinting at the moment this information is still available and you could you could devise a strategy like you said typically the developers that I work with what we're doing it is with using it on the targeting side of the network which typically when you're using Instagram they know which device you have like but there is nothing that uh that prevents vents you from uh using sending everything and and using this information on your web page because you have access to this information yeah a good place for for people to experiment with yeah sure well we had like six topics to discuss today we only got through web to

1:01:44app but I think this has been a one of the more insightful conversations I've had on web to app um you certainly like collect connected a lot of dots that were kind of lingering in the back of my mind and like understanding the the reasoning the tactics you know what's working what's not so I think this has been super helpful and I guess we'll have to have you back on next year to cover the other five topics we supposed to cover today yeah I mean we had lots of topic I'm I'm usually happier when we take one topic and we dig deeper because we don't stay on the surface so I think

1:02:18that was very good and I hope that uh the the listeners will have enjoyed it and if they're there listening to this is that they listen to the end so I guess mission is done but the topic is so broad as well like even even here within an hour or I didn't I didn't put the the timing the timer but uh it's so Broad and so deep that uh it's also a very good one to open the conversation and I I I hope that uh this this recording is just going to be an entry point that we can discuss more on the sub Club forum and elsewhere none in my

1:02:49linking request please but uh absolutely openly on on slack and forums I'm always interested to chat about this and it's also lots of people are experimenting with different things and um I started doing this web to up journey in 2016 and I'm still learning so yeah let's hope let's hope this was a an open door for for more conversation about it yeah that's great um anything else you wanted to share as we're wrapping up I know you're pretty much always booked so uh won won't say contact Thomas if you need help with this uh but anything else you wanted to share is wrap up no that

1:03:27I'm available on the on the Forum I prefer to answer question publicly because then it's one to n and what I have to say I mean I'm not I'm not hiding anything I'm happy to help uh I dedicate part of my time helping like openly for free just because I like it and I learn a lot from it so yeah if you if you want to reach out maybe reach out in a public place where I'm even more happy to do the effort that so others can benefit from the answer and and I don't have to repeat the same thing 20 times as well so uh yeah join us on on

1:03:58sub club or you can reach me out I'm on many open slacks for app developers like mobile Dev memo ASO stacks and a bunch of them like this so um yeah let's let's get the conversation there um also hopeful that uh it's not going to be one to end but end to end because there's lots of talent that has that has grown into this this topic that can intervene and lot more expert uh uh the ones that are building tools the one that have have done it for three apps so I guess we can all learn from having an open conversation about it yeah it's great

1:04:30and yeah Thomas is really active on the sub Club community so uh and we actually post every episode of the podcast to the community so if you have specific questions on the episode feel free to just reply to that post and tag Thomas and we can keep the conversation going or start a whole new topic on the sub club uh community and we'll we'll keep the conversation going and maybe I mean there's probably a lot of put from those of you listening who that you know you were shouting into the uh ether while you were listening in your car or whatever saying no no no no they should

1:05:05mention this or like I experimented with that and it it actually worked really amazing and they were saying it's no good or whatever so uh yeah pop pop into the sub Club Community and uh tell us your experiences and we you know he and I both have a ton more to learn so we'd love to hear from y'all as well awesome Thomas this has been so fun and uh we'll definitely be doing it again soon yeah thank you very much that was great thanks so much for listening if you have a minute please leave a review in your favorite podcast player you can also stop by chat. subclub do.com to

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