iOSDev UK: Making Money with In-App Purchases

Dave Verwer, shinydevelopment, @daveverwer

Developing in-app purchases in the Explore Flickr app

• purchases can be:
  • content, functionality (permanent purchases)
  • services, subscriptions (repeatable purchases)
• have to design your own store
• in-app purchases restrictions:
  • no promo codes or volume purchases
• store should answer:
  • what is this store?
  • what will I get if I upgrade?
  • big green friendly buy button
• ruby script to switch info plist based on DEBUG/RELEASE — needed to switch between versions
• measure success with analytics
  • log each stage to capture where people fall out
  • e.g. store shown, video played, upgrade button tapped, upgrade process complete
• 1.6% conversion from Explore Flickr (from those who view the store)
• A/B testing for store designs
  • HuffPost do A/B testing on headlines
  • have 3 choices for first hour, then automatically chosen
  • be consistent with presentation (don’t let people know we’re A/B testing them)
  • need to know if we’re still A/B testing
  • put both bits of code in app, and choose according to web check on first launch
• Results:
  • store -> video -> upgrade pressed -> upgraded
  • A: 100% -> 7.5% -> 3.2% -> 1.6%
  • B: 100% -> 9.5% -> 3.5% -> 1.8%
  • interesting stat is that video
• What next?
  • make the store more dynamic
  • downloaded plist file for wording
  • HTML for whole store page (but would need to download and cache it)