Improving conversion rates in KickSmoking

The problem we were having was getting people to upgrade from the free version to the paid version. Having them as two seperate apps makes the upgrade process basically impossible. With features such as trial accounts and in-app purchases available to Windows Phone developers there’s really no need to have multiple apps anymore, however I don’t want to leave one group of users out in the cold so we’re forced to maintain two apps in the app store.

What’s going to change

Because we don’t want to force people to download a new app just to unlock all the features, we’re going to support in-app purchases in the free version of the application. Upgrading the free version will bring it to feature parity with the pro version.

This has a few benefits

• If someone bought the old KickSmoking pro they will be fully supported.
• If someone downloaded the free version they will now have the convenience of upgrading in-app.

If it was free before, it’s free now. All features that people used to enjoy for free will always be free. People just feel sad when you take things away - especially if you haven’t warned them! But we want people to upgrade so there needs to be a reason to upgrade. We will be adding new features only available to our paying customers.

If you’ve already paid - then you won’t be forgotten. Only a small percentage of users are on the paid app - we could just discontinue it as maintaining one application is so much easier. But that erodes the trust of your very first customers, the ones that believed in you at the very beginning. If you’ve purchased the app then it will be maintained and will receive all the same updates that are pushed to the free version of the app.

How we encourage people to upgrade to improve conversion rates

Our main upgrade path is going to be through in-app purchases. We have a few features to remind our free users that they can support us.

Upgrade page on launch

Every Nth time the app is opened we pop up an upgrade page.

Not only does this remind the user on a constant basis but has the added advantage of reminding people more often if they like our app. Because people who like our app will open it more.

Upgrade page in the settings

The ability to upgrade needs to be easily available but not intrusive.

This is a perfect place for the settings area of the application - it’s easily accessible but nice and out of the way as it’s just another page in the settings area.

We need to make it as easy as possible to upgrade whenever they user feels like it.

By turning off extra features.

When the person first downloads the app all the features will be fully unlocked - but after a short while all the premium features will be replaced with a link to the upgrade page.

This lets the user know what they’re getting before needing to spend any money. Hopefully this will make the users a little easier to convert.