The creator of iCombat wrote an analysis of his experience making and giving away a free “lite” version of his app alongside his paid, full version. The result? It makes economic sense to create a lite version early on and update it often to goose the users into downloading – and paying attention to – your app.
His global conversion rate was 9% which meant that a considerable cohort of lite users bought the full version. He discovered a number of best practices for iPhone devs and allowed us to post them here. His most important takeaway? He should have made a lite app much earlier in the game. The conversion rate once the lite app was made available was quite impressive and meant a lot of lost revenue.
1. Should have released lite version from the beginning – There was no point to waiting and sacrificing the initial new release buzz. Since it is harder to get featured once your app is launched, say for app updates, it is important to strike early and hard with your app release.
2. Lite does NOT cannibalize sales – If your app is a gimmick then it might not make sense but in all other cases it only helps to increase sales (see our previous post on this topic)
3. Get the bugs out for your lite release – users churn lite apps and are fine giving you 1 star if they don’t like the experience. This is especially bad because the App store prompts users to rate an app when they try to delete it
4. Lite sales trail off too but paid sales remain higher – if you don’t have the x-factor that is needed to spread the word your lite downloads will fall as they have for iCombat, but in our case paid sales have continued to sell at a minimum rate several times higher than the pre-lite period
5. Frequent releases do juice downloads – Pocket God and other frequently updated apps have benefited from a weekly sales bump as they show up in the new releases section of the app store (users also like this episode style model)
Enough with the iPhone posts already man…there are like a dozen of them on the TC front page.
if I see anything other than praising iPhone posts I am very disappointed with TC for the day. Keep up the good work you non-apple-fanboys bloggers!
As a company with a free app in development, this just goes to reinforce our thinking. Great, timely post!
@Puranjay
Would rather read iPhone posts than read any more Twitter posts.
Preach it brotha!
or Facebook posts (shudder!)
Or Twitter Facebook cross posting post.
This App is great: http://bit.ly/48rETe
I totally agree with this analysis. With only a couple of exceptions, I have avoided apps that did not let me taste them first. The lite versions make for a great marketing tool. If I enjoy the app, I tend to upgrade.
Thought these strategies were common knowledge by now?
Demos, in particular, have always been a selling point for online software of any kind. The interesting thing is the conversion rate. When I owned a casual games company, the industry average was 1-2%, highest usually being 5%. Here, it is around 10%+. Price definitely plays a role in that though. Most downloadable casual games were priced $10-20, so the barrier was a bit higher. There isn’t a universal, easy payment system (unless you bought strictly from one portal) and it is a bigger time commitment. It only makes sense that the conversion rate would in turn be larger on the iPhone – but the revenue is potentially less on most products.
Alex
We are experiencing a high rate of conversion and a nice ratio between our lite and paid HearPlanet applications. Generally from 10% on the low end, to as high as 40% or 50% of our app downloads are paid, depending on price and other factors.
I’ll add that ratio of paid to free in US are much higher than in other regions. Who else wants to speak to foreign sales figures?
Email direct at sechtman at hearplanet (.) com if you want to share deeper information about your experiences.
Yeah, 9% is a solid return. We have a Lite version of Skateropolis in review now. Counting the minutes until it’s approved.
The only real big surprise here was that he suggested releasing Lite version right out of the gate. I’m on the fence about that one. A lite version on day 1 will surely lower immediate paid sales in the short run. That first day for paid is make or break. I’d say launching Lite at least 5 days later would be wiser.
I’d say launching Lite 5 days before the final App would be much more efficient. So you get a large base of people knowing and testing the App and generate an anticipation to finally get the “real App”. Implement a timer in your Lite-App to announce the release of the final App and your done.
Great info!
While checking out StoneLoops! of Jurassica (weird name, nice game) to review on AppStruck, I first downloaded the lite version and found the game interesting enough to make me want to download the full version.
The lite version of Assassin’s Creed for the iPhone is another good example of a lite version that lets you level up to a certain point and entices you to download the full version.
http://appstruck.com/2009/07/iPhone-App-Review-stoneloops-of-jurassica/
I had the same concerns as Randall when I was releasing my Cougar Call app (shameless plug). For my application, it seemed to make more sense to just release the paid version only, and then wait to see later if a lite version would make sense. Its been two weeks since the release, and I’ll probably submit the lite version for review in 1-2 weeks
Hey, I made $8K from iPhone last month and $20 from Twitter, so keep on with the iPhone posts. About a 400:1 ratio would be good :)
I doubt this is a good strategy going forward…what would happen if all future app developers follow this strategy—-this would dramatically reduce the 9% conversition rate— i guess apps are like songs…instead of free versions there should be trial versions with a limited time? or is any publicity good publicity? love to hear some feedback regarding monetizing apps =)
You’ll probably hear pretty quick that you can’t turn off a free/trial version. I mean if it were server dependent you could, but you’d suffer the wrath of many unhappy users.