Why Your App Downloads Aren't Making You Enough Money

✨ This transcript was generated and enhanced by AI and may differ from the original video.

Introduction

Hello everyone. Welcome to a brand new live stream. We're going to be talking about a really cool concept, something that I started talking about in the last live stream. And we're going to dive into it. I have with me Nicole Weiss, a consultant who's been doing this for a very long time. We've talked about this before, and we have so many cool stories that we'll probably share for a different episode. But today we're going to be talking about what Nicole does and does best for some of the largest brands on Earth.

Nicole's Background in Mobile and Marketing

Hi, thanks for the intro and hi everyone. I'm so excited to be doing this live stream. My name is Nicole Weiss. I am the founder of Brass Finch. We are a brand-new marketing firm that launched this summer. Really exciting. We already have amazing clients and have a great team, so we're adding clients all the time, which is great.

I am what you might call a mobile OG. I have been in the space since before apps were even a thing. I was doing marketing back in the day where it was text campaigns on your flip phones and atmosphere watch. I was fortunate enough to be in, I think, the right place at the right time. So I've really been involved in both scaling mobile web and the app space from the beginning.

I've worked with huge brands like Victoria's Secret, Macy's, Clinique. I was with Audible for a very long time, People Magazine. So I've been around. I've launched crazy things—some things that no one believed would ever take hold—like Apple Pay. I was at Macy's when that launched and no one believed that that was going to be something that people used. We all use that now. Same with Google Pay.

QR codes were another example. I thought for years no one believed me that anyone would ever use QR codes. About two decades later, they're finally everywhere. Can you imagine not having a QR code now?

UGC is another thing I launched back in the day at Clinique, which seems like a wild thing. Again, one of those things that's now BAU. At Macy's I launched an AI chatbot in-store. This was back in 2017, which, if you think about it now, everyone is talking about AI and no one was talking about it then. So I've definitely been ahead of time on lots of things that don't even exist anymore.

I've been around, done it all. I'm super excited. And now I'm really focused on apps. I'm taking all this brand knowledge that I have from my Fortune 100s and 500s and I'm bringing it not just to other large brands but to smaller apps that are starting out. I really want to take this chance to help others.

I'm excited. I'm working across a lot of different categories—not just retail or subscription or media but all different types—and it's great. I'm really loving it and looking forward to answering questions and hopefully working with some of you in the future.

The Real Work Starts After the Download

Oh, wow. We're off to a great start because we are going to share some really cool insights, and then those insights can evolve into more downloads and more money. That's really the focus here.

I talk about how to get more downloads all the time and all that knowledge is already on my YouTube channel. I'll talk about it more in the future. But there's one very critical part of what happens after the download. I started talking about this with Marcus a few weeks ago, and that is something that I get asked about all the time, but it seems to me like this is one of those areas where people just don't invest enough.

You work so hard to get a download. You have to do all your ASO, all your ads, all your targeting, really everything else. And then by the time you get a download, you're like, "Yes, I win." But it's like no, a whole new race is starting and you're right at the start line.

So we have onboarding and we have engagement and we have retention and we have all these different ways that ultimately lead to what we really want as developers, and that is making money or getting a user to activate, whether it's a free app or not. That's going to be the key to what we're going to be talking about today.

Light Chatter and Audience Check-In

Before we jump into the conversation, it's time for a tradition. What's in your cup, everyone? Let me know. And where are you from?

I'm here in New York City drinking peach tea. I drink so much tea I don't even remember what I drink anymore. This peach tea I found a few months ago is delightful. I kind of go between this and mint all the time. It's nice here in New York City. Cold because winter is coming, but also nice and sunny.

I am right outside New York City. Fun fact: I am a New York City native, third-generation Manhattanite. So I am a super rare breed. But I am not currently in the city. I live right outside in this really cool town in New Jersey called Red Bank. If you haven't heard of it, my guess is you'll probably go see the Bruce Springsteen movie. My guess is it's in it because we are Bruce Springsteen country. Everyone loves The Boss here. Can't say anything else.

I do not have a mug. I actually did not know about that tradition. Otherwise, mine would probably be filled with chai tea.

Okay, that's a good choice. We've had water on the show. We've had nothing on the show. We've had multiple mugs on the show. It really depends on what kind of morning you're having.

For me, if I don't drink any sort of warm and honey type of liquid, my voice will just disappear. So this is a requirement. This is an on-the-job requirement for me, not just for fun.

We have a pretty diverse crowd. We have some coffee in Toronto. We have people in Utah, New York City with nothing. Austin, Texas with green tea. Someone commented on my facial hair—that's a first. Thank you.

We’ve got some iced cold brew coffee at home, homemade. I think that's the best way to go about it. Fun fact, we have cold brew nitro on tap in the office. I don't really drink it, but other people do and they really wanted it, so we put it in. I like all the mechanics of these things. So for me, it was just, "Let's do this thing with pipes and pressure and stuff." For other people, it was about the coffee.

People are shuffling in. India with chai tea, we found our chai tea. Global again.

As always, if you have any questions for us, drop them in the chat and I will look through them and try to bring them up as we have a conversation about this. If we don't get to answer a question now, we'll probably answer it later. So drop your questions in the chat just to make sure we eventually see them.

What Happens After the Download?

Nicole, let's jump into it. Let's start with what a lot of people are thinking: really, what happens after the download? So the download happens. What happens after download? How does that get me closer to making money? That's the simplest way I can say it.

So, you know, again it depends on the type of app you have and even the type of subscription app, because it's very different. But you want users to start taking actions. That's the most important thing. And that doesn't necessarily mean pay. It could be starting a listen or browsing or onboarding.

There are a lot of things. It's really about: what is it that your app does? How do you build awareness and education and get them to start taking those actions that will get them to not only convert, but to stick?

A great example is if you're going to be sending push notifications, my big thing is don't just have that native popup asking for push notifications. You're not going to get them. You actually have to educate the user as to why. What is the value to them?

The more that you are open and you're able to show someone why they should take this action, the more likely they are to take that step. So it's really a matter of: what are those things that are going to get them to move through the funnel, make sure they understand the product, and then convert and stick?

People Need to Be Asked (and Educated)

I think you said something very interesting. People don't just do things. You have to tell them to do things and then they do them, which is really interesting because even on my live streams, if I don't ask for a thumbs up, I will get a few, a handful. If I ask for a thumbs up, I'll get an amazing amount—almost everyone will actually thumb it up.

In my mind, I always saw these things and thought, "I mean, if they like it, they like it, right?" But that's not how this works. And it's the same thing with enabling push notifications.

That's one of my biggest gripes with a lot of apps. You open the app and you get to maybe the first or second screen of the onboarding and it starts asking you for things. I don't want to give you things. I don't know who you are. So I think best case scenario, I'll just say no to everything. In the worst case scenario, I'll just leave and probably download something else.

Have you seen that also be the case where best case scenario they just kind of ignore you?

Yeah, definitely. You don't want to upset your users. So you have to understand what is the right prompting, when do you prompt, and what it is that you're guiding people through.

A/B testing is going to be instrumental in understanding what is right for your app. And more importantly, something I like to talk about is: when you're A/B testing, don't just look at your app holistically. If you're on both iOS and Android, actually look at them as distinct users. Apple and Android users are not the same. It's not just because you've chosen one device over another.

There's a lot of data out there that talks about the economic difference, the educational difference, and just the usage difference. So what might work for someone on an iPhone is going to be very different from an Android user.

It's important to test and understand what it is fundamentally that will make these people take those actions and convert, and talk to them based on the space that they're in. I think that's huge and something that I think a lot of brands, probably because of bandwidth, don't necessarily do—but you can see huge margin gains.

The Power of A/B Testing Different User Segments

What kind of a shift have you seen once you start A/B testing? Twice the conversion? Ten times?

Yeah, I've seen double by having different experiences on iOS and Android. I'm talking in some big brands where we're talking millions of dollars that are either made or saved because you're having a distinct, unique experience.

A lot of times people talk about localization: how might I localize my app for the US versus the UK? It's not just US vs. UK. You also should be thinking about iOS and Android. Then, are you talking about people who are visiting your app for the first time or maybe someone who was a subscriber and came back? So, what is your former versus your non-former?

There are a lot of different nuances, and the more that you're able to customize and personalize that experience, the better engagement you're going to get and the higher your conversion rates.

Interesting. One of the things that I don't think we've ever talked about on this live stream is optimizing for returning "new" customers—newish customers—versus new new customers. And that's something that I don't think I've heard anyone really talk about. Have you seen that make a substantial difference?

Absolutely. That can be just a gold mine in your lift. Again, it depends on the type of app you are. There are some apps where people cycle in and out of them all of the time. Understanding that and then how you activate against that is really important.

So whether it's communicating—it's not even just a simple "welcome back"—it could be a holistic different experience. How are you picking up where they left off? How are you showing them maybe what has changed?

One of the specific things I like to talk about is when you think about subscription apps and subscription pricing, especially if you're still using Apple's pricing. What kind of offers might you have to win someone back, especially within certain time frames?

Things that I think people don't do math around a lot: if you think about it, you're paying Apple to stick with them—right now a 30% fee for that first 365 days. Anyone that you get over that hump goes down to 15%. So if you've lost someone though that has crossed that window, you actually have 60 days to get them back and keep them within the 15%.

There are offers that you can do. There are different ways that you can communicate and incentivize them to come back so you're keeping them at that 15% fee. So there are different things that you can do when you're talking about formers and non-formers and just understanding why these people are leaving and coming back and how to retain them. It could even be developing holistic different plans for them.

Retention, LTV, and the Importance of Keeping Users

That makes a huge difference. I think that point of that one year to two year or three year—really anything beyond—that's money that's just going away almost instantly if you just allow that to happen.

One thing that I talk about and that everyone talks about a lot is getting more users and getting them more cheaply, whether it's through organic means, TikTok, ASO, or through ads. But ultimately, that is just one part of the funnel because once you get those people in, now you really have to get them engaged. If you can only engage them for a little bit of time, you might still be making a little bit of money, but all that money is going to go away eventually.

So even that ability to immediately convert someone is not even that good in the grand scheme of things if they're not sticking around—considering your app does have what it takes for them to stick around. It's not a seasonal app. It's not one of those things that you just need for a moment.

Is there something other than the popups in apps—the permissions requests—that when you see apps doing in their onboarding you think, "Why did you do this?"

Again, kind of app dependent. Sometimes I think just slamming people right into a paywall—again, maybe it makes sense—or having some sign-up block.

I need to understand what your app does. So how are you educating me? And it's not necessarily about "have a table and it's a free trial" because you're going to learn via the free trial. I don't even know if I'm going to start the free trial if I don't really understand fundamentally what your app does.

Again, this is where I think also how you communicate that for iOS and Android users varies a lot. I do find iOS users tend to be more into what they're downloading. By the time they download, they're usually like, "I'm interested in this product" and I think they just will more naturally convert with less information.

Android users like a lot of handholding. So I think the more that you're able to upfront that, it is very different.

I once had a hypothesis at a certain brand—never got to test it, we always joke about it—that we really just needed a gigantic button that just says "Start" for iOS users because sign-up rates were so high, versus Android users who really needed a lot of information.

That led to higher conversions. But if we tried that on iOS, it actually would tank conversions.

So I think again it really comes back to a specific app. But in general, just getting slammed into a paywall is rough. I know that's probably a touchy subject, but I want to know about an app. I think it's important. Having a strong paywall is great, but you have to have a great onboarding. People need—and that doesn't necessarily mean those screens that you swipe through. When I say onboarding, you have to have a great first-time user experience.

Hard vs. Soft Paywalls, and Trials

We get those questions all the time. Hard paywall versus soft paywall. We even have them in the chat right now.

Tyler has a workout-specific app for posture, which sounds interesting, and asks: hard paywall versus soft paywall? Also free trial or no trial for small apps? I think those kind of merge together. What do you think? What would you do in this case?

Hi Tyler. Feel free to find me on LinkedIn. We can talk about this more. I don't know about your app today and what you're doing. There are a lot of great options.

There could be an educational video at the front. There could be testimonials as part of it. There could be little modules showing what you can expect along your workouts. Again, how are you showing people what your app offers, and really how are you differentiating yourself from other apps that are doing something similar within the workout space?

When you get to a paywall and it's just, "Here's what my app offers," I don't understand how you are different. Hopefully, you did a great job with your ASO and that's why people downloaded your app. But a lot of times, that's just that first step. This is really your opportunity to be educating people. I would absolutely start with doing that.

On the free trial versus non-free trial: this is something to test. I would also run the numbers. If your subscription is a month long, you don't necessarily always need to be a free trial. I am actually a fan of a $0.99 trial for a few different reasons.

One, I've definitely seen that people who start by paying—if you don't have a free trial at all and you're just going in full price—those people do tend to be stickier. They are higher intent and they're going to last, versus free trial. You have to balance that out.

I love looking at Month 4 (M4) retention, for example. Where are those people going to balance out? You would have to have enough free trials—enough incremental—to make it worth it as you lose people, both in who converts and then who doesn't stay.

When you do something like $0.99, it's a little interesting because there's psychology behind that. People are now paying, but it's such a small amount. You don't mind, but psychologically you're now paying for a product, so you're probably more likely to start using it.

And again, going back to Apple fees and Android fees, that actually starts your 365 days, whereas the free trial doesn't. When someone starts a free trial, you're paying whatever you have to. Let's say you are an AI platform trialer as an example, and there's going to be fees associated on the backend. You're paying for those fees even though you're not getting paid during that free trial. And then when someone converts, your 365 days with Apple starts then.

However, if you were to do a $0.99 trial, that 365 starts on day one. You're paying 30% off of $0.99 for that first month. So it actually starts lowering your fees and shortens your window of that 30% that you're paying to Apple.

There's some math. Again, it depends on what your actual subscription costs are. If they're really low, that math won't work out. But if someone's paying $12 a month, $25 a month—as that goes up—it actually starts to add up. Those are things that I would test. I have tested in different apps and I've seen some really great results.

You brought up a good point: test everything. There's really no reason not to test, as long as you're learning from it and not just testing for the sake of testing.

The concept of $0.99 trials is, again, one of those things that we don't talk about often enough. If you look at the business world outside of apps, that is more common than it is in apps. Apps are really trailing, but we're getting there because of subscriptions. Apps are becoming just like any other business that has been around forever.

If you think about your cable subscription and all those weird tricks they had back in the 90s to try to get us to upgrade, that's exactly what's happening now in subscriptions land, which is exciting and interesting.

I think you said testing is important and don't just test for the sake of testing. Things can always be walked back. I think the important thing is don't be scared. Everything is a two-way door. It's not a one-way door. Even if something tested positive, if as you're following that cohort over time you're finding that your LTV is lower, you can go back. That's the beauty of it.

The Most Important Metric to Watch: M4 Retention

Speaking of testing, what is the one metric that you think everyone should really pay attention to, to say, "Is my onboarding and my experience really working?"

Of course, the obvious answer is going to be conversion to full-time subscription, so I'm actually not going to say that one. I am going to say that the metric you really should be looking at is M4 retention.

I speak to a lot of younger developers and younger marketers—"younger" in terms of the brand, not physical age—about how their retention looks, especially by the time you get to M4. I get a lot of, "I haven't thought about that" and "I haven't thought about tracking that."

It's great if people are signing up, but if they're not using your app then at the end of the day that's money that you're not making. You really have to make sure that you have a high LTV, and M4 is kind of where you start to see the people that are going to stick with you longer versus the people that are going to trail off.

A lot of times people might take the free trial. When they start the subscription, by three months at that point they've either decided they are using your app or they're not using your app. That is where you usually see the highest amount of drop-off. So that's where that M4 is really important, especially as you're tracking cohorts within testing.

That's where you'll see, "Okay, did my cohort A or my cohort B last longer?" And then again, go back and do the math. Maybe cohort B you initially acquired more, but if you have fewer people at the end, that means that A was a better test.

Because that's really where you start to see that change in drop-off. If you can get people to stick from M4 to M6, they're usually stickier. Now, obviously that's not always the case and you still have drop-off, but that's where you kind of have the most amount of drop-off I've seen. So that's a good initial indicator.

That makes sense. Obviously test and try to find that window, but in your experience four months is really where this is starting to really show. That's so insightful.

I've seen a lot of times flips in subscriptions. So again, you have a test and you're like, "Wow, this looks great." I think this is the example where we're talking about taking a direct sign-up versus a trial. That seems to be that window where you really see who is sticking and using a product versus who is dropping off.

So a direct sign-up you think would last longer than the four months, whereas a trial sign-up may not even make it to that four-month point?

I do think that directs tend to be more valuable because if you're paying for a product right out of the gate, you're using it. I think that's part of it, but again, you're going to have fewer people that are trying your product.

So that's why again everything comes down to not just what are those initial sign-ups, you have to look at the math and the long term stickiness. You have to have a certain amount of trial starts over your direct start rate so that when you go from trials to converts, what is that rate and then two days and beyond.

Annual Subscriptions and Engagement

This changes if you have annual subscriptions because if you're doing a good job or if you somehow manage to get a user to really buy in, maybe with a really big discount or something like that, you're getting them to an annual subscription—which I think is what most developers should be considering. How do we get to that point?

How would that change M4? Or how would you still continue to test knowing that you have annual subscribers that are kind of forced to stick around for a whole year?

Obviously M4 isn't necessarily a metric you look for with annual because you have them for 12 months, but you do want to make sure that these people are continuously engaging. This is where a really great engagement and retention campaign comes into play.

Whether it's push notifications or emails, it's: how are you making sure—using in-app events and promotional events on Apple and Google—that you are keeping your app top of mind at all times and getting people to come back?

Yes, you're not necessarily looking at M4, but at the same time, if these yearly subscriptions are not interacting at M4, there is a problem. You just have more time to win them back.

That's a really valid point. Tyler added in the comments that in his experience, people that actually pay at least monthly actually do engage with the app, and the people who start trials don't even engage with the app.

It's interesting because we had someone else with a posture app—posture for back pain—who was on the live stream about a year ago. I mentioned that my back always hurts and he said, "As soon as I launch on iOS," because I have an iPhone and it was Android-first, "I will send you a link." He sent me a link, I downloaded it and I just went through onboarding this morning. Perfect timing.

It's definitely one of those things where you go through and the app has to learn about you. They have to know your gender and your height and what you really want to do and how comfortable you are with certain exercises. It took a good number of minutes for me to onboard.

In my mind, I wanted to drop off multiple times because I just wanted to get to "give me something so my back won't hurt," and I didn't get to that. But I really wanted to because he was on the show and I wanted to make sure that I actually tested.

So I went through everything and I got to the point of exercises and it gave me a list that would take 33 minutes and I didn't have 33 minutes at the moment. And I think that's one of those places where if I actually go and do what the app wanted me to do once, I will probably be hooked because I'm probably going to feel so much better.

Even if I don't feel better, I'll feel something. I didn't have 33 minutes, so I just didn't do it.

Now, am I gonna go back into the app? Am I going to even think about it? Maybe when my back hurts again, I will. But what if it doesn't? Or what if it doesn't to the point where I now need to go and take 33 minutes out of my day to do it?

That's exactly what we're talking about here. If you can smooth this out, you'll know. If I stick around for four months, that means that I really got hooked that first time. I think that's really the key.

So that makes a lot of sense. Are there any hints or things along the way to four months that you would recommend looking at or keeping in the back of your mind as you are analyzing this data? Maybe what if they stay more than a month—is that an indicator that you're doing something right? What if they're staying more than two months? Is it one of those things where as the trend continues you can build this mental model of, "Okay, I'm doing a good job"?

I think it's again going back and looking at what it is that your app does and what people are doing in your app, and then taking a look at what are the behaviors of the people who are hitting that M4, M6, M8. What are they doing? And then how are you starting to reinforce that on day zero of your app?

In this instance, it was working out for 33 minutes. I don't know if in the back app it told you that at the very beginning—that after you go through the onboarding, you're going to work out for 33 minutes.

How are they preparing you from the beginning? Because you might have said, "You know what, I can't do my onboarding right now because I'm not going to have 33 minutes. I have to jump on a live stream."

So what if I do it tomorrow morning and maybe the app gives you a reminder at that point. You say, "You know what, I can't do it now, but..."

There you go, Tyler. Lots of great ideas. Again, so many ideas for your back app. I also have back problems.

Again, it's: what are those behaviors? Is it that you want them to—we find if they watch X number of videos or listen to Y number of stories or they like certain things—what are those specific actions? And then how do you get them to do that up front?

A really great example is way back in my Macy's days. I didn't just work on the app; I worked on a lot of their omnichannel strategies, but app was one of the things specifically part of my remit.

One of the things we started to notice was people who—this seems obvious now, but this was well over a decade ago at this point—people who both logged in and had the app were the most valuable users.

Right now no one is surprised by that, but back then not everyone had apps. People were still very store-focused, very web-focused. But we realized that this was an important behavior to the brand. So we started developing a campaign to get people to take that specific action.

It wasn't just "download the app." All shopping apps, you don't have to log in. You can browse for free. That's fine. But we really wanted people to log in. We had to give them a reason to do this. Why was this valuable? What was going to be the benefit and the upside?

We developed campaigns because we noticed those were our stickiest users. They spent the most, and that's what we got them to do. We had a huge lift in both our revenue and our stickiness because we got people to take the actions that we knew drove that.

Finding the Key Actions That Drive Value

That makes so much sense. Finding that list—or that checklist—of actions is probably something that's very app-specific and you have to know your audience.

I imagine it's kind of challenging even for you to come into an app and just automatically know what needs to be done. I'm assuming you've seen so many apps so you have an idea of what's a good starting point, but it's still probably a discovery process of understanding how the users use it.

Once you develop that list and you're building the product so it pushes people in the right direction—for example, the reminder, which I think is such a clever idea for Tyler's app—what if someone doesn't do that?

Let's say I said, "I don't like reminders. I'm never going to watch them. I'm never going to pay attention. I still want to do this, but just not now." I'll forget. So I'm kind of a drop-off. How would you re-engage me at that point?

If you're unable to re-engage someone through push notifications or email at that point, this is actually where I rely really heavily on the stores.

In-app events and promo events are something that a lot of app developers underutilize, but they are actually some of the strongest retention tools that I've found. People think of anything you do in the store as acquisition-focused, but I'd like to remind everyone that has an app: if someone is in the store today—even if they have your app downloaded—that means they're not thinking about your app. So that is an opportunity to remind them about your app.

The more you're able to create editorialized content and have that exposed, that's an opportunity for that light bulb in someone to be like, "Oh wait. I have that app. That sounds like a great feature," or "I didn't know about it. They just launched this. I am going to now open the app and start using that."

The store is a tool. Obviously, having a strong social presence is really important, but people have to follow you on social media. Paid, you can do paid retargeting. There are a lot of different things. I do like to try to focus on those things that are free. That to me is one of the biggest tools that I use: in-app events and promo events.

Google actually gives you the tools to retarget people within your app. So there's a lot of things you could be doing specifically for promo events that you can't do in the App Store.

Using the App Stores as Retention Channels

That brings up an interesting question. Would you recommend then retargeting with Apple Ads or something like this? I know it's not going to be nearly as good, but how do you even make that transition between someone browsing the store who already has the app, and then they see you again? How do we connect all those things, if we even can?

That's a great question. I've definitely found that with Apple Search Ads, kind of going broad helps. Sometimes you have to be really focused, sometimes you have to be really broad. The more awareness, the more people are going to remember you.

You have to see what makes sense for your brand specifically. Are we talking about things like product page search or search ads—not just search—or things like App Store tab ads? There are a lot of different paid media options within the store you can use.

But again, I believe in editorial and developing a relationship with your Apple partners to help you get surfaced. When you have that flywheel from a content perspective, you do see they work as a larger long-term branding impact.

I think that's something people don't think about with the stores: what does that do from a halo perspective long term? It is branding. It's not going to be your magic bullet. Stores are not your magic bullet, everyone. But they are part of your really long-term strategy and they're going to make everything more efficient.

I agree. Branding is one of those things that maybe when you're small and you're indie and you're just starting out, you're not thinking about at all. "Who needs a brand? No one knows my name. Who cares? I just need ASO. My keyword to get caught. I'll be number one. I'll get all the downloads."

But every one of those things that you can do to get that initial visibility really has an expiration or a cap. The way you go beyond the cap is actually to have a brand name so you can tell your friends, or people who see you can tell their friends.

People ask me about ASO all the time: do I even need a brand for my app? It's just wasteful because it's so many additional characters. "Can I just use all these keywords?" Technically, you can, but then how are people going to recommend you to their friends? If they recommend just the generic keywords, you're probably pushing traffic to someone else.

We can see that with something like TV remotes. Most of the TV remotes on the App Store and on Google Play have no names. When you go in, they all have the same icon. They look very much the same color-wise and keyword-wise. Does it really matter which one you get? It's a remote. They have buttons and you control your TV with them ultimately.

I think that's such a huge missed opportunity because you're really not building any momentum. You're always going to be dependent on ASO and you're always going to be dependent on paid ads and wherever you are: Apple Ads, TikTok, whatever.

I think that's ultimately the power play: how do you build that brand while doing everything else, and how do you connect that entire experience to the brand so people can talk about it more, share it more, and really enjoy it.

We talk about UX a lot in Appfigures because my co-founder loves UX—huge UX fan. Really all UX—everything is UX ultimately. It got me thinking that way many years ago. When you start seeing the world with that lens of "what is the experience we're creating," everything changes.

It's not "will we convert this user?" It's "will we actually get this user to do something"—like me on the workouts. It turns out it's very possible I downloaded Tyler's app and I didn't really take action. That's the experience. It's less about me converting, more about me engaging, because once I engage, then I'll convert.

Build in Public and Be the Face of Your App

Brand recognition is huge. The more that you're public and outward about what your brand is, who you are as the founder of the brand, the developer of the brand, you should be talking about it.

I find a lot of people kind of build in secret. Don't build in secret, everyone. Be very public. Go on LinkedIn, be on TikTok, be on X. The more you're talking—again, the remote control apps are a great example—the more you're talking about your brand.

I am the face of Brass Finch. My name is Nicole Weiss, but my brand, my company is Brass Finch. I am the brand. Same thing with your app. Whatever the name of your remote control app or Tyler's app—Tyler, please make sure you're out there talking about your app. Be the face of your app. What is your app's name? Talk about it. Make sure people know.

The more they hear it, when they need an app for their back, they're going to be like, "Oh, Tyler's app. My back's killing me. I'm going to go check it out." Then once you have their attention, then it's really about hooking them and converting them.

And that then comes back to testing because once you hook them, you can really start seeing what they really want. I imagine that the bigger the app grows, the more types of users you're going to end up getting.

An app like Macy's, you probably see everyone. There's not a specific profile that you can say, "This is our one user and we need to get this one user to log in." It's this one user that is young, this one user that isn't, this one user that wants suits, this one user that doesn't.

I imagine a lot of A/B testing has to go into pretty much everything. It sounds like you really like testing things. Have you ever run an A/B test that really surprised you, where the results were like, "What? This makes no sense." But the data actually supported it.

A Surprising A/B Test: The "Continue" Button

Oh, so many of them. That's why testing is important. One of my favorite things to say to leadership is always like, "No, we're not going to just roll that out. Yes, that seems simple, but..." and then I will bring in a multitude of testing examples.

One I like to talk about is everyone's favorite non-CTA "Continue." A lot of people don't ever use "Continue." It's, "Start your free trial," "$0 to start," "Start your membership."

I have seen everything that's not "Continue" win over and over and over again. I came across a situation with a brand where they just wanted to roll out—I don't remember specifically what the "start your free trial" messaging was, but it definitely wasn't "Continue." I said we have to test it. Just because it works everywhere else—yes, I know it already tested positive on web and it already tested positive here—we still have to test it.

It turned out that that saved millions of dollars because this one, again, it was actually an OS-specific and country-specific case. They didn't like hearing about a free trial. They just wanted to "Continue."

That was really important. Again, this goes back to where I've seen a lot of differences between iOS and Android. People think, "Let's just roll it out." They're very different users. Without testing, the amount of subscribers that would be left on the table would be huge.

Testing has unveiled a lot and I am the biggest defender of "Continue" because of this one test. I've tried for years to get rid of it from a certain brand and couldn't—all because of A/B testing.

We do have a comment in the chat. Patrick is saying that they submitted an app with "Continue" for starting a free trial and they got rejected for it. I think that's not exactly what you meant—"Start a trial" with "Continue"—but the context around that matters. How does that work?

Again, find me on LinkedIn. Let's discuss. Let's look. That seems really interesting. It might have been, again, is it in the Apple UI? Because if you're thinking about on Apple's actual purchase sheet, they have very specific legal language, versus are you on a marketing page?

So it might be where "Continue" was that makes the difference. Yes, I can see Apple rejecting it based on the where.

That makes a lot of sense—and probably the context around it. If it felt like it was trying to get people to start something without telling them that this is going to cost you money at some point.

Apple is pretty finicky and sensitive. You have to play your cards right if you're trying to do something that may be misunderstood.

Always Be Testing (ABT)

Okay, so A/B test everything. I've been talking about A/B testing for so long. I've been A/B testing for who knows how long. Always A/B test. Please, just always A/B test.

If there's a day where there's no A/B test running, you're just losing out on information that you could be having. Apple gives you A/B testing right in App Store Connect. Google gives you A/B testing right in their console. So ultimately, there's no reason not to A/B test something, even if it's the smallest A/B test.

Whether it's for app store optimization, for your creative campaigns, or for your onboarding and your paywalls. I had people on the show before who talked about paywall A/B testing and gave some very specific things that you can test like colors and putting little pieces of text in specific areas to get more conversions.

And also don't be scared to test multiple things at a time. Depending on your app funnel, you don't have to only be testing on your paywall. You could be testing your onboarding screen and your paywall at the same time. You could be testing your popup for push notifications at the same time.

As long as they're not in conflict and depending on what your app is, you can even run multiple tests on the same page depending on what they are. It's also about understanding what tests can be run concurrently and what have to be run in isolation.

There's no reason not to be spinning up multiple tests at the same time, and multivariant testing.

Go home and test. And if you're home, just test. That's the message of this entire live stream. If you take anything from this live stream, test.

Short vs. Long Onboarding Experiences

I want to talk about what to test a bit in a moment, but there's something that I keep getting asked about all the time and something that I've been thinking about: when it comes to onboarding.

We talked about that needing to be an experience that draws you into the app. Have you seen differences between short onboardings and long onboardings, and how would you go about testing something like that because they're just so open-ended?

I think it's coming up with a hypothesis and understanding what are those things that are going to be of value to your user in both the onboarding experience—either because they need to know it or you need to know it from them in order to give them an experience.

There is no set number. Some apps have 30 pages of onboarding, some have two, some have none. It again comes back to what is valuable and where is that drop-off point going to be.

If someone—if they're understanding that if you're going to have a 30-page onboarding, first of all there has to be some sort of expectation setting at the front. Maybe it's a progress bar or something simple. If people just keep hitting "next" and they don't realize, at some point they're going to be like, "This is never-ending" and they're going to quit.

You definitely have to have some sort of an indicator as to how long that process is going to be and you have to test into it. I would also say let's say you test into 30 pages of onboarding. That doesn't mean that 30 pages is always going to hold true.

I like to every once in a while completely peel back. You'll see this a lot with retailers actually on their product pages. You see product pages over time get junked up and junked up and they have everything. They've got reviews and samples and other things you might want and ads.

Then one day you'll go to that same product page and there's nothing on it but the product. And there's a reason: because testing has shown us that all these things are incremental, but sometimes it actually has just become overwhelming. Then when you strip that page off, it's that feeling of "so refreshing" and that changes behavior.

So I do challenge the "just because something was right for a while, it will always be right." It is good to again look at your metrics, look at the behavior of what is driving that retention long term, and then take a look at your onboarding. Are there things in there that have changed that you need or don't need? Should we shorten it again? It never hurts to keep challenging.

I think that's a good idea. Keep challenging yourself, but also keep thinking about your users. Read their reviews. Try to understand who they are. Look at the demographics and try to say, "Okay, maybe my user used to be this type when I did all this research and then locked it in, and maybe it changed a little bit."

Maybe I got some audience from my competitors and maybe their audience was a little bit different. Can I then adjust?

I think that's a great idea. Maybe to wrap it up, because we're running out of time but we still have a good amount of time, what are some of the areas where you would test and what kind of tests would you run if maybe you didn't do any sort of A/B testing before?

You kind of just tinkered with maybe screenshot testing and you're new to testing the onboarding or the paywalls. How would you go about that and what are top tests that you would recommend people go home and run right now?

Where to Start Testing: Find the Leaky Bucket

Whenever I start with a new app, I definitely want to try to look at their metrics and understand where their leaky bucket is—where is that fall-off happening? Once you've established that, then that's where you start testing and you start trying to understand what is it that is getting people to stop progress at this point.

So again, not one specific answer, but that's always my starting point: where is drop-off happening?

If you have a 30-page onboarding and people are not getting past page 15, great. That is going to be where you start. Why are they not getting past page 15? Because it should only be 15? Or you needed a progress bar and you didn't have that, and what if you added it?

I think the most important thing is taking a look at where progress is stopping, where people are not doing what you want them to do anymore, and then figuring that out.

Look at language. Is it clear? A lot of times once we start working on an app for a very long time, everything seems logical, but you need fresh eyes.

If you don't have a lot of reviews or people talking about it on Reddit and saying this is what's wrong, go ask people. Just ask people to go and do a first-time user audit.

I actually do these for small brands a lot of times. I do a 30-minute first-time user audit. So it's not a big consulting thing. Thirty minutes is all I'm going to spend on your app: fresh eyes. What I find sometimes is just eye-opening for people.

It's hard when it's your app. Go find someone who's never downloaded your app and tell them, "I just want you to spend 30 minutes and tell me all the things that made you pause. What were the questions that you had?" The ideas you're going to come up with are going to be wild and you can probably fill a year's worth sometimes of A/B testing.

I agree. I think that's such a good thing to do—to just ask other people. As a builder, I think it's one of those things that are nerve-wracking because what if they don't like something? What are you going to have to build? What if the thing that you worked on for six months now has to change completely?

But it's really not like that. I think ultimately different people will engage in different ways. Every time I talk to someone, I get feedback that I can incorporate into what I've built already.

I talk to a lot of developers and they say, "Well, if I ask and they don't like it, am I going to change? I don't know." No, you don't have to change anything. We're asking so we can test if we should change. And that's really what it's all about. It's how do we know what we can and should do. And that's really where things get interesting.

Testing onboarding with users is a little bit easier than testing something like a paywall because they may not have the feel of "When would I pay? When would I not?" How would you go about testing something like that if you decided you've come to the understanding that the paywall is the drop-off?

Testing and Improving Paywalls

Again, do you have a single subscription or do you have multiple? Do you have different plans, or if it's a single plan, is it a monthly versus an annual?

You want to start with clarity. Are you clear? I have an app that I'm working with right now that has a monthly and an annual and it's not clear.

The first thing I said to them was, "We need to clean this up. I don't really understand," because they actually show different things. The annual isn't just the monthly plan at an annual price. You actually get something more, and it's confusing for people.

That's one of the things that we're working on clarifying. This goes back to how do you have that fresh lens. You don't want to be hiding things. It's about: do people understand what they're getting from your app? That's the first thing I would ask.

Then there's a lot of other things you could test. Social proof can be great for an app. Sometimes people don't care. I've been seeing a lot of people recently testing videos on the paywall. Especially Tyler, for your exercise app, showing people actually going through the exercises because it gives them a sense of what they will be doing with this app.

There are so many things, but I would start with: is it clear? Do people understand what they're getting?

If they are, should I have a monthly versus an annual? You talked about how annual is sort of the gold standard of where everyone wants to be. That might be a lot for people.

I would say don't hesitate to start getting people in on monthly and then upselling them. Especially once you see that people are using that product, get them into the annual. Maybe give them a little bit of an incentive, but you have to get them in the door and using the product. Sometimes it's about simplification.

I think that's one of those things that if you ask developers if they try to re-engage or re-paywall after someone already subscribed to get them to upsell, I have a feeling most developers would say no. They haven't.

It's another one of those things that once you engage someone well enough, you have that opportunity. But if you haven't done enough—even if you manage to get them on a monthly—you may not have that sort of credibility or that good juju to actually get them to say, "Okay, let me give you a lot more money." Regardless of how big your discount is, it's still going to be some multiple.

That makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of thinking of everything as, "Is this clear?" because that's a framework I can take and apply to every step of the onboarding, to the entire onboarding, to the paywall, to even my first landing experience within the app, which is yet another step in getting a conversion.

So you're saying do look at everything, look at every single step, and then ask: is this clear, do they continue? If one of these answers is no, that's where you have to focus on. That's where you test and then you continue, you iterate.

Obviously it's a lot of work and that's where you come in and you can make that a lot easier. But for those who are going to do that themselves, it's an investment of time when you do it, but then it has long-lasting benefits.

It's incredibly important to actually take this step and say, "Okay, I'm going to test this one thing." Maybe test only the onboarding, or maybe test a shorter onboarding and then test every page in it if you want to until you get to a point where you're more comfortable.

In my mind there's always a cost to working on not-the-app, whether it's app store optimization or marketing or TikTok ads, really anything. The sentiment is similar across all organizations from indie devs all the way up to enterprise.

There's always someone whose focus could be something else until you get to even dedicated teams. When you're at something that large, you probably have multiple projects to work on. It's always one of those, "What is my incentive and how do I show my incentive and how do I get to that as quickly as possible?"

Closing Thoughts

We're coming up on the end. Are there any closing thoughts you would like to tell our viewers?

I just want to thank you for having me. The important thing for everyone, like we talked about: don't be scared to test. Understand your user. Make sure you're connecting them from all the way outside the app to the store into the app.

Be clear. Make sure people really understand what the value of your app is. What is the difference between yours versus your competitors? And build in public.

That was wonderful. So many good insights. I would love to have you again. I think we need more topics that we can dig into, or stories, or both.

For those of you who want to find you online before the next live stream with me, where can they find you? What is your channel of communication?

LinkedIn right now is my channel of communication. So come find me, Nicole Weiss. There are a lot of Nicole Weisses, but I am niweiss, not my full name, on LinkedIn. You'll see me—I have these glasses on in my picture. My company is Brass Finch. Like I said, we're new but we're mighty, and we're really excited to be supporting all the brands that we're currently supporting and looking forward to working with so many more of you.

We will include a link to your profile so there's no confusion in the video description later on. We'll also go through all the questions that didn't get answered. I saw a bunch of questions about ASO and some other things that were really a fit for probably my next live stream in a few weeks. I'll try to answer them in the comments as well so you do get answers.

Nicole, thank you again. This was incredibly useful. We dug into things that I didn't think we'd get to, and I again would love to have you again.

To everyone who's viewing us, please go home and take action. Go and A/B test something. And if you're home, you should be A/B testing something. There's really no excuse.

I will see you in a few weeks for another live stream. That's it for me. Thank you again, Nicole. We'll see you all in a few weeks.