[Experiment] Immediate Premium Upsell
Have you noticed all those apps that show you a premium upsell screen before you’ve even started using the app? I’ve always found it so odd that all these apps are trying to upsell you before you’ve even gotten value from the app.
Many times I don’t know whether the app has a free tier or it’s just a free trial that I will soon have to pay for. Isn’t there some % of people that immediately uninstall the app after getting hit with this screen?
How many people convert on this screen if you show a premium upsell before users have even gotten value from your app?
Well, I finally spun up a test.
I’m using ✍️ Writeaday for this test since it has the most users. Writeaday’s popularity has drastically dropped since I was working on it full-time but I’m still getting around 1K DAU and 10K MAU with about $500 revenue per month.
Immediate Premium Upsell Experiment
Experiment Setup
Control: Users go through 3 pages of onboarding before they can start using the app. They’ll occasionally hit this screen whenever they try to use a premium feature.
Test: Users go through 3 pages of onboarding and this premium upsell screen before they can start using the app.
Ran this experiment for 1 month with n = 1700 users in each group.
Experiment Results Summary
Showing this premium upsell definitely increases revenue (I reran this experiment and saw an even greater increase in revenue). But the expected trade-off comes in the form of less users coming back to the app (day 1, day 2-3, and day 4-7 retention numbers are all down) and more users uninstalling the app (almost neutral though, especially given how large the error bars are).
Purchase Revenue
Day 1 Retention
Day 2-3 Retention
Day 4-7 Retention
App Uninstalls
Shutting It Down
I’d like more revenue, but the cost here is too great. Especially given my low user numbers, my focus should be wholly on how to grow the user base of Writeaday. This seems like a classic situation where the short-term benefit hurts the long-term health.
It’s nice to know I have this switch I can turn on later when I want more revenue, but for now I’m shutting this down and focusing on growing the user base of Writeaday by increasing retention in any way I can.