Making Web2App Work: From Basic Landing Pages to Complex Sales Funnels — Nathan Hudson, Perceptycs

Summary

Podcast Summary: Making Web2App Work: From Basic Landing Pages to Complex Sales Funnels — Nathan Hudson, Perceptics

Podcast Information:

• Title: Sub Club by RevenueCat
• Host/Authors: David Barnard, Jacob Eiding
• Guest: Nathan Hudson, Founder of Perceptics
• Release Date: January 8, 2025

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Introduction to Web2App

In this insightful episode of Sub Club by RevenueCat, hosts David Barnard and Jacob Eiding welcome Nathan Hudson, a two-time former Head of Growth and this year's App Marketer of the Year, founder of Perceptics—a full-service growth agency specializing in mobile app growth. The conversation centers around the emerging strategy of Web2App, exploring its definition, strategic advantages, practical implementations, and the nuances that app developers must consider when integrating web-based funnels into their app growth strategies.

Defining Web2App [02:22]

The discussion begins with clarifying what Web2App entails. Nathan Hudson emphasizes that Web2App is not merely about creating basic web touchpoints like quizzes or landing pages but encompasses the entire process of converting web traffic into app users. He states:

“Simply put, it's the process of converting traffic on the web or starting to convert traffic on the web before directing them to your app.” — [03:45] Nathan Hudson

This broader definition helps distinguish Web2App from narrower interpretations that focus solely on onboarding quizzes or similar tools.

Strategic Benefits of Web2App

1. Cash Flow and Fees [07:35]

For smaller apps struggling with cash flow, Web2App presents a significant advantage by allowing quicker revenue realization. Nathan explains that accepting payments on the web can mitigate the delayed payout structures typical of app stores:

“The biggest advantage of testing on the web. When you're first launching a paid channel, you can just build that feedback loop and it's kind of what you want to do with the performance channel anyway.” — [08:50] Jacob Eiding

Jacob adds that platforms like Stripe offer almost same-day payouts, which is a substantial benefit for cash-strapped app developers.

2. Attribution [11:51]

Effective attribution is another critical benefit. Nathan discusses how Web2App can enhance the ability to track user origins more accurately, especially with evolving privacy measures:

“Using web allows you to pretty much spend, as Jacob said, 1k and learn something and that can be fine.” — [13:06] Nathan Hudson

With tools like UTM parameters, developers can better understand and optimize their marketing channels without relying heavily on third-party attribution partners.

3. Control Over the Funnel [07:35]

Web2App grants developers greater control over the user journey compared to app store limitations. Jacob points out the restrictions imposed by app stores on customization and funnel optimization:

“The app stores have Apple search ads, you can do click to install ads, I guess. But like your ability to control the acquisition funnel is pretty limited.” — [06:07] Jacob Eiding

By leveraging the web, developers can craft personalized and dynamic funnels that better cater to user needs and behaviors.

Impact of Platform Changes on Attribution [14:07]

The conversation shifts to the impact of Apple's privacy changes, particularly the deprecation of cookies in Safari and App Tracking Transparency (ATT). Nathan notes that while these changes pose challenges, Web2App can still maintain effective attribution through UTM tracking:

“As long as we have UTM tracking, we can see what we need to see.” — [14:35] Nathan Hudson

Jacob concurs, highlighting that UTM parameters provide a non-intrusive way to track user sources, thereby preserving some level of attribution accuracy despite privacy restrictions.

Web2App for Different App Sizes

A. Smaller Apps [07:35 - 14:35]

Nathan outlines that smaller apps benefit most from Web2App in terms of cash flow, reduced fees, and improved attribution. For these apps, every dollar saved and every insight gained is crucial for scaling. Jacob adds that the ability to iterate quickly with smaller budgets is invaluable:

“With Stripe or whatever, I think they do almost same day payouts. So you can get that.” — [09:34] Jacob Eiding

B. Larger Apps [20:53]

For larger, established apps, the benefits of Web2App shift towards reaching new audiences and expanding market presence. Nathan explains that once an app scales, leveraging web-based funnels becomes essential for tapping into diverse user segments and optimizing long-term growth strategies.

“Expansion to do with intent... you can have a lot more lead magnets.” — [29:29] Nathan Hudson

Practical Implementations and Examples

1. Quizzes [63:05]

While quizzes are popular, Nathan advises focusing on how they answer user questions rather than just asking them:

“A good web onboarding journey tells a story. A great web onboarding journey echoes their story back to them.” — [65:19] Nathan Hudson

He recommends integrating interludes that provide evidence, testimonials, and functionality explanations to reassure and inform users throughout the quiz process.

2. Webinars [33:02]

Nathan shares a case study where Perceptics built a webinar funnel for a high-ticket subscription app. By directing users to a webinar before the purchase, they effectively nurtured leads who were not immediately ready to commit:

“We could take portions of that video, run them as YouTube ads, and direct people to watch the full-length webinar.” — [34:16] Nathan Hudson

This approach helped bridge the gap between initial interest and eventual subscription.

3. Landing Pages [04:35]

Basic landing pages with clear calls-to-action (CTAs) remain fundamental. They serve as entry points from various channels like TikTok, YouTube, and blog posts, guiding users toward app downloads or subscriptions.

“The basic setup is just we have a landing page and a sales page on the web and we're trying to sell like an Ecom brand would.” — [05:28] Nathan Hudson

Challenges and Considerations

1. Fraud, Payments, Refunds [46:03 - 49:31]

Transitioning to a web-based payment system introduces complexities like handling fraudulent transactions, managing refunds, and ensuring compliance with payment regulations. Nathan emphasizes the importance of using reliable payment processors like Stripe or Paddle to mitigate these risks:

“Paddle is really solid for a lot of things. They have a lot of great tools for sales tax compliance.” — [49:28] Nathan Hudson

Jacob notes that while app stores manage these aspects internally, Web2App requires developers to establish robust payment and fraud prevention systems.

2. User Intent and Lifetime Value (LTV) [45:07]

Nathan discusses the variability in customer LTV when using Web2App, pointing out that ethical practices significantly influence user retention and satisfaction. Conversely, dark patterns can harm LTV by misleading users, leading to higher churn rates.

“Typically LTV is higher on web, aside from these things.” — [46:03] Nathan Hudson

3. Tools and Infrastructure [49:12]

Effective Web2App implementation relies on leveraging the right tools for payment processing, funnel building, and analytics. Nathan recommends starting with established platforms like Stripe and gradually integrating more sophisticated tools as needed.

Best Practices

1. Creating Winning Web2App Funnels [62:41]

Nathan shares practical tactics for building effective Web2App funnels, emphasizing the importance of storytelling, social proof, and personalization. He advises developers to focus on answering user questions and providing value throughout the funnel:

“A good web onboarding journey tells a story. A great web onboarding journey echoes their story back to them.” — [63:05] Nathan Hudson

2. Social Proof [65:26]

Incorporating social proof effectively involves addressing user objections through testimonials, user counts, and case studies tailored to the app's target audience. Nathan suggests focusing on qualitative social proof that resonates with specific user segments rather than generic numbers:

“Join others who have XYZ like you and then having a testimonial of someone just like you who solved that problem.” — [65:26] Nathan Hudson

3. Personalization [66:43]

Personalization enhances the user experience by tailoring the funnel journey based on user inputs and behaviors. However, Nathan warns against over-personalization, recommending a balanced approach that enriches the user experience without becoming overly complex:

“Focus personalization on context as opposed to just focusing personalization on questions, answers.” — [67:05] Nathan Hudson

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

As the episode wraps up, David Barnard reflects on the expansive opportunities that Web2App offers to app developers:

“Web marketing is like 15 years ahead of app marketing in tooling in so many different ways. It just opens up so many possibilities to shape that entire funnel.” — [38:14] David Barnard

Nathan Hudson concurs, emphasizing that while Web2App introduces additional complexity, the strategic advantages it offers in terms of control, cash flow, and audience expansion make it a compelling approach for app growth.

“There aren't that many verticals that shouldn't try web to app. You should try it as long as you have the hypothesis around what you expect to happen.” — [58:43] Nathan Hudson

Both hosts encourage listeners to thoughtfully assess their app's stage, market position, and specific needs before diving into Web2App strategies. They also highlight the importance of continuous learning and adaptation in leveraging web-based funnels to complement app store presence effectively.

Key Takeaways:

• Web2App is a comprehensive strategy to convert web traffic into app users, extending beyond simple onboarding tools.
• Benefits include improved cash flow, reduced fees, better attribution, and greater control over user funnels, especially advantageous for smaller apps.
• Platform changes like Apple's privacy measures impact attribution, but Web2App can mitigate some challenges through tools like UTM tracking.
• Implementation involves leveraging quizzes, webinars, and landing pages tailored to the app's specific needs and audience.
• Challenges include handling payments, fraud, refunds, and maintaining ethical practices to ensure high LTV.
• Best practices emphasize storytelling, relevant social proof, and balanced personalization to enhance user engagement and conversion.
• Developers should assess their app's stage and strategic goals before adopting Web2App, ensuring it aligns with their growth objectives.

For those interested in exploring Web2App further, Nathan Hudson invites listeners to connect via LinkedIn and visit Perceptics’ platforms for more insights and potential collaboration opportunities.

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Notable Quotes:

• “Simply put, it's the process of converting traffic on the web or starting to convert traffic on the web before directing them to your app.” — [03:45] Nathan Hudson
• “The biggest advantage of testing on the web. When you're first launching a paid channel, you can just build that feedback loop and it's kind of what you want to do with the performance channel anyway.” — [08:50] Jacob Eiding
• “A good web onboarding journey tells a story. A great web onboarding journey echoes their story back to them.” — [63:05] Nathan Hudson
• “There aren't that many verticals that shouldn't try web to app. You should try it as long as you have the hypothesis around what you expect to happen.” — [58:43] Nathan Hudson

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Resources Mentioned:

• RevenueCat
• Nathan Hudson's LinkedIn
• Perceptics

Transcript

[David Barnard]

Welcome to the Sub Club Podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub Club is brought to you by RevenueCat. Thousands of the world's best apps trust RevenueCat to power in app purchases, manage customers and grow revenue across iOS, Android and the web. You can learn [e-mail] let's get into the show. Hello, I'm your host David Barnard and with me today, revenuecat CEO Jacob Eiding. Our guest today is Nathan Hudson, a two times former Head of Growth, this year's App Marketer of the Year, and founder of Perceptics, a full service growth agency for mobile apps focused on driving profitable user growth, retention and revenue. On the podcast we talk with Nathan about the strategic opportunity of Web to App, how and when to use Web to App, and why one app found success using webinars in their Web to app funnel. Hey Nathan, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.

[Nathan Hudson]

Hey David, it's great to be here.

[David Barnard]

Been meaning to have you on for a long time, so it's great to finally make it happen. We've talked about this for almost a year.

[Nathan Hudson]

It's been a while. Long time coming. Yeah, just excited. One of my favorite podcasts. In fact, it is my favorite podcast.

[Jacob Eiding]

Come on, that's just pandering. I'll take it though.

[David Barnard]

And Jacob, nice to have you on the pod today.

[Jacob Eiding]

Thank you. It's nice to see Nathan and we met in the YMCA weight room in San Francisco, but it's good to see you virtually and we didn't get a ton of time to talk when we were at Raga in San Francisco. So I'm excited to dig in a little bit.

[David Barnard]

Awesome. So the topic today is Web to App. Been a huge topic of 2024 and I think going to continue to be one of the leading topics of 2025 for reasons we'll get into. But I think the first place to start out because I think there is a lot of confusion around it, is what do we mean by webtap? How do you think about webtap and do you have an opinion on the spelling? Is it web the number two app or is it web asking the hard hitting questions, David?

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, that's tough. It's. It's funny you say it because I was working on some content a couple of months ago and I wasn't sure whether to title it web2app to web2app.2. So I looked at how you guys named it at Ragger. I looked at loads of different, you know, posts and articles, and I think that this web number two app is becoming the staple way of referring to web to apply. I don't know if it's because webto app is already taken.

[Jacob Eiding]

No, it's just cool. It's like boys to men, you know what I mean? It's like a hip thing to do. I guess it is kind of funny.

[David Barnard]

That we're just like, making up words in this industry at this point.

[Jacob Eiding]

I think all words are made up at some point, David. So it's like, you know, but it has been a thing that, like, kind of emerged organically. I've been aware of the concept for a long time. Right. We even experimented with this kind of stuff at Elevate 10 years ago. But it's been in the last, I feel like 18 months when I finally heard. So many people have been emailing me, being like, do you all have a webtap solution? Like, what are y'all doing for webtap? And at first I was like, well, yeah, you can use this and whatever. But I've. I've come to learn it's actually kind of a. It's a whole thing. Right. And so. Yeah. What does it mean, Nathan? Tell me finally. So I know.

[Nathan Hudson]

Well, good question. I like to think the reason I like to define web to app firstly is because I think there are a lot of people who just assume what web to app means. Building one of those web onboarding quizzes.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, that's what I assumed.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah. Most people I speak to, whenever I say web to app, they think, oh, so I need a quiz, I need onboarding journey. So I think just taking it a few steps back helps. And yeah, simply it's the process of converting traffic on the web or starting to convert traffic on the web before directing them to your app. So I like to think of it as wherever we are in the funnel, at some point in that journey, we are going to leverage the web intentionally or unintentionally to help us convert users.

[David Barnard]

So, like, practical takeaways. You kind of mentioned a few there. Like, a lot of people do do quizzes and it's super popular. We talked a lot on the podcast. Like, they have a quiz, but practically, like, do you have, like, buckets of, like, you know, minimal web to app all the way to, like, full web to app? Is there. Give me some examples of, like, what you think of as web to Apply.

[Nathan Hudson]

I mean, the quiz funnel is the Most common, I think it's, it's worth saying that it is the most common. But things like blog posts, you know, directing meta traffic or TikTok traffic to a specific blog post and then having people download the app from there. Sending people from YouTube videos to long form webinars or videos swap to app, at the end of the webinar you might sell the app or position, hey, we have a product, you can buy it on our site all the way through to just basic landing page with a buy now button. So I think there are loads of different ways to, to slice and dice it and we can get into some of the rationale behind each of those and the, the use cases for those. But really I like to think that the basic setup is just we have a landing page and a sales page on the web and we're trying to sell like an Ecom brand would like a lot of SAS products do. And then we kind of build around that based on what the user's looking for.

[David Barnard]

So at the highest, highest level, it's just having some function, some touch point on the web before people get to the app. And then you would even say that that's not the definition, wouldn't necessarily even include that you're sending ad traffic to it. Like we talked to an app, none to run on the podcast. Their main source of traffic was people searching alternative to couch to 5K. And they had this one blog post that ranked really high for that. People went to the blog post. Then people go from the blog post to the app store to becoming a subscriber. So you would even like lump organic traffic in that. It's just like creating a touchpoint on the web as people get to the app.

[Nathan Hudson]

Exactly that. And I would say it gets, not vague, but it gets more complex in that I wouldn't even say that it has to be cold traffic or that it has to be people who haven't used your product. Oftentimes you can reactivate churned users via the web. You know, whether that's an email campaign to churn subs, pushing them to the web to start a new trial or new subscription. Still, web to app, maybe it's app to web to app, but it's, it's web to app.

[Jacob Eiding]

It's using the web as either some part of your acquisition funnel or retention funnel. Right. And like, yeah, I think, I guess it's, it's a good way to frame it because you know, I think in my mind where we sit and how I've been thinking about this technology, it's from a technology perspective. It's like the purchasing and the quizzes and like all of the things that have kind of become synonymous with this. But I mean really you're talking about just using the web as this like more open platform where you can own more of your distribution, which is always the problem with the app stores. I mean the app stores you have Apple search ads, you can do click to install ads, I guess. But like your ability to, to control the, you know, to have control over your acquisition funnel is pretty limited. And the web just gives you a ton of more tools that you can use. Like you were mentioning content like whatever, just like good sales pages and then not even, maybe it doesn't even include a purchase. Right. It's just about driving users to content and then content into the app because people search stuff right on the Internet, it's like a thing. And then of course we can talk, I guess we'll talk too about like what the, some of those, more like technical aspects of it, like actually converting and things like that.

[David Barnard]

So all of that leads into why, which we kind of touched on that a little bit already. But like why should apps be considering using the web more Again?

[Nathan Hudson]

We can do some, some more nuance, some more buckets. I like to break it down based on app size and app stage because I think there is a clear division between benefits for really massive apps or apps that have been around a long time doing multiple millions in monthly revenue versus smaller apps who are just looking to get their first acquisition channel going beyond organic aso. Now for those smaller apps, I really think there are three benefits. The main one being cash flow, right? Which is I don't have to wait so long to receive my money if I take the purchase on the web. Now I've spoken to loads of people, differing views, some people agree or disagree. There's a question of is it the fees, is it the attribution? Having worked with a lot of early stage apps who are just trying to get one paid channel working, they always have this issue of, well, I mean even if I spend 3k this month, which is, is a really small amount and not advisable, but even if I spend 3k this month and make 50k, I'm not going to be able to spend that next month potentially, so I can't, I can't do anything, I'm stuck.

[Jacob Eiding]

It interrupts your iteration cycles, right?

[Nathan Hudson]

So I think that is, you know, by far the biggest advantage of testing on the web. When you're first launching a paid channel, you can Just build that feedback loop and it's kind of what you want to do with the performance channel anyway.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. And Even then, then 3K can actually become enough money to learn something. Right. Because you could even do like a thousand dollars in acquisition, learn stuff literally in a day and then do an iteration and you'll. And then, you know, if you're using Stripe or whatever, I think they do almost same day payouts. Right. So you can get that. I guess it's obvious in hindsight but like the combination of keeping 95% of your, your revenue net of fees and then on top of that getting it instantaneously is a huge windfall. Like if you're cash strapped.

[David Barnard]

Yeah. I've talked a lot about the fees and how small apps, you know, only pay 15% anyway on both Google and Apple. But that time value of money thing.

[Jacob Eiding]

Like you talk about like on the worst case scenario like the App Store might be like 60 days net of spent or. Yeah.

[David Barnard]

Or 65 is the.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, yeah. You can imagine you're easily, easily renting that money for that amount of time is 15%. Right. A short term loan is going to cost you probably nearly that. So the fee almost doesn't even matter at that point really. The 15% break, it's important but like compounded together, I never really thought about that. That is huge for small apps though.

[David Barnard]

How do you think about conversion? I mean this is something I've always been concerned about is for an app that has like no brand.

[Jacob Eiding]

No.

[David Barnard]

Is there a reticence on the part of consumers to pay on the web for some random app they just heard about through a Google Ad or whatever?

[Nathan Hudson]

It depends. Typically we don't see, you know, huge disparities on conversion between web and app. Oftentimes it's higher conversion on the web, especially if we're talking about, you know, low ticket subscription products and even more so for high ticket actually. But just for a second, if we talk about those low ticket products. Yeah, it's not an issue. I think it can be the case that if you're directing traffic just to a landing page as we spoke about before, and then trying to get people to purchase without a trial, without a quiz, without any context, and your landing page really isn't that great, then yeah, you're going to struggle. But similarly, a lot of small apps have hardly any reviews and a hard paywall and are still able to convert organic traffic. So I think, you know, applying the same approach on web makes a lot of sense. And I think we talk about control There are things you can do on web to kind of make you seem more impressive than you are.

[Jacob Eiding]

It's hard to stand out on the App Store, right?

[David Barnard]

Yeah, that's a really good point. Like when you have like 10 reviews on the App Store and maybe you had a bug in your 1.0 and so you're actually only rated like 3.5 stars and you only have 10 ratings, it's like you can create an aura on the web that looks a lot more impressive than your 3.5 stars on the App Store.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. And a good template for WordPress or whatever.

[David Barnard]

So you mentioned there were several reasons. So we've gone through cash flow and fees. What are the next two things that you think about on why smaller apps should even consider a web to app?

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, the next two are kind of linked. The first one is attribution. Now it's becoming less of a reason to switch to web to app. I'm specifically talking about mobile subscription apps that are pushing meta as their first channel, oftentimes, at least from the founders and teams I've spoken to. Beyond organic traffic, the first channel people think to try, it's an ASA, maybe, or Meta. And when it comes to meta, when scan was the only way of attributing traffic, it was a real big issue. If you weren't spending 10k plus a month, you weren't going to hit your privacy thresholds, you weren't going to see your postbacks and it was going to be a problem. Now with meta's AEM aggregated event measurement, it's slightly different, so it has leveled the playing field. But there is still an advantage of using web in that you can pretty much spend, as Jacob said, 1k and learn something and that can be fine. And you can do that on web. I would not want to launch any kind of app promotion campaign with a 1k budget or a 2k budget just because I'd be pretty cautious about what we're going to get back in a given timeframe. So I think the fact that it's slightly easier to attribute on web, benefit three means benefit four, I can spend less money as a smaller app to actually make some progress.

[Jacob Eiding]

Actually, you know exactly where those people were coming from. You know very well their conversion. You can really tell something about that. I mean, we, this is analogous. They're not the same. But back in my, my core mobile development days, it's like we used to soft launch apps on Android because we knew even just background noise on Android we could get 500 downloads a day. And like it didn't matter. We didn't need that many because we would launch a super busted version of the app and then we would get like a trickle of downloads and we would just look at all, we'd watch, we'd literally watch the session replays for like all 500 of those users and we would learn a ton. And it like wasn't statistically significant, wasn't scalable, but it didn't matter because like all we needed was to start that engine of information that, that loop of like iteration. That's kind of what you're talking about here. It's like you can spend small amounts of money, learn a little bit and then you don't need to actually scale or actually make money. I mean it's nice if you don't lose all of that money but really the value there is like the information because you'll make money when you scale it, right? Like that's, that's the whole, the whole mission.

[David Barnard]

So on that front, how has Apple's changes to Safari impacted attribution for web to app? Because I know like they're deprecating like cookies. All the privacy stuff that Apple has done in Safari, has that had an impact in that same timeframe that Apple introduced App tracking transparency, A small impact.

[Nathan Hudson]

Nowhere near as big an impact as.

[David Barnard]

Att because you can still use UTM parameters, right? And Apple's not blocking those.

[Nathan Hudson]

I think it'll be interesting to see. You know, I always hear Google are onto something next or you know, we don't know what's going to happen with all the rest of the browsers. But I think as long as we have UTM tracking, we can see what we need to see. We can go to mixed panel amplitude, we can see our users, we can, as Jacob said, dive in and watch those funnels. So I don't think it's been such a big issue yet, but it's definitely something that people have spoken about, are kind of wary of, but very few actually David, I think you're probably only one of three people ever mentioned it.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, it's always Apple's like kind of sometimes missing the mark. But like UTMs are fairly inert, right, because you encode them usually the link you're putting into a campaign or whatever. So they're never all that targeted. They can't really convey personal information in them. You just kind of get a bucket of people and yeah, it's me. Oh, like when I analyze attribution and inbound data for revenue, Cat, you know, we got ads and all kinds of other sources. It's just like so much nicer like to know like kind of where users came from. And like I don't feel bad about, it's not super creepy or anything like this. It's just like, oh, did they click on us in a search term? It's like, okay, that's nice to know right? Like, and so I've always said this price said 20 times on this podcast. But like this is with the App Store conversion process specifically. But I feel like by Apple like not allowing UTMs to flow through the App Store download, they've actually made privacy way worse because basically all these like adjusts of the world. I mean not to don't want to talk ill of our trusted partners or anything like this, but like basically the entire fingerprinting industry was created to circumvent the lack of UTM parameters on the app stores and if they just allowed a little bit of privacy like with the UTM stuff. But I think it is worth, it's worth highlighting. That's kind of the core, one of the core advantages here is things attribution. Not only is it like it's. You don't even need a partner for it. Like you don't need an mmp. You don't need anything. You just encode UTM params. Make sure that's making it into your funnel some or into your data side somewhere. It's really easy to break up your inbounds and start to get qualitative, especially small numbers data on what's performing.

[David Barnard]

This is like a whole nother podcast. But I would be interested for your take if you're willing to share. Facebook's AEM is essentially fingerprinting and yet Apple lets it happen, which is the whole state of the industry is just bizarre to me because Apple made this big deal with app tracking transparency. They like fingerprinting is against the rules. But Facebook adjust apps, flyer, individual app developers, other ad networks. Like everybody just moved to fingerprinting. Facebook's doing the best at it, but it's technically a violation of Apple's rules. But they're like turning the other. It's just bizarre to me. Any thoughts?

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, I was speaking about this someone a couple of weeks ago. I love aem. So let's say to start with that I don't want it to go anywhere. I don't think Facebook are doing anything. No.

[Jacob Eiding]

This is news to me by the way. I'm so bad at all this ad tech stuff.

[Nathan Hudson]

Like it's crazy because I mean there have been some big accounts that we fully migrated from Scan to AM because it's that much more accurate. And it's like maybe four or five months ago, we would only really recommend it to smaller apps, smaller clients. Eight, ten months ago it was really bad and shabby and wasn't really good. Now it's really strong. So, yeah, whatever they've got going on, it works really well. And I encourage anyone who's pushing app promotion campaigns to try that on Meta. But yeah, I don't, I don't understand why Apple haven't jumped on it, but I'm not complaining, but I don't know.

[Jacob Eiding]

I would have to look at the technology more deeply to understand exactly what it's doing. But, you know, again, it's like, I don't think, I mean, we're getting, we're getting probably off the, off the beat here into like industry news, but like our industry prognostication. But like, I do think it's just sort of the understanding there's way too much economic value locked up if we don't allow developers to make some sort of understanding of the quality of the customers that they're paying to attract. You know what I mean? Like, everybody stands to benefit if we can understand. Are the users I'm trying to bring into my product actually users interested in my product. Right. There's like just market efficiencies there that are generally. And when, when processes and growth of businesses are cheaper, generally, that's good for the world in aggregate. Right. So maybe Apple's like silently wising up to this. It's good for them, it's good for developers. It's probably good for the people involved too, as long as that data isn't being brokered. A million ways to like a bunch of, you know, do weird stuff. But I think that's maybe not the primary case.

[David Barnard]

And that's what Apple broke with att. So I think it's like they maybe achieved their primary goal with att. And maybe this kind of refutes previous conversations about how Apple specifically did it to break Facebook and to cash in and build their own ad network. And there was all these conspiracy theories early on that that's why Apple did it. But I've always maintained that it genuinely was like a kind of privacy fundamentalism inside of Apple. And they did achieve, like by deprecating the idfa. Like, it is way harder to like build up a dossier on an individual user across multiple apps. And so Facebook using fingerprinting internally to Facebook is like not giving them all this like, super private data and well.

[Jacob Eiding]

It'S not like Facebook doesn't have a dossier on all their users.

[David Barnard]

Yeah, they already have it. Yeah, exactly.

[Jacob Eiding]

You know, I mean, this is like we already knew where you lived and who you dated, but now we actually know what running app you use. It's like, it's like, what's the incremental damage at that point. Right.

[David Barnard]

And that's what's been so frustrating about Scan. It was like, it was like built from a, like that privacy fundamentalism standpoint of like, we can't let any, any personal data leak. And I think AEM is a good example of like, hey, the economic value is there. We should let companies like Facebook do this to the benefit of our entire platform.

[Jacob Eiding]

Also, the users, users have already engaged in like data, private data sharing with us because anyway, we're. Yeah, yeah, we're probably getting way off the rails here, but yeah, maybe this is the second podcast we can do on just like the state of the, the state of the attribution industry. But I think we've hit all the, I think kind of hit all the like, major key points for smaller apps. And, and you broke it up. And why is web to app so looked at differently? When you get to scale, like, how does it change?

[Nathan Hudson]

I think the reason it changes when you get to scale is not because those benefits don't apply. Everyone cares about cash flow, but typically the amount that these larger apps are spending on ad spend is not the biggest concern. You know what I mean? It's like they're not going to not be able to do anything next month because they had a little bit of a bad week.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. You also have access to capital. Typically, like you can get loans even like once you have some established. It's just not as big a deal.

[Nathan Hudson]

Exactly. So I think cash flow, sure. The fees become, you know, a little bit more relevant. All of a sudden. 30% hits a lot harder than 15. And so I think, you know, that's, that's one thing. And even though, you know, people say, yeah, but it's not, it's not 30% forever. It's like, hey, this is a new user and I'm not getting 30%. This is significant.

[Jacob Eiding]

It is essentially when you're like running a little bit of ad arbitrage, right. You're like, I'm not really able to count on that next year revenue anyway. So thank you for that discount for, you know, it's like a. Here's a, here's a gift card for a discount next Year. Thank you, Apple.

[Nathan Hudson]

Exactly. So it's like, yeah, the fees become more of a benefit or sorry, the fees become more of an issue and web to app becomes more beneficial in that way. But I think the others that are more exciting are kind of what you touched on earlier, Jacob, around control. The ability to really control the user journey and the funnel as much as you possibly would like to. And when I speak about this, I mean kind of going back to the days of here's a specific ad creative which happens to tie with this landing page which happens to tie with this onboarding funnel and guess what, the paywall is exactly the same and kind of really building out a granular journey based on the job to be done or problem statements that you're pushing. Top of Funnel. You can kind of do a little bit more of this now with you know, custom product pages and these kind of advancements. But I don't think it's the same and I don't think it ever will be. Because really what we want to do is say, hey, this person saw this ad. So in onboarding I want to ask them this set of questions.

[Jacob Eiding]

You can't have a fully integrated like funnel as product, right? Where it's like the ad into the funnel, like it's all integrated and reactive. You can't really do that without something like this.

[Nathan Hudson]

It's the synergy of acquisition and product that's what's missing. Sure, we can have a really great top of funnel synergy ad creative app store, screenshots. Great. And then we can learn about them and onboarding and tailor the paywall, but we can't necessarily do the whole thing. But again, even that benefit that I touched on, that example was just speaking around quizzes and kind of how you may use that in a quiz funnel. But things like how you anchor pricing, I'm sure everyone watching this has had an app projected at some point because they had some sort of violation on their paywall. Right. Price related, whatever it may be. And I think that is frustrating. And also there are sometimes things that you want to do which you may not think this isn't unethical, this is just I want to anchor pricing this way. I want to see how it performs and you don't really get any refunds or any upset users from it. But Apple don't like you doing certain things. So I think it kind of opens the floodgates on that front. And similarly, when we think about things like money back guarantees instead of trials. Right. This is something that you just, I funny enough I actually saw in the Sub Club community today someone posted something about, hey, are people doing this in app and how are they doing this? I didn't read the post in its entirety, but on the web this is a big thing.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. Faye and the Dipsea team internally here are trying, are running on the web a money back guarantee alternative to trial, which experiment. Yeah.

[Nathan Hudson]

So I think there are all kinds of things you can control that you can't control in app.

[David Barnard]

And back to your point, on custom product pages, it's like that's been kind of the biggest innovation in like 16 years of the App Store. I mean, if you think about the fundamental user journey of the App store across these 16 years, you dump somebody into the App Store, they see three screenshots, a description, a user icon. Like, yeah, there's like discoverability stuff. Search has changed a little bit, but like the fundamental experience of the App Store is pretty much the same. Sixteen years on, it's like three screen and yeah, you can scroll and get more screenshots, but what do people actually see?

[Jacob Eiding]

How do you stand out? You know what I mean? Like I, I, I sometimes I open the App Store and I just like, everything looks like the same app slop. No offense to all of my customers, but like you just go, and especially if you search, search like an AI keyword or something like this and it's just like every like variant of slightly modified AI wrapper and you're just like, you almost like lose your mind. You're like, I just, I just want to be talked to. You know what I mean? I don't want to scroll through screenshots, I want to like be sold. So having that control to actually create an experience, that's somewhat differentiating too because like the likelihood, I mean, I would. This is, I don't have the data on this, but if somebody clicks on an app ad, they probably click on more than yours, you know what I mean? Like somebody who clicks on app ads. Probably somebody who clicks on app ads. And so you have to have something that's going to make them be the one. This is the one that they convert on, right? Yeah.

[David Barnard]

And then again, speaking to Control, like you were talking earlier about getting rejected for like pay pricing and paywall issues. I got rejected for creating a video of the widget in my weather app and I cropped it horizontally 16 by 9 of like the home screen so that I could really highlight a medium sized widget. And Apple rejected me and said I had to create a new video that was like vertical so that it could represent the entire home screen. And I was like, look, the widget is really small. If I crop it horizontally, it still looks like a homepage, but you can actually see what's going on. And they're like, no, no, no. You need a vertical video to show off your horizontal widget. And it's like dumb stuff like that where they take control of stuff that like doesn't matter and they lock everything anyway. I could rant for a long time about it, but to your point on control, I mean, they reject screenshots. They reject. And parts of it I get like, you know, they do prevent a lot.

[Jacob Eiding]

Of unscrupulous developers from unscrupulous developers from cropped screenshots, you know.

[David Barnard]

Well, but, but there used to be stuff, you know, you don't hear about anymore because it doesn't happen because they stop, you know, they don't allow developers to do this. But there used to be issues with people putting screenshots that were just totally fake. I mean, it's like these fake ads for games. There is consumer value in Apple having some level of like being able to reject stuff.

[Jacob Eiding]

This is always their problem though. It's like, it's not the intention, but it's always when they scale it. Same with app review. Like, it's like, how do you, how do you teach a thousand entry level employees to adjudicate App Store pages? It's very, very hard when we speak.

[Nathan Hudson]

About web to app. It's not that everyone's making the shift from in app to web to app so that they can be unscrupulous and have all these unethical things. They're doing it because they want a horizontal video.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[David Barnard]

That video is a better sell for my app than anything I can do in a screenshot. But Apple won't let me.

[Jacob Eiding]

It's just Apple's, you know, I mean, they're to Apple's view and I think they're somewhat right here. The App Store is there. They're their users and they feel they have a duty to protect them. And they've made certain promises about what you'll get on the App Store. And you know, it's, this is the deal we've made, right? We give you 30% and you get to insult us. But, but, but it's fine, right? But, but, but I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to jinx it because like, I think Apple, like this is again zooming out a little bit, but they, it's relevant to this part of the conversation. But they've more or less been okay with this kind of stuff. I think it's my go to the AM Conversation as well. Like, Apple kind of turns an eye to like a certain amount of things. As long as you're playing ball in the things that they control. As long as you're not being a total, like a total rake and just like doing unscrupulous stuff constantly. Like Apple, I mean, they won't say officially they're cool with this, but like by their lack of action, they've never taken action in it. They've essentially like implied that they're okay with this, which I think is great. You know, I think they. I think there is some level of understanding there. They got to do what they got to do. They got to lock down what they have to for their own like sort of messaging. But then they do understand that these things are important and they really are helping the app economy and things like this. So.

[David Barnard]

And I think ultimately this whole web to app movement is great for developers in the long run because as more and more developers find more and more success outside of the App Store using web payments, Apple has to do something, has to respond.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. At some point.

[David Barnard]

Yeah. It's like they need to like evolve their thinking on the App Store or more and more and more and more and more traffic is just going to go to the web.

[Jacob Eiding]

All right, we've hammered on control, but Nathan's got a bunch of really good points here and I want to make sure we give them adequate time. So what else? What else for big apps is one of the benefits reaching new audiences.

[Nathan Hudson]

Right. And expanding your reach, I think is massive. Massive. And I think this takes, it takes so many forms. I think the obvious one, or not the obvious one, but the one that Thomas mentioned, David, when you spoke to him on the podcast around reaching different pockets of audiences on existing channels. I think it's a great one that a lot of people still aren't really aware of is that when I pick at promotion campaign, install campaign, I'm getting a different pocket of users to. If I pick at promotion campaign trial, start as my event, which then becomes completely different again if I select a sales campaign and a conversion campaign on web. Because to your point, Jacob, if I'm clicking on an app ad, I'm probably clicking on multiple. There are people out there who don't click on app ads, but do click on web ads. And therefore if I want to reach those users on a given channel, I need to use a different campaign type and campaign objective. Which is one layer of expansion. But I think it really goes even deeper than that. For example, I like to think of expansion to do with intent. When you are pushing traffic to the app, you are if we take a subscription app, focused, so focused on can we get this person to start a trial, to send back the trial event to meta, can we use a hard pay wall and get the purchase event to go back to meta? And sure, you can optimize a funnel that way and you can reach profitability and have something that works. But there are a whole load of users that are dropping off and we never think about those that didn't make it. The guy who downloaded the app but didn't start the trial, what happens to him? Like he's gone, right. We didn't get any data on him. Sign up was after the paywall. I don't know, he's gone. But we still paid for those impressions. Right. Now with web you can have a lot more lead magnets. You can capture lower intent traffic, blog articles and webinars like we spoke about.

[Jacob Eiding]

You do retargeting. Right. Like after. Yeah. Not even on the primary channel that you attracted them initially. Right. You can have other networks you're running to do retargeting once. Once somebody's at least gotten to your. Gotten to your funnel.

[Nathan Hudson]

Precisely. So when it comes to kind of building out a full stack, multi channel approach, you can do a lot more on web. And I think that is really big for a lot of apps who are spending a lot already. Right. They're already juicing the spend, they're looking for new things. Like what can I do now? Well, maybe now you should invest in some long form content and some lead magnets and really start to nurture those that aren't going to purchase today or tomorrow or next week, but probably will in two months time.

[Jacob Eiding]

That's more like a B2B motion. Right. Where it's like you know, start to think about in consumer, you're always initially targeting just like these like fleeting moments of intent or trying to like manufacture intent in a very narrow moment. In B2B we're constantly just doing the latter or you just described anything which is where it's like just be ever present because we don't know when that moment's going to happen necessarily. But we just need to like cover the zone. Yeah, I guess like at scale it probably makes sense. I mean you think about this too. Like at least Duolingo had a very broad example. But just think they weren't doing brand marketing 10 years ago. You know what I mean? Like, now they just have weird videos with the owl that go viral and like there's nothing about their app at all. Right. It's just like you just need to be thinking about the owl constantly. Right. And it works, but it doesn't work until you're at an amount of scale. Right. Which, yeah, to your, to your point is kind of the, the evolving benefits in web dap as you grow, can.

[David Barnard]

You give some like, specific examples that you've seen work? Well, whether it's like web Google search or YouTube or maybe even go through multiple kind of flows and channels that you think do a good job of capturing some of that intent that you're not going to capture, directing people straight through the app store into the app.

[Nathan Hudson]

Absolutely. So one example was a project I worked on where we ended up building out an entire webinar funnel to push a subscription app. Now, it wasn't like a $30 a year subscription, it was like £200 a year. So it was, you know, it was fairly high ticket for a subscription app. But the challenge was it was a pretty sensitive topic and people just weren't ready emotionally to invest in that kind of purchase at the time. So you're hitting home. The message resonates. Absolutely. I hear you, but I'm not ready for this. I need some time. So we can't, we can't run app. We can, but then we have to go into freemium and that's like a whole other thing. We didn't want to do that. We wanted to scale up top of funnel as fast as we could.

[Jacob Eiding]

Well, you actually kind of created a freemium, Right. It's like you created a free on ramp that necessarily wasn't the app. But you're like, okay, here's some value before you purchase. Right.

[Nathan Hudson]

And that was pushed three ways. Well, two ways really matter. Instagram, Facebook, but also YouTube. And I think this is where it becomes really interesting because we could just take portions of that video and edits of that video, upload them to YouTube, run them as YouTube ads, and then direct people to watch the full length webinar.

[Jacob Eiding]

Oh, okay. So you would take clips from the webinar and then. Oh, so interesting. It wasn't live. It was like a. Yeah, more like.

[Nathan Hudson]

A vsl, like a masterclass.

[Jacob Eiding]

Okay. And so they would, what, they would have to like sign up or something or some gating to get to it.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, we experimented with a few different things. The gating works. You can. Nowadays, you can kind of make it seem as Though it's live, so you can have people. You know, a webinar that starts every five minutes. You like, I just, I just made it.

[Jacob Eiding]

Oh, that's, that's tricky. I'm already having FOMO though, I guess at that point, I mean, webinar, but this is generally just like a piece of free, low commitment content that you're giving away a lot of value to the customer. Right. Do you even in the, in those lead in ads, do you advertise the app at all? Or was it purely just like, hey, here's a webinar on this topic.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah. No mention of the app. Well, like, this is the topic you're struggling with. This is the solution.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. Which goes back to your expansion thing. Right. It's like, okay, there's not, not everybody's somebody who thinks of an app. I think about like my, my parents generation. I'm constantly pitching apps to them and they're like, app, what's an app gonna do? And it's like, apps can solve a lot of problems. Okay. And then I'm like, okay, just let me download the app. And then they're like, two days later I subscribed to this app. I know I got Premium Forever Pro or whatever. And it's like, of course you did, of course you did. You just had to be open to it. Right? I mean, I think that's probably this part of this expansion story is there is just like a lot of people who, they miss the, the boat. I see it in myself as like, new technologies are coming out as I approach 40 and like new tech is coming out that the Gen Alpha, gen Z set is using. And I'm like, no, I don't want that. I don't need that in my life. And I have reason to resist that other than I'm. Other than it's like I didn't witness it coming up, right? So like I've heard this from a couple folks I've talked to web to app. It's just like you get access to a whole new audience of people who will watch a webinar but won't download an app, but will take a quiz but won't download an app. Right. And you get an opportunity to pitch them. Obviously your conversions are going to be all wacky. It's going to be a totally different machine. But at scale, we're talking about at scale here. It's like you need to always be looking for that next card you can play. Like, okay, what's the next frontier? So that's really cool. I Bet if people with a thought they could probably come up with a lot of, a lot of really cool ideas for like, how do I build something that's a little bit less than just get into my app, get a free trial, or just get into my app and try the freemium. But it's like, what can I build on the Internet? I mean, look, I mean, this podcast as an example, right? There's like, we've done this kind of intentionally, unintentionally, just giving away a lot of value. But like thinking about how we do it at scale or how an app would do it at scale for that, you know, that slightly lower ticket value is kind of very interesting.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah. And I think the interesting thing about this example is we weren't even at scale when we tried this.

[Jacob Eiding]

Oh, so it was just like from the start.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, it was more to do with the audience needed more time to convert and we needed a fast trial start if we wanted to get our post back. So we were kind of at conflict. Also, the audience was slightly older, so the other, you know, we're talking about expanding audiences. You can also expand it to different age demographics, desktop. A lot of people still, you use Facebook on their desktop and you can reach them via the web. So things like this. But you mentioned that your parents didn't want to download an app. Probably if they came for a web to app journey and they landed on a website, they may have felt differently. So there are different, different plays.

[Jacob Eiding]

Especially if they were like an influencer involved, right. Somebody they like respect or like watch on tv, you know what I mean? Or something like this. It just like slow walk them from what they're comfortable with into like something that maybe is uncomfortable for them, I think is really fascinating. And it like plays back into control because it's like once a developer has the control on this, the world is their oyster. They can try all kinds of stuff. Right. Max Weinberg, the founder of DuckDuckGo, has this really wonderful book on growth. We'll put it in the show notes. I can't think of the name of it, but he's like, he contends that there's only like seven different growth tricks. Right. It's like pr, paid marketing, SEO, whatever. I always thought it was really painful because in the app world you can only do like two of the seven. You know, it's like paid ads and SEO on the App Store. It's about it. But this actually opens up like basically every channel now, right? That you can try. And you can try programmatically, which is just, it's just really cool.

[David Barnard]

Not only every channel, but like a ton of creativity because it's not just sending people to the App Store page and making that funnel work. It's like talking through this has gotten me really excited. I had not thought about web to app quite so broadly as you're presenting it. And it's genuinely making me excited in that I talked to so many developers who are like, how do we get those first 500 downloads? And when you're trying to push people to the App Store and there's low intent and maybe like I said earlier, maybe they got a 3.5 star on the App Store currently because of whatever 1.0 issues and like this just the world is your oyster as an app. If you think about it in this way, any form of. And like web marketing is like 15 years ahead of app marketing in tooling in like so many different ways. And so it just opens up so many possibilities to shape that entire funnel. So, yeah, it's super exciting to think about it more broadly like this. Any other, like, top of mind examples of like, cool things that you would never think would work for an app that you're seeing work for an app.

[Nathan Hudson]

I think it becomes interesting because now we get into how you're building out the web funnel or the web onboarding journey. There are some things you can do with web apps that you can't do with WordPress. Let's put it this way, right? So I guess an example is I want to take a picture of the food in front of me and it's going to tell me with some clever AI, how many calories in the food. You can build that demo into a web journey. Now you can also build it into the app, but now I can bring it super early so I can experiment with ads that just take people directly to some tool to take a picture of food and give me calories. Would I do that only at real scale when I don't care about conversion. But if I bake that functionality into some sort of cohesive journey, for example, you know, I'm pushing calorie tracking and macronutrients and I have people sign up or not and I say, hey, are you eating now? And people say, yes. Or are you near food? Yeah, let's play a game, take a picture of the food and we'll demo the product. It's so much smoother on web because you're already asking for a lot of. There's already a lot of friction there. I'm asking someone to go to their fridge and open it up and take picture of food or, or something like this. But if it's no sign up, nothing's gated and it kind of feels like a fun thing to do. Some users are going to do this and you know there are apps doing stuff like this which you can, you can try. So I think those are kind of the more product demo experiences that you can build out on web. But they are in my opinion super fun because it then becomes what functionality does that app do and how can we rebuild part of this on the web to decrease time to value.

[David Barnard]

So another interesting opportunity on the web is that you're not as constrained to what you sell. Even so inside an app it's typically just a digital purchase only and you can't have any add ons. So tell me about the opportunities to diversify things you sell and to increase average revenue per user on the web.

[Nathan Hudson]

I mean the obvious example of things like upsells, but I think where it gets smart is when you have things like one click upsells. I've already taken their payment details. I'm now going to show them something that's an add on and they're going to click buy or you can bundle products with your subscription. So it's almost like a cross sell pre purchase. Right. Which we're just bundling products, whether that be, you know, you're a fitness app and you also have some fitness clothing that you want to bundle on or you want to sell a nutrition guide. One great example are apps where you take photos or like, you know, family photos. And we're going to sell, send you physical albums and photo albums, stuff like this that can work really well on web, these kind of upsells. I don't see too many people using them like, you know, noom headway. They do have upsells oftentimes. A lot of people are still using digital upsells though. But there are some edge cases where you can actually bundle physical products and ship them. So yeah, the family album's one example.

[David Barnard]

Is it headway shipping like physical books now?

[Nathan Hudson]

I think they might do. Yeah, they might be.

[Jacob Eiding]

I think the idea of bundling digital content's really interesting, right. Because most of these businesses are already digital businesses. Right. And so when you're thinking about increasing your revenue or your ltv as David was pointing out, I mean you could in theory, you know, honestly, it's just the, it's the point of purchase friction. Like as you were saying, Nathan, like, you know, if you want to like, okay, get in through the payment details, like you can craft that experience so that you collect payment details, you get authorization and then like you right before checkout you're like, hey, why don't you add this extra? You know, if you're a fitness class, like here's a like exclusive like VOD option, right. For another, another piece of content or like, you know, you got somebody with a problem and all of this is like, you know, it's just like trying to find how painful this is for the person and like also just what their price sensitivity is, like what their value line is. Right. I actually think bundling is a really one of the challenges in. One of the challenges in B2C always is just like price discrimination or essentially like finding out how much money like somebody, you know, like finding a right price for somebody so that you can kind of have a good like sort of value extraction with your value, with your value creation for them. And that's sort of a. In gaming, they do it by just letting you buy more coins, like purely with some consumption mechanic, but by adding some other like skus that you can like bundle on. I think it's a really good idea. And then you know, with anything doing it at the point of purchase, like there's often just like a lot of intent and a lot of, you know, you're very up funnel still so you get more eyeballs and things like that. But I can see like that being complex. Right. And why you wouldn't want to try this until you're very late stage.

[Nathan Hudson]

But familiarity as well. Like this is not new. Amazon does this.

[Jacob Eiding]

Oh, they give me all the time. Customers also bought. I'm like, yeah, I need that too. I didn't know I needed tape. I do need tape. Thank you. Click.

[Nathan Hudson]

You know, it's always the most generic items.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. But it works on me. Like I. What was I buying the other day? I don't know. I was buying some electronic stuff and they were like, do you probably need some more solder? And I was like, yeah, you know what? I'm actually out of solder. I'll just go ahead and add that. It's a little bit different here. Right. Obviously it's very. But I still think the concept, you know, there's a reason stores stuff, the checkout aisle, you know what I mean? With like sort of useful but maybe like stuff you wouldn't necessarily go out of your way to buy. But yeah, the complexity of implementing that I think is, you know, probably, probably doesn't make it worth the squeeze until also you have A brand, right? Like, you know, I've heard of Noom. I've heard my friends have used it and whatever, and I've decided to go all in or whatever. And then getting offered like some sort of upsell at that point of purchase is probably different than random app. I've never even heard of ever trying to sell me another thing that I just. You know what I mean? So it's probably just a card. You have to judiciously, like, choose when you play.

[David Barnard]

It can probably thwart user intent as much as it can expand the arpu. So probably something to be careful of. And then, I mean, that kind of thing can easily turn into a dark pattern too. My wife went through a web flow where there was just continue buttons. Continue, continue, continue. And she got to the end not realizing that those continue buttons were actually adding stuff to the cart. And there wasn't like a final checkout that like gave a full dollar amount.

[Jacob Eiding]

You know who's really bad at this is the travel industry. They're really bad at it, right? It's like, oh, insurance and oh, the extra premium. Like, airlines are terrible. I mean, they all. Because it works, I guess. But like, yeah, they're all terrible at it. Nathan, I want to ask, like, sort of related to arpu, but maybe more like LTV of install generally. But are there, like, general, like, characteristics or sort of about the way that people buy? You know, it's credit card just on the app store. Are LTVs like, generally lower? Generally higher, like churns. Like, how do you think about the quality of these customers? Are there any sort of expectations people should have before they start this?

[Nathan Hudson]

It's a great question and it's hard to answer directly. Because of the dark patterns.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, if you have a dark pattern, really high.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah. It's like a lot of people are, as Xavier said, doing these things on web where it's like, oh, look, web's working really well. Like, I guess an easy example, which maybe this isn't so dark. But whether it be a free trial or a paid trial with a really high annual price plan, just not notifying them at all, not sending any comms during the trial window and then just billing them at the end, it's like, oh, you've already got payment details. If it's. Especially if it's a paid child, it's really easy to do that, but questionable. So typically LTV is higher on web, aside from these things, is it higher? I'm not sure.

[Jacob Eiding]

I mean, probably depends just what you're selling and what price Point. And all of that stuff I've heard from some folks, some of the mechanics of like the apps, like working with credit cards, some of the like. For example, you mentioned paid trials, which I think is much more common in web to app. The reason being I've heard is just there's so many fake credit card. People like have credit cards, they either bounce or they're not real or whatever. They use those to access a credit card locked free trial. And I know one developer I spoke to at least like they started with a free trial and then they converted to like a $1 one month trial. Right. So it's essentially a trial, but it's really an intro period. And that has the benefit of you've now validated, this is a real credit card and it costs money, which then you're just saving yourself the pain of like providing service to those users. And then like, you know, having a failed credit card probably net. It maybe doesn't make a big difference, but it does like kind of help with some of those conversion rates. I've also heard a lot and I'm curious if you've heard the same just like about. It's kind of all this stuff that we grouse about. We complain about the App Store fee a lot. But then once you're like dealing with credit cards and direct payment, you realize like, well, okay, this is kind of nice because one, yeah, there's just like, you know, Visa and all these, they have these different sort of like rules around. I think it's called 3D Secure. There's like different things you can do that will like increase the likelihood that payments go through but then also reduce your exposure to fraud stuff. So like if there's a lot of fraudulent credit cards being used on your site, you are liable for that. And people like Stripe will, they are also liable to provide some protection to Visa for that. And depending on what payment provider you're using. So you now have to think about that, which isn't necessarily something you have to think about on the App Store. I mean you do like people do get kicked off the App Store for like a lot of fraudulent transactions. I think Visa and the App Store one, they have to deal with the chargebacks. So like, you know, when people are getting ripped off, Visa has to eat that. And if they have a vendor who's, you know, seems like they're getting a lot of chargebacks, they're going to kick you off. But then also there's like things like money laundering and stuff that can happen. People use these sort of flows for that that people have to watch out for, which I think generally on the App Store you don't have to think about. But for web to app, it's now something that you're have to get good at. And the folks I've talked to that have gotten successful, at least some percentage of them had to go through sort of this process of understanding what these like sort of finer points are.

[Nathan Hudson]

It becomes a lot messier. Right. And I think that's why, you know, even you didn't touch on it. But I thought you were going there like chargebacks. Right. Refunds, handling these yourself as opposed to having the benefit of Apple.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. Even just the mechanics of it. Right. Like where does a user go to get a refund? You have to have that figured out somewhere. Right. In the App Store it's taken care of for you.

[David Barnard]

What tooling are you using? And like how do you approach that when you're setting, setting this up with the clients that you work with?

[Nathan Hudson]

I think the first thing comes into. Are you using Stripe? Everyone defaults to Stripe because they're so big. But when I look at the different options, Paddle is really solid for a lot of things. Right. They have a lot of great tools for sales tax compliance, which we haven't even touched on, but that's another thing to be considered.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. So they buffer at least some of the risk for you.

[Nathan Hudson]

You know, fraud, things like this. So that's really kind of where to start. Beyond this. I, I've been fortunate that some of the bigger clients that we've worked with have already been fully on top of this and aware of it. I don't think it's such a big issue for smaller apps either. Right. Like no one really has to worry about that much fraud if you've only got 15 paying customers a week. It's like probably it's legit. But I think it's an area where there's almost a gap. There's almost a gap for tooling or a gap for mobile apps.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah. To have it all because it's a lot of. And this is, you know, it was probably no secret that we're keen on this space and like trying to figure out. I'm trying to build our way, way there and these conversations, this one obviously. But then I've had conversations with a lot of founders this year that have been doing this stuff and yeah, it's the payments complexity we were just talking about. All of the stuff we've been talking about is software. Right. It's like you got websites and you got quizzes and you got landing pages, and each of those individually is kind of probably a simple thing. But then you have to, if you want it to work. We were talking about synergies between your acquisition and products and all that stuff. You want it to be all stitched together. And the complexity can get quite hairy over time. We've definitely seen there's like a number of like upstarts trying to work on this stuff. And I expect that to probably continue into 2025. Hopefully we can revenuecat can get a decent solution. But, you know, baby steps, sometimes we take it slow so we can take it fast. But yeah, I think, like, I think it's clear at least from what I'm talking about. It's not necessarily like slam dunk value for everybody, but like, it's definitely worth trying right at some stage for sure.

[David Barnard]

So we've gone through a lot of the complexity, the benefits, some drawbacks, but at kind of a higher level. How should people be thinking about that? They listen to this podcast and they're thinking, okay, we should do web to app. What are the questions people should be asking themselves to get started?

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, I think it's a great question. And the questions they should be asking are really, why do we want to do web to app? I think this is why I always ask clients and potential clients first, is why is this appealing to you? Is it because of the fees? And oftentimes it's like, yeah, I heard that, like, we'll save money. And then it's a case of figuring out that there's, there's more to it than just the fees because you need to actually be profitable on web and you don't know whether the traffic is going to be more expensive or not. So we've got to try all this out. We've got to build landing pages and funnels that convert. So it's, it's not as simple as just switching two buttons on an ads platform. But that's the first question is like, why do you want to do this? The other question I'd like to ask is what does your existing marketing funnel look like? How are you converting at the moment in app? Because the best place to start on web is that, for example, if you have a really long onboarding in app, build it on web. That's where you should start. If you're a utility app and you have a hard paywall, don't build a long quiz on web. I've had some like utility app founders. I asked me, I'm really struggling to come up with like questions to ask on the web.

[Jacob Eiding]

Oh my God, there's such a great meta note about founder cargo culting there. And I think that's like some message we try to tell in this podcast always, which is like, don't listen to anybody. Nathan's great. Everybody we have on this podcast, great. But don't listen to anybody. Like without thinking about your situation because like, I mean, it's obvious, but I don't know, everybody wants to make more money, they want to try stuff. So it's like, okay, how do you feel about multiply and divide for my calculator app? You know what I mean? Like, what's your feelings? Like, how are you hoping to improve your ability to find the area of a room? Very funny.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, that's the place to start. And then I think specifically when it comes to then building out long onboarding funnels, it becomes questions like, what is it? Most people who are already running successful in app onboarding journey duplicate that on web and see some sort of success. Very rarely have we ever worked with an app app where they have a solid profitable in app onboarding funnel. They mirror that on web and it just doesn't work. Like that's not the case. Oftentimes there are certain questions that we want to remove or certain things we need to add in, like certain problem statements we want to hit a little bit more and kind of change the funnel based on the traffic. But generally speaking, if it's working in app, it's the same target market, it's the same.

[Jacob Eiding]

They don't really care that much that it's web. Right. It's not. It's just a screen with stuff they can read on it.

[Nathan Hudson]

So I think that's one question. Another question would be, well, which is a big one? How much do we want to invest before we give up on this or not? I think a lot of teams are focused on building product and getting that existing funnel working. So the appeal of web to app sounds great, but the investment required to actually get it working, not so much. Especially with the lack of tooling to make web to app fast. And obviously there are some products out there that help make it fast, but there's nothing that really does it end to end super quick, doesn't require any dev resource. We're great. So I think any app team that's going to start investing in web to app is going to need to allocate one time, two resources and three money. Probably you should be very cautious about diluting your spend that's going to the app and try and bring new spend into the web depending on where you're at. If you're spending millions and millions in app, sure you can just slash some of that and send it to web. But if you're only spending enough to reach learning phases and privacy thresholds in app, you're going to need to make a decision because that becomes a little bit complex. So yeah, those are some considerations I think most teams should ask before launching this.

[David Barnard]

Yeah. And to your point earlier, I do think it's interesting that if you're an app that has a few hundred people coming in, like you've got the product flywheel going, jumping to web instead of really dialing in that product market fit and getting that first motion going seems like it can just be a distraction that's actually going to net you less in the long run. Even if you save a little bit on fees, even if you get a little more kind of cost advantage. But I liked what you were saying earlier and I hadn't thought about it from this like standpoint. If you're struggling to start that product motion and you've got a product going but you just don't have people getting into it like then maybe it is worth the investment just to get that zero to one motion going.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, there's almost like a middle there where it's probably if your app's kind of working and you kind of have something, you should probably just focus there until you hit headwinds. But if you're very at the very, very beginning or if you're at the very kind of like late stage on the app, like core app, you can maybe think about it. It's kind of an interesting reality. I don't know, it's probably varies but like what kind of mixes of folks, folks that have done this successfully for some period. I guess like, I guess like as a percentage of like net new subscribers, like what percentages of people's traffic are coming revenue wise, like coming from web to app and a good setup.

[Nathan Hudson]

It varies, right? Like 80, 20, 20, 80, 50, 50.

[Jacob Eiding]

Oh really? All over the map. It really just depends which is an argument for maybe it should. It could work for you. Right. But I think it could be any one of those. Right. It could only be a minority. It's not that dissimilar to like some of the like pre. We wouldn't call it web to app but like adding a stripe online conversion through email, follow up campaign, you know what I mean? These are not like going to change your life. But they are like incremental improvements on retention and conversion that you should do, but. But again, not before you have like a core funnel that's kind of working.

[Nathan Hudson]

I think it also comes down to as well what people are able to get working first. For example, a lot of people will start with web and app, see that web's working, and then scale web more so that it makes up a higher percentage of overall net new revenue. That's just because you scaled that more. Like, it's not to say that there's a bigger opportunity there.

[Jacob Eiding]

Yeah, which is often the case too. Anytime you're evaluating businesses and sort of like a snapshot, people want to draw too many conclusions about, like, why numbers are a certain way. And like, often it's like, well, that's just because. Because this is how it. This is this moment in time.

[David Barnard]

You know, as we start to wrap up, I did want to kind of do a little bit of a quick fire and maybe hit on some of your, like, top practical tips. Like, if you're going to make this work, here are some of the things you should try. And I do actually want to start with like, verticals. Like, are there like, specific kinds of apps, specific kinds of intent that you think are going to have a higher likelihood of succeeding? And others where you think, like, we were joking about a calculator app. But, like, that's maybe a good example of like, probably going to struggle. Like, people are looking for that utility on their phone, they're probably willing to download an app. Like, they're probably verticals. They just really shouldn't try or maybe should delay web to app until they're way further along in their journey. So how do you think about those?

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. Utility apps don't need to invest in web to app. That doesn't mean it can't work. A lot of people think utility apps just can't make web to app work. They can't make quizzes work in a lot of cases because there's nothing you need to ask users. But they can most definitely have landing page checkout, here's the product. And that can work well. Just like they'll have screenshots, paywall, native prompt.

[Jacob Eiding]

I mean, if it solves a problem. And like, it's like, I think a flighty, like, that's kind of a utility app, you know what I mean? Like, and I could imagine easily converting people from the web if you targeted it correctly. But yeah, I wouldn't ask a quiz about Your travel, you know what I mean? Maybe I would actually. How often do you travel? Because Flighty is one of these apps that gets way better the more you travel. Right. So like kind of building. Okay, nevermind. Utilities. You should do a quiz for your calculator. I changed my mind. Don't listen to Nathan. Don't listen to me. Listen to me instead.

[Nathan Hudson]

Well, yeah, don't do that.

[Jacob Eiding]

Okay. Official advice from Nathan, he's a smart one. Don't, don't do that. Okay.

[Nathan Hudson]

But yeah, and then in terms of intent, low intent, web, high intent, maybe not web in that if there's low intent, you need longer time to convert, you need to put more effort in. You can do a lot more in web. It goes back into what we were speaking about, about control. But I generally like to say that there aren't that many verticals that shouldn't try web to app. You should try it as long as you have the hypothesis around what you expect to happen or what you're hoping to get out of this. Again, touching on the intent piece. Blog posts, webinar funnels, gated lead magnets, you can't really do these things in app and they really lend themselves towards, you know, traffic that's low intent or lower intent than those that would want to purchase. So I think that's, that's one case. The other thing I would say is around pricing and price point. Typically I've seen a lot of higher ticket products make web work before app just. And I think it's for a range of reasons. Sometimes it can be to do with the audience like the audience age and how comfortable they are purchasing on web versus in app. Sometimes you know, it can be around just not being comfortable regardless of age to spend that much money on a subscription app, more comfortable making those larger purchases on web. But again, low ticket subscription apps work really well in app. You don't need to necessarily invest all of this money into building out web funnels just to push your 2999 annual product.

[David Barnard]

Yeah. Next up in our quickfire, what ad channels are you seeing find success? Any ad channel or are there specific ones you think work especially well?

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, I think a lot of channels work. I've seen metal work, Google like search and YouTube, TikTok. I would say outside of channels, affiliates and influencers, amazing with web, again it comes back to the attribution piece. If I'm working with influencers and creators and I want them to push my product, it's hard to attribute when it's mobile on web. I can just Take them to a dedicated landing page. UTM parameters. Perfect. So I think it's not just kind of ad channels, but just channels more broadly. They're applicable for web to app, but I've not come across a channel that just hasn't worked. Worked. I know Thomas was saying he hasn't like had that much success with YouTube as a channel. I have, but that's because the videos we were pushing were like more long form and it worked really well. So again, I think it, it depends but what I would say is don't think, oh, I'm, I'm testing web. So now I need to find a new channel. It should be, firstly, can we get existing channels working on web? Secondly, are there channels like this channel that we can expand into? Thirdly, other channels aren't like this channel that we should test.

[David Barnard]

Awesome. So next up, what data do you feed back to the networks for improving that targeting? In app we talked about how hard it is to get the right signals and get it fed back and cross the privacy thresholds. At least you don't have to cross the privacy thresholds. But what are you feeding back to the networks and how are you making that kind of targeting work on web?

[Nathan Hudson]

It's not that dissimilar to mobile. The only difference is we want to send as many events as we can because we can map out more of a funnel. So we can send sign up events, trial start events, we can send multiple events and just kind of see the conversion from each step. So that's one thing. You can also experiment with optimizing for value as opposed to just events. So if you're pushing, you know, monthly plans, annual plans, lifetime plans, you can kind of maximize value and send that data back, which is something that some people are doing, but it's not been spoken about that much. I personal. I've tried it and it's interesting. I kind of don't have any impressive results to share as of yet, but I'm hopeful that we can get this working. But yeah, really the same things I would say to anyone looking to launch on, you know, app promotion campaigns, make sure you're optimizing for something that's actually valuable. So if the most valuable thing you can optimize for is a trial start, then do that. If it's the purchase, then do that. But pixel tracking, step one, with meta, you can use your conversions API to send data from the backend server to server. Definitely, definitely do that.

[David Barnard]

Yeah. Awesome. And then you had a list I didn't get to attend your workshop. At growth annual. But I got to see your slides and so you had a list. I just want to quick fire these and just give me, you know, 90 seconds on each of these. And this is like specific tactics for creating a winning web dapp funnel. You've talked about quizzes but like what makes a good quiz work on the web or even in app.

[Nathan Hudson]

So I think where quizzes are concerned, I find this quite funny because quizzes are all about asking questions, right? We're asking questions to the user, but an onboarding journey is about us conveying value to the user and it's really about us answering their questions. So if you think about it, the user has in their mind, is this app gonna work? Is it for people like me, is it gonna do this, this and this? But what about this? They have all these questions and we approach it with let me ask my 15 questions so I can track them nicely. The first thing I would say is don't focus on what questions you're asking, but focus on what questions you're answering. Sometimes you can answer a question with a question. For example, if you land on calm and you're like I don't know what this app does and then they say are you here to sleep, improve focus, etc. You now understand what the app does and they've done that by asking a question and giving you multiple choice answers. But beyond that you can use, I like to call them interludes, which are kind of the screens that break up questions to communicate specific information. I think there are three types of content you could put on an interlude, like evidence, things that prove you do what you say you do. Whether that be charts, graphs, social proof, testimonials, the sorts content that focuses on reassuring the user. There may be known anxieties that they have. I think there's a great example from Headway that's like do you often worry? Or something like this, like how often do you worry? And then you click a lot and then it tells you, hey, don't worry, loads of people worry. Stuff like this, that's an example of reassuring the user. But the idea is you want to figure out prior to building what those are and then on certain screens call them out specifically. A great example is time to value. I don't know how long it's going to take for me to get my abs. Summer's next week, can I do it? This app told me I can. Woohoo. So the charts we see, but that's one. And the final one is I would say functionality like don't not talk about your product. You want them to get to the end of onboarding and have a pretty good understanding of what you're going to do and how. So that's, that's something. And doing those things ultimately adds value. So that's kind of my, my approach. I guess if I had to wrap it up in a nice way, I would say that a good web onboarding journey tells a story. A great web onboarding journey echoes their story back to them.

[David Barnard]

Next up is social proof. How do you incorporate social proof effectively? And then how effective is it and should people be using social proof?

[Nathan Hudson]

I often get asked what type of social proof should we use? And I think it really comes down to what questions. Back to the previous comment the users have in their head, like, are they thinking, do I believe this works? Are they thinking, is this safe? Are they thinking, if it's like a very health oriented product, you're asking for medical information, is this a trusted product? Who's validated this? Who approves them, you know, whatever these kind of questions are. But the idea is what objections do people have? Once you identify those, then you can narrow down what social proof you should be displaying on your paywall. Not your paywall, your web onboarding journey or your paywall. I think a great example is, and you've probably seen it all the time, when people have like 80 million, 20 million, 30 million users use this product, it's like, that's great. But probably if 20, 50, 80 million people use the product, I already know what the product is. So smaller apps who are then like, join thousands of people using my app is like, doesn't really have the same, the same impact. You're better off saying join others who have XYZ like you and then having a testimonial of someone just like you who solved that problem. It's less focused on kind of volume and quantity, more focused on kind of qualitative efforts.

[David Barnard]

And lastly, talk to me about personalization. How, when, why should you think about personalizing? And this does get to a point where it can get very complex to personalize a web journey where you've got this like infinite branches of a tree. But I know it can be powerful. So tell me about how you think about personalization.

[Nathan Hudson]

Yeah, I think personalization is super key. I think the reason it's so important is because it's how you echo their story back to them. If I just have a really nice flow and ask some great questions, I'm saying stuff and I'm doing stuff, but I don't know how relevant it is to you. What I want to do is make you believe that this product was designed for you. Like someone sat down and thought about David and then built the app. And the way to do that is to ask questions, use the answers in the next questions, and kind of take them on that journey. What I would say, though, is that you don't need to over invest in this at the beginning because oftentimes the diminishing returns are very real. And you think that adding way more personalization is going to dramatically increase your conversion rate. And it doesn't because people don't care that much. So I think the question is to figure out what do people actually care about. For example, if we take an example of an app that helps you get to sleep, right? If you're helping me get to sleep and you're asking me what time I sleep and all of this stuff, great. You're going to personalize it by reminding me when I can go to sleep. Great. This is cool. But that's not really moving the needle for me emotionally. Right? It's not doing much. It's very functional and I understand, but it's not probably the best example of personalization. Whereas if we take an app that is to do with improving your focus at work and you're asking me what my job is, and then you're telling me that, you know, CEOs, XYZ developers, XYZ, you know, train drivers, ABC. Now this is like, ah, okay, this makes sense because it's specifically for me and my context. So I think focusing personalization on context as opposed to just focusing personalization on questions, answers is, is a nice way to, to wrap it up.

[David Barnard]

Yeah, that's some fantastic advice. I mean, so many of these, and especially this last kind of quick fire round that we did the last few minutes, it applies to so many other aspects of your product as well. It's like not just your onboarding journey, but how do you personalize the product? How do you find emotion and like, really show people that you're delivering value in the product? How do you incorporate social proof? Like, I was just using Strava last night and a friend of mine from, like 20 years ago was on Strava and showed me that he's like, now an athlete competing in triathlons. And that was like a really interesting social proof, you know, moment for me of like, oh, that's really cool. Like he's using Strava. I can follow him on Strava. And so all of these, like, apply throughout the entire product journey. And so really fantastic advice as we wrap up. Anything you want to share? And are you accepting clients at Perceptics currently? I know a lot of growth advisors are, like, booked up through 2025. Do you have any spots available? I know after listening to this podcast, some folks are going to want to get in touch.

[Nathan Hudson]

We are pretty busy these days. I'm pretty busy these days, but the team is growing, so we do, we do have capacity and we are taking on new clients. And I'm also available to chat all things web to app. Sometimes, like, the best way is to just message me on LinkedIn a question because, for example, it may be the case that you don't really need my services or our services and you really just need a little bit of advice and a kind of point in the right direction. So more than happy to do that as well.

[Jacob Eiding]

That's good. Top of funnel marketing right there. You know, give away a little bit, reel them in.

[David Barnard]

And definitely we're going to include links, but Nathan's been sharing a ton on LinkedIn and then you started a YouTube channel as well, right? So you're sharing a lot more like video and written content and slides on LinkedIn and stuff. So great follow on all those platforms. All right, Nathan, well, it was so much fun chatting today and thanks for sharing all these great nuggets and learnings that you had over the years.

[Jacob Eiding]

Thank you, Nathan.

[Nathan Hudson]

David, Jacob, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

[David Barnard]

Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com to join our private community.