In-App Purchases
The Challenge
Change our business model, UI, and on-boarding flow to fulfill an urgent Apple requirement.
The Context
In our previous business model, the mobile app was a companion product to our web platform product. The mobile app was free for our highest-paying customers and it couldn’t be acquired in any other way. However, it was possible for a customer to purchase our full web product through our mobile app. Apple noticed this, and they informed us that according to Apple’s terms and conditions, Apple has to make 30% of sales made through the mobile app.
We let Apple know that our business model didn't have our mobile app as a separate product, since it was a companion app, and we suggested having a less direct push to purchase the web product on the mobile app, but Apple was firm and asserted they must make 30% of anything sold through the mobile app. Apple told us if we didn't make this change, in five months we were going to be taken out of the App Store.
Since it wouldn't make sense to give Apple 30% of the purchase of our desktop platform, which is much more sophisticated than our mobile platform, we had to reimagine the nature of our mobile product and figure out how detach it from our web product and sell it. This brought along a whole new set of possibilities and limitations, like changing our onboarding flow, adding a purchase flow, updating our UI and selling the different content types within our mobile app individually.
The team came to the conclusion that the soon-to-be independent mobile product was going to be sold on a subscription basis because we noticed that many similar products on the market, went from a one-time charge model to a monthly subscription-based model in the last couple of years, so we tested different prices to find a price point our customers would be happy with, and the team decided this was the best way to increase revenue.
Our students depend on this app for on-the-go studying, and due to the urgency of this requirement, we had to hold all other mobile efforts and prioritize this one.
The Solution
Turn our companion mobile app into an independent and subscription-based product.
The Process
The mobile app is not a one-to-one mobile rendition of the web application, it contains study materials that are easy to digest on the go, the idea behind this being that when a user is studying on their mobile phone, they don’t have the same time and attention they would when on a desktop or laptop device. The mobile app is a smaller version of the web app that we are constantly improving and expanding with mobile-friendly content types, and web features that we adapt to a mobile learning experience.
Since we had to add payment options and legal information to this existing experience, we completely changed our onboarding flow while maintaining the free trial, because that is an offering that significantly helps us acquire customers, since the user is able to get to know the platform and content materials we offer before purchase.
Updating the UI
When starting this project I realized we could use a UI lift, so I asked my PM if we had the bandwidth to take advantage of this opportunity and make UI changes I believed were going to improve the experience, and he said yes, the users welcomed the new look with very positive feedback. The initial UI was made long before I was hired.
The New Onboarding Flow
We chose to present students with the products offered first, and ask for their registration information second, so that users have an idea of what is being offered to them before asking them to do anything.
Because in-app purchases are now taking place, collecting location data is now mandatory, so we needed to add country and state fields. Since our products are available internationally, there are two ways this country selection section can go; if the user is in the US, the country field shrinks and a state field appears on the right to collect that data, if a country besides the US is selected, the country field stays the same. I chose to place the state field next to the country field because I didn’t want to add more rows crowding this page.
Due to the addition of purchases, we also updated our Terms of Service agreement and Privacy Policy.
The business team decided to itemize every content type inside the mobile app and sell them both separately and in a package. Which means the student can purchase the videos only, deep dive videos only, flashcards only, test bank only (which is a large set of practice questions, 1000+), etc, or the entire package for a recurring monthly price.
Since the study materials are now being sold on the mobile app, we added marketing pop-ups to encourage students to purchase before and after their free trial expires.
There is more copy on these screens that I would like, but certain information we are required by law to display in full, before the user can expand the purchase details: the product name, the price per month, a note about the price being a monthly subscription, and another note about the ability to cancel anytime. Users have to immediately know how much they are paying and how often, without having to expand anything. I wanted to hide and have to expand some copy like the iTunes purchase terms & conditions, but we were told it had to be displayed in its entirety.
Once the free trials expire, and the user hasn’t purchased any products, they would find this screen, the products are no longer accessible but they are available for purchase.
Once a user purchases the Test Bank, like in this example, the tile becomes full-width, as the only available option now is to access the full product. The other product tiles remain the same, with the option to purchase them on the right.
There are three states a content type can be in: the first one is active on the free trial period and available for purchase, that's why its tile is active and there's an unlock button next to it.
The second state is a content type that has expired after the free trial ended and it’s available for purchase, so they’re in an inactive tile with an unlock button on the right. On our desktop app, we have different user tiers, depending on how much customers paid for the product, they get partial or full features.
The third state is active because it has been purchased, the tile is active but there is no unlock button on the right.
Integrating a new business model and onboarding flow was a challenge, but we met Apple’s deadline. Users did not report confusion about the new onboarding flow, on the contrary, this change along with additional UI updates like new background images, icons, and content types, with easy-to-digest, on-the-go study materials and features, gathered very positive feedback turning this 2.7 app into a 4.7 app on the Apple store, less than a year after my PM and I started working on this product.