Article

Mitesh Patel
Mitesh Patel 12 July 2018
Categories Mobile, Search Marketing

How to Increase In-app Purchase and Boost Revenue from Your App

In-app purchase is the most important way for monetizing the mobile app. The blog talks about the tricks to increase the in-app purchase and boost the revenue.

Let us start our story with a simple question: Why did you build a user-friendly app? The reason may vary depending on your business type and size. For example, you can use the customized mobile app as a promotional tool for your B2C business or an important business tool to simplify complex operations of your company. But, when it comes to app monetization, we have different perspectives. App categories like gaming, health and fitness, and utility have the maximum apps with in-app purchase functionality and ad-free or premium version.

These days, one of the prime reasons of opting for custom mobile app development is to generate revenue, and in-app purchase is the best option available to date. The mobile application development company can guide you regarding the in-app purchase in detail, but here we give some noteworthy and effective points to get the most from in-app purchase:

  1. Entice Web Visitors

Your website’s visitors can be the most likely users of your apps. You can readily entice them with promotional offers. For example, you can write on your website “ Exclusive offer for our app users- Get 20 percent OFF on the first order. Just sign in or create an account in our app to grab this offer” to attract them to download your app. Remember, the number of downloads will eventually earn you dollars, and therefore, more people should download your app.

You can get an optimum result rapidly when you target an audience consisted of your website visitors because they are already familiar with your business and brands. You can attract them by offering them a discount and easy download process.

  1. Create Hype Smartly

Do you know that FOMO(Fear Of Missing Out) always works and the customized mobile app is no exception? It has roots in the social media interactions when people fear missing something joyful that their friends are doing. Here, we need to use this concept slightly differently and smartly to create the hype for your app. 

You can offer limited period offers like flash sales, deals for the day, and the like exclusively for the app users. In other words, you can come up with just anything that is time-sensitive. It will create FOMO effectively and people will buy through in-app purchases. What makes this strategy more amazing that it is not restricted to the sale of tangible products.

  1. Use Push Notifications

Next, come the push notifications. As a great way to communicate with the existing users, push notifications have gained ground in the mobile arena. Though they have a resemblance to the text messages, push notifications have high engagement rates. When it comes to promoting different campaigns push notifications to remain highly effective.

But then, it is better to use them wisely and in a controlled way. Frequent notifications can annoy your app users that lead your app to deletion. Even if they do not delete your app, they may mute the notifications and you cannot spread awareness about discount offers and other promotional stuff effectively. Therefore, you need to make sure that the push notifications always add value to your user. By building a careful strategy, you can use push notifications to boost purchase through your app.  

  1. Take Help from Geofencing

The concept of localization can help you boost in-app purchases. All you need to integrate geofencing and location-based features in your app. Apart from taking the push notification strategy, geofencing can track the position of users through they are not using the app. However, you need to take their permission for it! Now, as and when they enter into the predetermined area, they get a personalized push notification regarding your services.

Let us take an example of an apparel brand with an m-commerce app. When the app user enters in the specific location near the beach, they can get an offer for discounted bathing suits, and the user can willingly go for it! In a way, geofencing can increase the in-app purchase.

  1. Offer Loyalty Program

The loyalty program can encourage users for more purchase. It can enhance the user experience to improve your app’s in-app purchases. It establishes and strengthens the brand loyalty and you can get a huge base of loyal customers.

Let us understand how a well-planned loyalty program works:

The program has a customer profile for every user in which all their transactions are saved. The app users can easily purchase their favorite items with a click or two with this record. With every purchase, the users keep on earning reward points. Once the points reach certain limits, the reward can convert either in a monetary gain or into an attractive gift. This strategy encourages the users to buy through your app while preventing them to go to other companies.

  1. Optimize Checkout Process

Once your app’s user is convinced to purchase products through in-app purchase, what will they expect? A safe and yet simple checkout process. Therefore, you need to work on optimizing the checkout process. Remember it should not take long when the user is ready to purchase something. If the checkout process is longer than a couple of steps, the conversion rate may drop miserably. In other words, each additional step in the checkout process can mar the user’s shopping experience and reduces the chances of purchase something through your app.

  1. Offer Premium Experience

 When you offer a paid version of an app or an ad-free version through in-app purchase, your app users would certainly expect a premium user experience. When the users become subscribers for premium services, they must be given a better performance and improved functionality.

Let us take an example of Pandora app. It is free for everyone to listen to music. But, if users want to enjoy songs without any interruption of annoying ads, they can opt for a membership model that costs approximately five dollars a month. Whereas, the $9.99 model offers unlimited search and download of songs. In other words, subscribers should get much more in lieu of a small fee. You can start by offering a free trial to attract the users for a paid plan. If the users will get enhanced experience, they will definitely go for purchasing the subscription.  

  1. Prepare Referral Program

Finally, user referrals can be one of the most effective and easiest ways to boost in-app revenue. The good thing is the referral program does not require much work on the app owner’s part. When you offer an in-app referral program, your existing users will take care of it by inviting their friends and family to join the app. In a way, you can increase the number of downloads.

All you need is to offer an incentive to both existing and prospective app users for registering in this program. Though it looks like a win-win situation for both app owners and users, the referral program is more beneficial for the app owners in the long run as it helps them build a good reputation and increase the user’s loyalty.

Concluding Remarks

If you have an objective of making money from your app, in-app purchase is your perfect starting point. You need to focus on the marketing of your app in the first place to attract as many people as possible. A mobile application development company can assist you in promoting app with App Store Optimization (ASO) services. When the users get satisfied by your app’s appearance and performance, you can start taking monetary benefits from your app.

From sending notifications periodically to starting a loyalty program, all the above-mentioned tips can help you increase the revenue through in-app purchases.

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