The day after we launched iCombat lite (iTunes link) I wrote a post about how we had waited months longer than we should have to launch a lite version. Looking back the delay was caused mostly by a fear of cannibalizing our potential user base and concern for giving away our iCombat’s secret sauce in the demo version. After a month live in the app store, the evidence for doing a lite version is compelling proof for anyone looking to launch an app on a small marketing budget. See below the 1 month conversion stats as well as some of our key takeaways:
Conversion rates well above 5%
Most developers report conversion rates between 0.5% and 2%, and while Ethan Nicholas of iShoot fame at one point claimed (see comments) a conversion rates of 8% (200k sales off of 2.4MM lite downloads at the time) we didn’t think that was a reasonable expectation given the increased competition in the App store since (and in the gaming category more specifically). And since there is no way of knowing where users are coming from we thought at minimum we should break out the conversion rates controlling for the previous month’s sales average.
I was surprised when I found our conversion rates in the control case close to 7% percent for U.S. sales. Even when iCombat was clearing over 2.5k lite downloads a day our conversion rate was peaking at above 9%. While the early high conversion rate could be attributable in part to iCombat’s update that also occurred during the period, the averages trended steadily around this rate both before and after the update went live. Aside from the new release it is worth noting that most other conditions were controlled for as there was no press, no features by Apple, no reviews, advertisements or anything else that might have spiked sales (a real marketing coup we know).
As for the big surge in monthly sales (5x), this is a bit skewed due to the low average volume of sales iCombat had experienced in the month prior to the launch of the lite version.
Some lessons learned:
1. Should have released lite version from the beginning – There was no point to waiting and sacrificing the initial new release buzz. Since it is harder to get featured once your app is launched, say for app updates, it is important to strike early and hard with your app release.
2. Lite does NOT cannibalize sales – If your app is a gimmick then it might not make sense but in all other cases it only helps to increase sales (see our previous post on this topic)
3. Get the bugs out for your lite release – users churn lite apps and are fine giving you 1 star if they don’t like the experience. This is especially bad because the App store prompts users to rate an app when they try to delete it
4. Lite sales trail off too but paid sales remain higher – if you don’t have the x-factor that is needed to spread the word your lite downloads will fall as they have for iCombat, but in our case paid sales have continued to sell at a minimum rate several times higher than the pre-lite period
5. Frequent releases do juice downloads – Pocket God and other frequently updated apps have benefited from a weekly sales bump as they show up in the new releases section of the app store (users also like this episode style model)
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Interesting observation. Can you please tell me a bit more about which conversion rate you state. Thanks, Joe
Joe,
I don’t understand your question really…the conversion rate is how many paid versions have sold as a % of total lite downloads.
Miguel
That post let me thing more about how we are going to submit our 1st app.
Good job
Thanks for this interesting post. Sorry if this has been made clear somewhere else, but did you release a lite version prior to the full version, or concurrent with the full version?
The lite version was released months after the paid version. That is why we decided to write the post, because iCombat had a 5x increase in sales over the previous month of paid sales.
I love this post, its thoughtful analysis and rock solid conclusions. At Flurry, an iPhone app analytics company, we also studied and shared data about how a Lite version can impact sales of your paid app. I’m just adding our data point to this discussion.
http://blog.flurry.com/bid/19375/iPhone-App-Store-Marketing-Give-it-Away-to-Get-Paid
Peter Farago
VP Marketing
Flurry Analytics
good article just some points,
2: If you have a good title that can stand alone and attract sales without a lite version then a lite version does canabalize sales as you instantly go to from 100% conv rate to 0-15%. your downloads need to exceed conversion * 100 times your average sales
3: Non paying customers are more likely to rate badly. ex “I don’t like puzzle games” for someone who downloaded a puzzle game.
In most cases you should release a lite version, but it really must be evaluated on a case by case basis. Great games/apps and ip driven titles especially will not go demo until they are all but dead.
This is fantastic info, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share.
One minor issue: the link to Pocket God is one letter short.
Got it…fixed thanks!