mobile-appsMy company wants to get a new mobile application and asked me to think about how to woo customers with such an application.
There are plenty of apps out there giving you the opportunity to just use a certain part of it, as long as you did not buy the whole content.
As I have not done something like this ever before, I would need some kind of guide on which part to give for free and which part to pay for. (Maybe a strategie guide?)
Thank you for your effort
ps: It’s about an industrial app, so I do not want a “buy ad-free version”
Note - Thinking from the customer point of view It depends on the type of application you are going to publish.
If the app is going to provide some service maybe restrict the service to 30 days in free version or something like that. And lure them to pay for the service.
If it is an utility application maybe cut down some functionalities in free version and ask them to pay for certain features they want.
Freebies! , yeah people love freebies . Spread some love by sharing free stuff with your users and watch them roll into your net.( A strategy used by freecharge, paytm, uber, ola and many others in INDIA)
Additional - Ask users to install monetised applications to get the full version aka the paid version of your app. ( You can earn from your users installs )
It all depends on the type of application, maybe share more details about your app.
This is something that you should try to be a lean as possible about.
The first thing you need to do is to test if customers will actually find value in the full (paid) product. Talk to dozens of potential customers and see if it solves a problem that they think is a big deal for them. If they are excited then it is time to start building.
Your main question however was…
“which part to give for free and which part to pay for”
This is not something that anyone can tell you without great detail about your product, and even then it is all guess work. That’s the point, though, anything you do now is only a guess, those guesses need to be validated. The best way to do this is to guess which features can be in the free version and will still provide enough value to hook some customers.
The things you may want to keep in mind are…
Then, once your best guess is built, launch it as a small beta. Track what your customers are doing and saying (quantitative and qualitative data) and then use this to make the decision if this free version is good enough or if it needs to be changed (refined or expanded).
One critical piece of advice is this. Once you officially launch the app, NEVER take features away from free users! This can cause your ratings and customer relations to plummet overnight. You can always give free users something new but if you take one feature away they will feel violated (even if they paid nothing for the app).
For more information about the qualitative side of this testing see Running Lean by Ash Maurya…
http://www.amazon.com/Running-Lean-Iterate-Works-Series/dp/1449305172
For more information about the quantitative side (testing feature usage, conversion, churn…) check out Lean Analytics…
http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Analytics-Better-Startup-Faster/dp/1449335675/ref=pd_sim_144?ie=UTF8&dpID=511KJDBt4fL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160&refRID=1B49ZDMTEAPAEFYVN8KP
Hope this is helpful,
-RB
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