App publishers have some concerns about dynamic pricing in mobile apps. I respond to common concerns and say why you should consider Sweet Pricing. Sweet Pricing helps mobile app publishers maximize revenue with price testing, segmented pricing and dynamic pricing.
Over the past year, I have reached out to hundreds of publishers. In that time, I have heard a number of concerns about dynamic pricing that have made publishers uneasy about Sweet Pricing and our tools. A small number of these concerns arise time and time again.
In this blog post, I will address the most common concerns that I hear. These are the most common reasons that app publishers are cautious about Sweet Pricing or choose not to use our product.
Concern #1: We Already Use Our Own Tools
In many cases, publishers are already using their own tools before I reach out to them. A very small number of app publishers roll their own dynamic pricing solution, but many rely on basic A/B testing frameworks or simple data collection.
But these tools are often rudimentary and not the highest priority for app makers; their highest priority being app making. In many cases, these tools are nothing more than a server that responds with a product ID.
At its very core, Sweet Pricing is a server that responds with a product ID. But we do a whole lot more. Here are three things that Sweet Pricing can do that most in-house tools cannot:
- Segmentation: You can segment your audience by a number of attributes and deliver the correct pricing to each segment;
- Price Model Testing: You can run two or more price models together to compare performance, and ensure that each user stays in the same test group throughout the test’s lifetime;
- Enriched Attributes: You can use non-static attributes like ‘engagement’ that we calculate in real-time.
Most app publishers that I speak to cannot easily visualize or filter the data they collect. But our mobile app analytics tool gives you quick insight into your users’ purchasing behavior. You can view your app’s performance, filter by user segments and test new pricing models directly from our App Manager tool.
Building a complete set of analytics and pricing tools takes time, effort and money, and it often makes sense to use a third party tool rather than building tools in-house. Sweet Pricing’s plans start at just $15 per month, so maintaining in-house tools works out much more expensive in most cases.
Concern #2: It Is Too Early to Think About Dynamic Pricing
When I talk to smaller app publishers, I am often told that it is too early for them to think about dynamic pricing. They have a huge list of priorities and dynamic pricing is right at the bottom.
It is obvious that pricing becomes more important as apps generate more revenue. App publishers use a segmented pricing or dynamic pricing tool to refine a pricing model. But the tools must compete with all the other priorities that actually generate revenue.
But I think it is worth considering Sweet Pricing even if you are making a few $1,000 per month. Here’s why:
- Sweet Pricing offers three products that suit three types of app publishers. Roughly speaking, the smallest app publishers benefit from our basic price testing tool, which is 100% free. Medium sized publishers benefit from segmented pricing, which starts at just $15 per month. And the largest app publishers benefit from bespoke machine learning based dynamic pricing, which we will launch early next year.
- Insight into future trends. For small app publishers, dynamic pricing might not have a large pay off in dollar terms. But a tool like Sweet Pricing can give invaluable insight into purchasing behavior that you can use to refine your pricing model in the future.
- Successful apps grow quickly. Successful mobile apps grow extremely fast. In many categories, such as mobile games, the lifetime of an app is relatively short. So if you wait too long to implement dynamic pricing, you might only be optimizing tail revenue.
A dynamic pricing tool might truly be a no-priority for your mobile app. But it is worth thinking objectively about whether implementing a tool today could be beneficial in the long term.
Concern #3: Dynamic Pricing Is Too Complex to Implement
This relates to the previous concern about priorities. Some app publishers are concerned that implementing Sweet Pricing could take a long time, or require experience with dynamic pricing.
We have designed Sweet Pricing to take the headache out of price testing, segmented pricing and dynamic pricing. Our main objective is to make it super easy to install our client libraries and manage in-app prices.
For most mobile apps, it should take no more than one developer day to implement and test Sweet Pricing. When I implemented Sweet Pricing in an iOS app, it took just a few hours.
We provide open source client libraries for both Android and iOS. For each library, there is a simple 4 step set up guide that a developer can follow. Once you sign up to Sweet Pricing, we’ll also send you an onboarding course by email that helps you configure Sweet Pricing and create your first pricing model.
Concern #4: We Want the Same Prices on Android, iOS and/or the Web
If you have apps on both Android and iOS, and perhaps a web app, you might want to ensure that prices are consistent across all experiences. But this doesn’t necessarily restrict you to static pricing.
If you require that users sign into an account, Facebook or Twitter, you will have access to a unique user ID such as an email address. You can use this unique user ID to ensure that prices are consistent across all platforms.
Simply pass a user ID to Sweet Pricing’s client library, and our servers will ensure that users see and pay the same prices on Android, iOS and the web. In June, I wrote Cross-Platform Pricing that shows you how to pass a user ID to Sweet Pricing.
With this feature, you can deploy segmented or dynamic pricing and your users will see the same prices across all their devices. The set up process is exactly the same, so there’s no additional work that you need to do.
What Do You Think About Dynamic Pricing?
I hope this blog post has addressed some of the concerns you have about Sweet Pricing. If you have any concerns I have not covered, send me an email or tweet @sweetpricing your question.
If you have an Android or iOS mobile app, search for your app on our website. You will find out whether your app is eligible to use Sweet Pricing’s tools, and get an instant quote for Sweet Pricing Lite and Sweet Pricing Pro.
Sweet Pricing Lite is our basic price testing tool. You can use this tool to test the performance of a price increase or decrease. It is 100% free.
Sweet Pricing Pro is our segmented pricing tool. Rather than using static pricing, you can segment your audience into groups and deliver targeted prices to each group. Plans start at $15 per month for up to 5,000 monthly active users. Use our search tool to get an instant quote.
Sweet Pricing Dynamic is our machine learning based dynamic pricing tool. We build a bespoke model for each mobile app we work with. Dynamic will be available early next year. Contact us to register your interest.
