“People are going web-to-app for the wrong reasons…” — Thomas Petit, Independent App Consultant

Web-to-app funnels have been around for a while, but they’re becoming an increasingly hot topic. Despite the growing interest, there’s still a lot of confusion about their real benefits and the best ways to implement them.

This week on the Sub Club podcast, we talked to Thomas Petit — an independent app growth consultant who works with several app businesses who’ve found success with web-to-app — about what kinds of apps should consider implementing a web-to-app strategy and why.

To fee or not to fee?

Many app businesses get started with web-to-app because they want to avoid app store fees. (Which makes sense; a 15-30% cut of your revenue can feel pretty steep.) But according to Thomas, this really isn’t a good reason. Owning your transactions on the web introduces a host of additional complexities that can outweigh the benefits for a lot of businesses. “Many people who move to web-to-app underestimate the amount of work that it [takes] to maintain it,” Thomas said. “There is value in owning the relationship, but it translates into work.” Not only do you have to set up and maintain your payments infrastructure, but you still have to pay a 3% fee to a payment processor like Stripe.

As Thomas points out, the 15-30% app store commission is actually worth a lot. “I believe there is real value behind the commission: like the visibility that the app store is giving you, the fact that they’re processing the tax for you, the fact that they’re processing refunds and billing errors and so on — there is real value behind it.” When you take into account that conversions and retention are generally higher on the app stores (plus the app stores support around 200 payment options, which isn’t possible to do on your own), most apps will want to maintain a presence there.

The Benefits of web-to-app

If you ask Thomas, he’ll tell you that people are going to web-to-app for the wrong reason (avoiding app store fees), but staying when they discover the opportunities that they hadn’t originally considered. web-to-app gives you more control and flexibility for marketing your app and driving conversions.

📚 Further reading: The pros and cons of web-to-app funnels

Reach new audiences

Besides avoiding app store fees, two of the most common reasons for doing web-to-app are more flexible attribution and audience expansion. With web-to-app, you can get around some of the app stores’ restrictions and collect more granular data about who your users are and where they came from.

If you have a niche app that’s best experienced on an alternative platform (to Roku, Apple TV, or the Amazon Appstore), a web-to-app flow can also help you go beyond the App Store and Google Play to reach a wider audience.

Better support for B2B

But one of the biggest (and often overlooked) challenges with in-app purchases is a lack of support for the B2B use case. To date, Apple and Google haven’t developed a way for employees who need access to apps for their job to be part of a team account or have their employer purchase their subscription. If your app caters to the B2B space, you can get around this limitation with a web-based solution that makes expensing and team billing easier.

Thomas has encountered this issue. “One thing that is very limiting when you pay in the app store is the billing when you’re a professional,” he said. “I’m thinking about one client in particular… where they actually had this restriction because they had lots of small teams that were like, ‘We want to use your product together and we don’t care about the price… but we need it to go through the billing of whatever HR wants.’ [This kind of transaction] can be handled on the web but cannot be handled when you use IAPs. And this is a very good case to go web-to-app because that’s what the customer needs.”

Customize user journeys

Within your app store listing, there’s only so much you can do to showcase your app and its value. The App Store and Play Store set the parameters of how much text you can include and what kind of assets. But on the web, you’re in control — you can set up as simple or complex a landing page as you want. And some apps like Ladder are using web-to-app to not only create longer, more compelling onboarding experiences to drive conversions, but also to train the Instagram and TikTok algorithms to identify more high-intent potential users.

Some businesses are even offering part or all of their app’s functionality on the web. Take Photoroom, for example. “I think they put at least ten free tools on the website that are in the app,” Thomas said. “And at the beginning, I was like, ‘I don’t know why they’re doing this… this looks like cannibalization because I’m doing something on the web without any kind of login. But in the end, I believe it’s beneficial because they’re playing the long game — you know the app is there. If you need it, you know there are other features in there.”

A happy medium

For many subscription app businesses, a hybrid strategy that includes both an optimized app store listing and a targeted web acquisition flow is the way to go. This way, you can take advantage of higher conversion rates and user value in the app stores, while also reaching new audiences, offering more tailored user experiences, and collecting more nuanced attribution data.

📚 Further reading: Using web-to-app to go from 0-1 with your paid user acquisition