PhotoMeta in-app purchase

A couple of months ago I already blogged about PhotoMeta iAd revenue. Today I want to take a closer look at the in-app purchase.

The PhotoMeta in-app purchase of $2.99 has a dual function:

1. Detailed metadata values become available
2. iAds are no longer displayed

From the initial release of the app, I thought it would be interesting to closely follow the ratio in-app purchase / total downloads.

The chart below gives the evolution of that ratio since the PhotoMeta initial release (April 2011). Note that this is a cumulative ratio.

After a slow start, the ratio is leveling around 7%. Given the fact that the app exposes a lot of functionality in its free form, I'm convinced that 7% is a pretty good ratio.

I'm wondering how many of the remaining 93% would have paid $2.99 for the basic/free functionality. Maybe I should change my strategy in the next major PhotoMeta version, making it a paid app without iAds and without an in-app purchase. If anyone has experience with this, feel free to contact me or use the comments.

Comments

[Michael Mayers]

Hi Chris,

Great post. Just a few questions: If this chart is cumulative how comes the ratio in the final three months is less than the month prior to that? I'm guessing, but could this

Have you done any kind of cohort analysis on your in-app purchase data? For example, splitting users into cohorts by the week they downloaded and then assessed what the in-app purchase experience was for each cohort? That could highlight some interesting insights if some cohorts performed better than others.

Other cohort segmentation options could be geographic, pre- and post-major release / upgrade, device type, etc.

Regards,

Mike

[Chris]

The ratio expresses the total number of in-app purchases / total number of app downloads over the complete lifecycle of the app (until a certain date). The ratio can decline if in a specific month there are a lot of new downloads but not so many new in-app purchases.

I've never done any analysis using cohorts.

Chris.