How to Build More Successful Paywalls — Sylvain Gauchet

David Barnard:

Welcome to the Sub Club Podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub Club is brought to you by RevenueCat. Thousands of the world's best apps trust RevenueCat to power in-app purchases, manage customers and grow revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. You can learn more at revenuecat.com. Let's get into the show. Hello, I'm your host, David Barnard. Today's conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in RevenueCat's State of Subscription apps report. Each episode in this series will explore one crucial metric, ensure actionable insights from top subscription app operators. With me today is Sylvain Gauchet, Director of Revenue Strategy, US at Babbel, and Chief Insights Miner at GrowthGems. On the podcast I talk with Sylvain about top strategies for paywall optimization, the danger of over-optimizing, and why the screen before your paywall might actually matter more than your paywall. Hey, Sylvain. Thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Sylvain Gauchet:

Hey, David. Excited to be here. I got some good stuff for you. Looking forward to dive in.

David Barnard:

All right. You've been mining gems all year, and I wanted to talk through some of the best paywall-related gems you've mined this year. So for those who don't know Sylvain, he runs something called GrowthGems, where he watches all the industry videos and listens to podcasts and then shares the top tips. Mines the gems from those. And you had some doozies this year and we wanted to focus today on paywalls and monetization. What I wanted to do is go through the top few gems related to paywalls' trends, like what's been new and exciting in 2024 that you think people should be implementing in 2025, if they haven't already this year? So let's kick it off. What's the first, it's got to be the most important gem of all. What's your top gem for 2024 on paywalls?

Sylvain Gauchet:

It's actually framing the discussion kind of gem. It's actually on everything leading to the paywall, because I'd be remiss if I don't talk about that at all. So the gem is from Darrell Stone that used to be at Citizen and I forgot where it is right now. So the gem is get your users excited about your product by telling the whole story through the flows that present the paywall. Think about the user mindset when they open the app and the story you reveal to them through the onboarding, so that when they see the paywall, it's contextualized. I think that story, especially focusing on the very beginning and your hook in the onboarding and the peak end rule of handing strong before the paywall, is what will make the paywalls successful, or a big part of it.

David Barnard:

Any other examples of apps that you think do an incredible job leading up to the paywall?

Sylvain Gauchet:

Yeah. Leading up, Rise Sleep is one that is often mentioned. I particularly like the hook and the story they tell at the beginning. Same thing in terms of the hook and [inaudible 00:03:13] how we feel. I discovered an app yesterday called 222 that has a video essentially onboarding and hook at the beginning. That's pretty amazing. So yeah. I think those are doing great.

David Barnard:

Awesome. All right. Gem number two?

Sylvain Gauchet:

Gem number two. It's about loss aversion as part of the onboarding. Have onboarding questions, then a generic paywall. Then more question related to specific premium features, or even have users set up those premium features. Then have a feature paywall and say "These are part of the premium plan." The way that works, because to try and explain it visually is, essentially, you have people set up features throughout the onboarding. Then you present them with a paywall that essentially is like, "Now get it." And if they don't get it, you explain to them everything they're going to lose. And they're going to essentially lose everything that they set up. So there's some cost fallacy and the idea is that the projects themselves during onboarding, you show that after they reject the initial paywall. And it's that last aversion that pushes them to convert.

David Barnard:

Yeah. That's a great one. All right. Next gem?

Sylvain Gauchet:

Next gem. There are multiple things you should test displaying during the paywall experience. A list of features and explanation of how the free trial works, social proof, comparison of basic versus pro plan. This can be done through a long scrollable screen or multiscreen paywall. And this is from Ekaterina who is at Mimo. And she was mentioning that a Mimo, the multiscreen auction led to 60% increase in the trial opt-in rates. And I've been seeing those multiscreen paywalls more and more, especially for free trial, where instead of showing the bleakest timeline, they actually break it down in multiple screens to tell you what's going to happen in two days, what's going to happen in five days, et cetera.

But, it can work also if you don't have a free trial. And essentially what I like about it, I guess, it blurs the line between what's onboarding and what's a paywall. It's like if you have a screen before the paywall, is that part of the onboarding? Is that part of the paywall? But, it gives you that possibility to show benefits, explain better the actual transactional aspect, and [inaudible 00:05:22] some last-minute pitch or recap to push people over the edge.

David Barnard:

Yeah. That's such a great one as well. I would guess that part of why this works ... And this is just maybe a truism that you should use throughout your entire onboarding even, is that people don't read. So if you have a lot to say, a long paywall can work, especially for a hard paywall, because then people maybe will take the time to scroll if you have a hard paywall and they don't have an option but to read.

But, if you don't have a hard paywall especially, and it's a premium product and you have a lot you want to communicate, communicating it in smaller chunks that are easier to digest in multiple steps is a great way to take the things that you would think should be on the paywall, but can actually be one-at-a-time stepped through in a way that ... And you were saying this earlier, is with the first gem from Darrell, about what's leading up to the paywall, is that this is the perfect example of really controlling those last few steps before the paywall with really strong messaging. And again, messaging that you maybe think should be on the paywall, but by putting it in individual pages, it can just be so much more impactful.

Sylvain Gauchet:

And the choice between long paywall and multiscreen, that's something you want to test. But, I agree if you have a long paywall, you're typically going to get only the real explorers scrolling down. And dividing it into pieces is usually helpful to get people to really see it. Also, an often-made mistake is your plans are not above the fold if you had a long paywall, because you decided to put too much stuff on it and then you miss out.

David Barnard:

This is actually fairly easy to test. So if you currently have a long paywall, take that paywall, break it up into three or four pages and experiment with a multi-stage paywall, because you might be surprised just how well that performs compared to the long paywall.

Sylvain Gauchet:

100%.

David Barnard:

All right. Next gem?

Sylvain Gauchet:

Next gem is from Thomas Petit, favorite growth consultant. It's the conversion behavior of users during onboarding and post-onboarding is different. So you probably want a different paywall for the two. When you A-B test your paywall, separate the analysis between the onboarding paywall and the post-onboarding paywalls. And I like it, because typically you think one paywall, but you essentially displayed in a bunch of places. So you can make one change to your paywall that's going to help right at the end of the onboarding or even during onboarding, but that can hurt after. And same thing can be true of the opposite. If you start showing that free versus pay charge on your first paywall, then you're probably going to hurt yourself. But, if you use it as a second paywall later on when some people access a feature, you are actually helping them understand what they could get in addition, because they'll probably already know to some extent what they can get for free, since they did not convert initially.

David Barnard:

This can be relatively low-hanging fruit, though. So if you do have a paywall that has a description of each of your main premium features, so that when a user taps on that specific feature, they see the pitch for that feature more prominently, those kind of things can probably be done fairly straightforward. And then again, even if you're not super sophisticated about analysis, you can maybe form a hypothesis that if they tap on a specific premium feature and you are selling that premium feature more prominently. So maybe there's ways to maybe do it easier and less sophisticated and still make it work. But, I think you're totally right. It's like, it's too easy to get lost in the weeds and spend way too much time over-optimizing when you're early. If you're making a 100K a month or more, these are the kind of things that are going to help you get from a hundred to 200 to 500 to a million, is starting to optimize things like this.

Sylvain Gauchet:

In the end, you need to do the math. It will rise prioritization and see if that's, let's say, a better opportunity than changing something in your onboarding. And maybe it depends. If you have a revenue counting, it's easy to do, then yeah. If there's an effort that's limited, so you can turn that over pretty quickly. You actually set up things very nicely for the next time. With Impulse, it's from the 2.5 gamers show and it was mostly J. K. Raimer that was presenting it. And essentially it goes like, it's create feature/quiz/report-specific paywalls, focusing on what the user could get, based on what triggered the paywall. When they closed this specific paywall, show a pop-up telling them about all the benefits they get with premium access. If they decline again, give them the option to access the initial feature for IAP.

So it's essentially a multi-layer thing where you saw a specific feature, you click on it and you get a paywall that's specific to that content you try to access, is unlock it with premium. But, if you don't unlock it, you reiterate everything else you can get with premium. So you have essentially a second paywall that says, "Here's everything else you can get with premium," and if the close it, then you have an IAP in that purchase to give them access just to that one feature, or piece of content. And so you piece it like that to hopefully increase conversion and target people alongside the demand curve.

David Barnard:

Yeah. I really like this one. And at App Growth Annual ... And we weren't able to share the recording, but at App growth Annual an employee from Google, Tammy, was sharing how much Google is seeing apps that use hybrid monetization have been really succeeding. And I think this is something folks who are focused on iOS can actually learn from Android, and it might be just as impactful if not more on iOS. And that's this idea of hybrid monetization. It's like if somebody is willing to pay for something, but they're not quite ready to pay for the whole experience and subscribe and have recurring payments, some people are just not wanting to subscribe. They have so many subscriptions. Even when you have a ton of subscriptions, if you find it valuable, you're going to pay. But then, they might be enticed by these single in-app purchases. So again, probably not something early stage that you want to get too sophisticated with, to your point earlier. But, it can be a powerful unlock to kind of get them to pay, experience the value and then want more. So yeah. I think it's fantastic.

Sylvain Gauchet:

Yeah. Exactly that same caveat on your growth stage. It absolutely might not be the thing you want to focus on if you are early. And the same thing goes with anything. If you're price testing today and haven't tested anything else, you're missing out. So you need to go in areas where you don't have diminishing returns or where you have big opportunities.

David Barnard:

All right. What's the next gem?

Sylvain Gauchet:

The next gem is also from Thomas Petit and its aggressiveness of monetization comes in many different shades and those tricks often work. So you can have free-trial toggles, Wheel of Fortune, on or after the paywall, back up offers. But, you need to find the balance so you don't give an overall scammy feeling. And we end with firming the discussion again, is how many of those tricks are you going to layer into your app? And how much is that in line with your app, its concept, your audience? Or how much is that going to maybe annoy them and deteriorate the brand perception?

David Barnard:

Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about this. I actually recently did a podcast with a golfing app. And I loved the way Alex, the CEO there ... I love the way he framed being more conscientious of your users. And the example he gave was that he actually has imaginary conversations with users in his head anytime he's writing copy, building features, going through flows. And so I think this is a perfect example of if somebody walks into a golf shop, they would expect somebody to walk up and say, "Hey, what are you interested in today? You're looking for clubs? You need some balls?" That's expected, right? And that's not annoying when somebody asks, "Hey, you need some help?" But then, if they follow up and you say, "Oh, no. I'm just browsing," and they're like, "Oh, we have this," and "Oh, we have that," and they follow you around the store, it's like that's awkward, right? That's the experience we don't like as humans.

And so I think this is actually a really good analogy to draw, is go through your own onboarding and have a conversation in your head with the user. It's like, "Okay. This page says that. How does that make the user feel? What do they say?", if I'm talking to another human being or role play with colleagues or something. And how does it feel going through all this? And I think this point from Thomas and the way you shared it is really good, that if you layer on too many of these, it starts to feel like that used car salesman. And if you're spending a ton of money on ads and you got to hit that [inaudible 00:13:59]. And the brand isn't important to you, you're okay with higher churn or whatever, maybe you do layer on a bunch of these together and it is what it is, it can be very effective.

But, I think you need to do that with full realization of how you make your users feel. And then what that means to the long-term performance of the business, because as he and I talked about again on that podcast is that a lot of consumer subscriptions, there's so much churn. And so, if you're using all of these tactics and laying on so many, you should expect higher churn, because you're doing a high-pressure sale, which then leaves the user not as fond of the brand and maybe a little more on edge. So yeah. I think this is a fantastic way to wrap up this whole paywall optimization conversation, is that you can go too far and that that may not be good for the business, even if the A-B test is successful. Awesome. Well, Sylvain, this has been so much fun chatting through these gems. Anything you wanted to share as we wrapped up?

Sylvain Gauchet:

No. Go visit GrowthGems on Substack, subscribe to the newsletter. I have awesome content coming up. I think it's going to become [inaudible 00:15:08] for anybody in subscription apps, so go check it out.

David Barnard:

Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Sylvain Gauchet:

Have a good one.

David Barnard:

Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat.subclub.com to join our private community.