Why Web Onboarding Should Sell The Problem, Instead Of The Solution – Leon Sasson, Rise Science

David Barnard:

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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 topic, and share actionable insights from top subscription app operators. With me today, Leon Sasson, co-founder and CTO at Rise Science. On the podcast, I talk with Leon about why web onboarding should sell the problem instead of the solution, how discounted paid trials are beating free trials, and why creative that flopped for app ads might just crush it for web funnels.

Hey, Leon. Thanks for joining me again on the podcast.

Leon Sasson:

Hey, David. Good to be here. It's been a minute since last time, and the RevenueCat conference. Good time since.

David Barnard:

Yeah. Always good to chat with you. And the topic of web is something you and I have talked a lot about over the years. You were one of the early folks. I mean, I remember talking with you at MAU, gosh, four years ago or something, about Stripe, and chargebacks, and the challenges you were having. So you've been around the block, and I know in the last year, you've found some things that are finally really clicking, and so I was excited to have you on to talk about that, and what's working and why it's working. And I think you're super introspective and super into data, and so I feel like we're going to get a really fresh perspective. So tell me, what's working and why is it working?

Leon Sasson:

Oh man, it depends who you ask. But we've been trying to work on web stuff for a long, long time, probably in earnest around end of '21, early 2022 when the whole IDFA, ATT, scan period of time that it kind of wrecked everything for everyone. So it was a time of people really, and us too, freaking out about, "All right, what's the future? Is mobile marketing dead?" Because for a few months, it was totally dead. And the obvious first order thing to do was, like, "All right, let's do web funnels." And that was early 2022. So you sort of tried that a few times.

And back then, I would say there were some large players in the space doing it. It was more e-commerce, but you still had some... Maybe Noom was the biggest web funnel at the time, I believe so. I'll start with everything that wasn't working. So we did that for a while, and we were like, "All right, we need to figure out web." And I was pretty naive, "Hey, let's rebuild our app onboarding in web." That's kind of, "All right, let's do that." We did that, didn't quite work. Did that again maybe six months later, we just couldn't get it to work, not even close.

And we kind of gave up, and we sort of scratched it as, "Hey, our app relies too much on healthcare data, and all these cool features that are deep integrations on your phone. So maybe that's why it doesn't work on web, because we don't have your healthcare data, and we don't have all these sort of deep integrations with your wearables, and your sleep schedule and all of that." So we sort of parked that project, and also at that point, all the marketing world started working a little better on app. So the whole IDFA apocalypse, it was definitely bad, but things recovered, and the big published... Like, Meta and Google, and just everyone kind of figured out how to work with the new system. Even though it was painful, there was a path forward. So we kind of kept chugging along working on core, making our app better, and focusing entirely on our app.

And really maybe in 2024 or so, so now two years ago, we're like, "All right, let's give web another shot." And we never gave up truly, it was more about, "Hey, now it's not the time, but we know it's a big opportunity." And maybe the naive take, and maybe that was our third attempt, was, "Hey, it still needs to look similar to the app, and it's helpful to bypass some of the Apple fees or whatnot." Very quickly, talking to some people, and learning, it was like, "All right, those two things are pretty wrong."

And first of all, it changes the dynamic so much that the Apple billing thing is totally almost comparing Apples to oranges. It's not even remotely the equivalent formula, rather it's just one small piece of the equation. And second, once we talked to a few people that have cracked it, and coach us along the way, and then put us in the right path, we've also learned that the way web funnels are successful tend to be very different than the way app onboarding flows into be successful. And they're almost fundamentally different parts of the user journey, so you have to treat them like that. So that kind of kicked off really, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of iterations to get the right mechanism of what's going to work on web is different than app, and we should treat it as, "Hey, it's a different surface, a different channel entirely from the marketing side all the way to user experience."

So we sort of started from scratch, about, "This is not at all related to the app, this is a web funnel, and let's make that work, unrelated to what works on the app." And that kind of kicked off a learning path that so far has been super promising and super productive. So happy to dive in any areas there.

David Barnard:

Yeah. Well, let's get specific. When you say you need to treat it as a whole separate channel, what were the learnings? Why is the app onboarding not working on the web? And then how do you make that web-specific onboarding? What is it that people are enticed by and resonating with on the web that doesn't work in app? And why is it working in app and not on the web?

Leon Sasson:

Yeah. The thing that we learned on our side, and this might kind of vary by different developers and different companies, but one of the things that was pretty obvious from the get-go was the audience, especially if you look at it from the lens of, "Hey, you're acquiring users through paid marketing." Or any at scale marketing channels, the audience that you often attract to a web funnel tends to be very different than the audience that you attract to an app funnel. And there's obviously a little bit of overlap, because at the end of the day, the fundamental core user problem might be similar. In our case, it's people that might be exhausted in their lives, and are looking for a solution. That's a very overarching theme. But the audience is so different that we found some marketing channels down to the level of... Because the campaigns tend to be web campaigns, not app campaigns, you tend to have a chance to attract customers and users that are not traditional app users.

So they're not the type of users that are going to instinctively download an app as a solution to random problems in their lives. Whereas these are users that would happily buy stuff online, they're engaged in e-commerce, and they're happy to take a peek at something and go deeper. And if the solution happens to involve an app, you might be able to convince them that this is the right thing for them. But these are not users that would traditionally end up in the bottom funnel, "Hey, I'm going to download an app." Type audience. So it's a lot more higher top of funnel audience, which means that a lot of what ends up working is creating it as a lower intent to start, but often high willingness to pay, because on some of these marketing channels, you're attracting essentially an e-commerce audience, depending how you do it.

So it ends up being because the audience was different... And we can get into behavioral traits of the audience, but even down to demographics, the basic thing, you might be able to attract... We found that on web funnels, we can attract a lot older audiences, like 40, 50, 60-year-old people at scale, that maybe the traditional ad marketing wasn't really able to reach them, who knows exactly why. And then you can imagine very quickly that the way that you talk to a 50-year-old is very different than the way we talk to a 30-year-old. Especially in the lens of sleep and health, the problems might be very, very different. Because the audience changes, then you're starting essentially with a whole new blank slate on what works there.

So that's pretty high level, but it was pretty shocking that, "Hey, the audience is different." And that brings a corollary to the marketing, because the audience is different, then the creative that works can be very different on web than app. Not all of it, but some of it can be very different. Which then means that in a way, web funnel when you're running at scale on, say, Meta, or Google, or whatever other channel you might be running, you can end up where you have almost uncorrelated marketing performance between different types of campaigns. Everyone that markets might tell you, "Oh, this month performance is down, and everyone's freaking out." And when you run web and app separate, you realize, "Oh, maybe web is down this month, but app is up." Or the other way around. So you end up with actually a very different sort of cycle that, in a way, just makes the ecosystem a lot healthier, and more robust to flukes in performance. So that's a bit of the high level that we've learned on the website.

David Barnard:

Are there specific channels or even placements that you feel like do especially well on web that you're seeing a lot of success with? So on Meta, is it more the Facebook placements than the Instagram placements? Or is it Google versus Meta? Are you seeing any specific channels perform better than others?

Leon Sasson:

We find that generally speaking, they all work the same, because the web audience, at least for us, has leaned older. You tend to see more shift towards Facebook blue app than Instagram, but that's pretty high level, and that ebbs and flows all the time depending on creative. So on that side, there's not a lot of differences. But on the creative side, we often see creative that maybe wasn't working on app that now starts working on web, and the other way around. So you have more chances of winning when you can try something twice, and maybe it's going to work on one side and not the other, because the audience is different.

So our job on the web is, we're getting people to realize the problem they have, which often is something that rhymes with, "Hey, you're exhausted." Or, "You have all these potential problems in your life, and you might not have realized that sleep is the reason why you have those problems. So we have this app that will help you take control, and feel a lot better, and unlock that part of your life." We had to unlearn a lot of the app onboarding that we spent a lot of time crafting, which was, on the app, it was a lot about time to value, "Hey, get to time to value, get to aha moment." You have as long as you want, but you really have to almost impress the user and give them value before you kind of ask for a hard commitment of a trial start, or a credit card, or whatever.

On web, we realized that because people tend to be a lot higher on the consideration phase, often, you're just going trying to go deeper on understanding the problem and personalizing it, but not going straight into solutions, because they might not be sold on the solution yet. So just going out and trying to tell them their plan, and tell them all the things that the features are going to do, that might not work. Whereas trying to understand, and making realize, "Oh, this is the problem you have. Let's now talk to solutions later on the app." And it's all a separate phase, and it's about helping them realize that they might have a problem, and that we could have a solution for them that they should try out, versus trying to go straight to the aha moment of, "Oh, wow, these people are going to solve my problem on the first 30 seconds." Because they're just higher on the consideration phase, they just haven't downloaded the app, tend to be a different audience. So we did have to unlearn a lot of that product side.

David Barnard:

It actually makes a lot of sense when you put it that way, that when you download an app, you're looking for a solution, and so the app onboarding is to get you to a solution. When you're seeing an ad on the web, and you're on a website... I know when I'm surfing the web, or reading about something, I am more in the discovery phase, like, "What is it about my sleep that's broken? What do I need?" And so it kind of makes sense that the web onboarding needs that more exploratory, framing the problem much deeper than the app, where people are just ready for the solution. Would you say that kind of perspective also informs creative, or is there any pattern between the creative that's working on the web versus what's working with app campaigns that you're sending into the app?

Leon Sasson:

There probably are. We just don't think about it that way. We don't think about, "Oh, web creative versus app creative." We think about our creative as a much more deeper into what customer personas we're trying to reach, what hooks and value props we're trying to sell. Yes, because the audience is different, but the creative team doesn't really care. It just happens that they get a different persona, or a different type of audience that they're working on the creative, we don't necessarily try crafting creative for web. It's more like, "Hey," I don't know, "web has more females over 50 year olds, so there's more creative for that audience." Let's say. It doesn't matter if it's app or web, at least for our current status.

David Barnard:

So then are you trying most creatives on both app and web simultaneously, and just letting the algorithms decide what wins, or are you creating web-specific campaigns and app-specific campaigns?

Leon Sasson:

So that's a deep question. That's very, very deep. Creative testing at scale, I feel is the never ending... There's always a hack, always a system. Everyone thinks they're better. Facebook tells you, or Meta, or Google, they all tell you what to do. And then the experts tell you to not do what the... The other people tell you to do. So you've got to try it all, and I feel every six months, things change. But one of the nice things about web is the algorithm that learns for delivery tends to be a lot... So the algorithm, the signal and the measurement is a lot more effective, because the platforms, Meta, Google, and TikTok, and whatever else you may be, they don't have to deal with the scan, ATT, privacy related constraints that, "Hey, data is delayed. The attribution is broken. You can only see 50% of the traffic instead of 100%."

So on a web, because it's more traditional, from the lens of the advertising platform, web is essentially an e-commerce, which is a lot more easier to pipe all the instrumentation into the system. So the learning system is faster, so it's a lot easier to run those campaigns, one. And then two, the algorithm tends to optimize a lot faster. So you tend to find the people a lot faster, and you tend to know if creative works a lot faster than on app, where you might not be able to really dive down, and you might need to wait a week or two to know if it's working. And depends on the budget, if it's too low budget, it might be longer. So on web, a lot of that iteration cycle tends to be much, much, much faster, which is a huge unlock for web. So it's not necessarily about testing strategy. We do test most creative across both app and web separately, but at the beginning, I believe we might not have been doing that. So it depends on testing strategy, and we're always iterating on that.

David Barnard:

I wanted to dive into a few tactical things since we are running short on time. Are you spinning up a bunch of different funnels? Are you matching the funnel to the creative? Is there a persona bent where the... Do a creative with a specific persona in mind, and then that leads to a very specific funnel with that persona in mind?

Leon Sasson:

Yeah, I think that's holy grail of web funnels, and you can actually go to the level of the creative itself matches the funnel in a way that app campaigns just cannot do at all, because you have to download the app in the middle of the flow. We do that to some extent. It hasn't been a huge breakthrough yet, because it does require an [inaudible 00:16:05] more complex operations between marketing, and product, and coordination of everything. But we are seeing very interesting success that you can imagine, where you can have very different creatives and funnels for very different personas, and it's all customized. So we have some level of customization, but we're going a lot deeper on that, because it does seem that it's going to be another huge way of unlocking when you can truly personalize the experience for that audience that they're coming from, a very specific type of user need.

So for example, there's people that are tired and want to sleep better because they want to be more productive in the morning. That's a very different persona than your 50-year-old female that's struggling with sleep-related issues around menopause, which there's a whole body of science around, and what you can do. So very different personas. And yes, in the funnel, you can get into customizing different parts of the experience, but if you can really tie the funnel to the user audience that you're reaching, you can just reach a lot more people, and let the algorithm just find those people for you.

David Barnard:

Last question, pricing and packaging. Are you using different pricing and packaging on the web versus the app? And then even on specific funnels or specific customizations, are you showing them different offerings, like only monthly, monthly and annual, annual only, lifetime? How are you thinking about pricing and packaging on the web versus app, and then even with individual funnels?

Leon Sasson:

Yeah. So the answer is, for sure. And before I even say that, I would say the building relationship is incredibly important, because when you move away from, "Hey, letting Apple handle all the subscription stuff." The reality is Apple does solve a lot of problems that you don't have to think about, and you can argue whether that's worth 30% or something else, but Apple does solve the problem for users, and users know how that works. When you are on web, that's your problem now, and you have the trust of the customer. So everything from taking the payment, to canceling your subscription, to changing plans, to requesting refunds, to the customer support, to potentially handling chargebacks, you have to get incredibly good at that as table stakes, because if not, you're either just making money on people that have no clue how to cancel subscription, or even worse, that's just going to destroy your app reviews, and your credit card... You're going to get flack with all the credit card systems.

So the billing work stream of the journey needs to be just super polished. Everything from starting, to canceling, to changing plans. We just spend a tremendous amount of time polishing that as much as we can. So that cannot be an understatement of, "Oh, we'll do that later after with signal." Because the other caveat is, if you don't have all of that fleshed out when you're testing, the signal you get, you might see, "Oh, your trial conversion is super high." And it's like, "Oh, well, because you don't have a way to cancel the subscription. So of course the trail conversion is high, but everyone is super upset at you because they don't have to cancel the subscription." So-

David Barnard:

And you're getting high chargebacks and high refunds, which means your payment acceptance rate is lower.

Leon Sasson:

Now, back to your real question of monetization, packaging. I mean, like everything, we experiment a lot. We have found two major learnings. One is, yes, it needs to be different. We tend to skew to shorter-term plans, so monthly, quarterly. But we test everything, because we found the users are in a very different consideration phase. And then two, we tend to not offer free trials on web, which is maybe the biggest difference. And in some cases we do offer, but most of the time, we don't. And instead, we found that offering heavily discounted trial period, so, "Hey, the first month might be half the price." Or whatever measure it might be, ends up being a lot more promising for a bunch of reasons. It helps the algorithm optimize a lot better, so it's not finding people that start trials and then automatically cancel a minute later. So we have found through testing that that works better for us.

I know some people do find that through trials in web works just as well, so I don't think this is a... Everything on pricing, monetization, it sort of depends heavily on your space, and your app, and your brand, so everything needs to be tested. But for us, yes, pricing, packaging is very different than the app directly.

David Barnard:

All right, Leon. Thank you so much for sharing so many great insights. As we wrap up, anything you wanted to share with the audience? Are you hiring, anything our audience can do for you?

Leon Sasson:

Yeah, of course, David. Like always, download the Rise app, and most people could use some help with their sleep. And then specific to our company, we're always looking for talented people across product, engineering, design, and now marketing, so both UA and creative production, so definitely reach out. And just generally speaking, I love sharing notes with other people in the app and consumer space, so the more... Feel free to reach out. You know how to find me online, leon@risescience.com.

David Barnard:

Awesome. And we'll share links to your LinkedIn and career page as well in the show notes, so people can go there as well. But Leon, thank you so much. It was great.

Leon Sasson:

Thanks. Thanks for having me, David.

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.