andreaskam

Hehehe good point. I removed it and linked to the HackerNews thread instead as that might be more useful for people.

I have no way of being 100% certain, however I followed the best practises: - Being on a new version of Android - Having an up to date version of Google Play store app - Being on wifi - Having lots of battery and also plugging my phone in to power

Happy I saved you some $$$

What was painful about pre-registration ads is you don't realise your mistake until you launch your app. Only then do you look at your screen and then go have a cry hahaha.

Be super interesting to read a case study for the App Store and their pre-order ads.

We didn't cap it because we were getting conversions at around $1.36 USD. This is more than we'd normally spend for an install, but we thought it's worth it because it also gives us launch day momentum. Obviously, had we known that actually only 1 in 12 were going to install, we'd of killed that campaign instantly.

We started the pre-registration around 2 months before release and it ran right up until release. The max you can do is 90 days.

Yeah we often think about the free trial vs freemium experience. I really admire apps like FitBod who just let you try out 3 free workouts without needing to commit to a free trial.

Eating healthy is one of the toughest habits to commit to. The benefit of the 7 day free trial is it really pushes people to try it out during those 7 days and see if it's for them. Otherwise you download and think "I'll look at this later" and then never come back to it.

Not saying what we have is perfect and I'm still looking for better options. We're always down to give people a longer trial if they get in touch with us. I get that 7 days won't be enough for everyone.

RE: Instacart integration - we already integrate!

haha it's been my pleasure being a guinea pig. Just wish I could of learned the same lesson for $5k instead of $20k.

All good points. Especially about meal planning being something you're looking to solve right now, not in a few weeks time. Unlike a game, where a few weeks from now you'll still be looking for new entertainment options. Thanks for adding your thoughts, I think they'll be helpful for someone else considering pre-registration for their app.

When they're on their phone it'll show a download button instead :-)

The QR code only appears on desktop.

Fair point. To Google conversion = someone who has pre-registered. That's different to someone actually installing. I never expected 100% of people who pre-registered would install, but having only 8% of people who pre-register go on to download seems kinda wild.

If anyone has any figures for a pre-order campaign on the App Store it would be very interesting to compare the conversion rate.

We felt that getting a lot of traction on the launch day might give us some good momentum in the charts. With hindsight, I'd wish we'd saved our money and spent it after launch, when we could sense check the figures that Google Ads is reporting.

Hope it's helpful for some fellow developers when considering how to promote their app launch :-)

If you look at the first screenshot in the article it shows what the pre-registration page looks like.

It says:

Perks of pre-registering

- Automatic install

Install automatically when it's available