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Cost of user acquisition for native apps is enormous. Most people install very few apps per month, and the vast majority uninstall them afterward. "Utility app
by smt88 4y ago
Cost of user acquisition for native apps is enormous. Most people install very few apps per month, and the vast majority uninstall them afterward.
"Utility apps" (messengers, banking apps, etc.) do OK if the user must use them. All other types of apps are competing against the few big social apps and games that are more than adequate for most users.
- throwaway-blaze 4y agoThe flip side of this: the App Store duopoly has made app subscriptions painless for customers, and if your app has a dedicated group of users it can be quite profitable.
- muzani 4y agoI thought it's the opposite. The app stores are a marketing channel. It's easier to advertise a game or recipe app than a web game or recipe site.
- fomine3 4y agoIs advertising recipe app is easier than recipe website? I think opposite. Recipe sites are often found by recipe search on web, but I never downloaded recipe app from app store when I want to cook something.
- muzani 4y agoI say this from experience doing both. It's the user behaviour. Google searches also direct people to the app if done on an Android device. In developing countries, a lot of people don't own a PC, so digital stuff is through a low end phone which doesn't have the memory to run Chrome, lol. It's strong enough that apps are a part of the marketing strategy, especially if it involves digital purchases. Sites are good for previews, apps for monetization. It could well be different for US, which is iOS heavy, or the HN crowd which prefers to avoid Google. Americans are more likely to have a credit card, including minors. In developing countries, a lot of people still transfer money via an ATM. A housewife might go to the store, reload $25 into her phone, use only $5 of that for calls, and the rest is transferred into Google Play credit to buy e-books or in app purchases.
- fomine3 4y agoYes I sometimes download recipe app from advertisement on recipe sites. Recipe sites push app aggressively. So I think app store isn't good marketing channel to find recipe app, but just a repository.
- muzani 4y agoActually, I stand corrected. It used to be that Google would rank apps high on a Google search 5 years ago. It no longer does. This was the typical user acquisition strategy - get people into the app, then have a site with deeplinking for sharing stuff to the public, like what Instagram and TikTok does. This is no longer valid today.
- smt88 4y agoAds for either apps or websites are expensive. Ads for websites convert much better because there's a lot less friction for each conversion. It's easy to get people to click "Login with Google". It's much harder to get them to click "Install".