Why Web Onboarding Should Sell The Problem, Not The Solution – Leon Sasson, Rise Science

I would say that building a 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 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 cancelling your subscription to changing plans to requesting a refunds to the customer support to potentially handling chargebacks. You have to get incredibly good at that as a cable stakes because if not you're either just making money or people that have no clue how to cancel subscription or even worse like that's just going to destroy your app reviews and you're going to get flagged with all the credit card system. So the billing sort of work stream of the journey needs to be just super polished.

Hello, I'm your host David Bernard. Today's conversation is shorter than usual and will be featured in Revenue Cat'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 Sassin,

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 webfunnels. Hey Leon, thanks for joining me again on the podcast. >> Hey David, good to be here. It's been a minute since uh last time and the revenue cat conference. Good times good time since.

>> Yeah, always good to chat with you and 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 like 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 to talk about that and like what's what's working and why it's working and I think you know 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? Oh man,

it depends who you ask, but uh yeah, we've been working on we've been trying to up on work on web stuff for a long long time. Probably in earnest around 20 end of 21 early 2022 when the whole IDFA kind of at 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 right all right what's the future right like 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 you know early 2002 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 was more e-commerce but you still had some maybe like n was the biggest web funnel at the time as is I believe so back then 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 that was pretty naive hey let's rebuild our app on boarding in web right that's kind of all right let's do that we did

that didn't quite work did that again maybe 6 months later we just couldn't get it to work like not even close and we kind of gave up and we sort of scratched it as like hey our app relies too much on healthg data and all these like 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 you know sleep schedule and all of that. So we sort of parked that project and also at that point all the the marketing world started working a little better on app. So the whole kind of IDFA apocalypse it was definitely bad but things recovered and and the big publish you know like meta and Google and just everyone kind of like figure out how to work with the new system.

Even though it was painful, there was a a path forward. So, we kind of kept chugging along, working on core, you know, making our app better and focusing entirely on our app. And really, maybe in 2024 or so, so now 2 years ago, we're like, all right, let's give web another 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 kind of like bypass some of the Apple fees or whatnot. Very quickly kind of talking to some people and learning it was like right those two things are pretty wrong. And first of all it changes the dynamic so much that the apple building thing is totally almost comparing like apples to oranges. It's not even like remotely the equivalent formula right like it's just one small piece of the equation. And second, once we talked to a few people that have cracked it and kind of coaches along the way and then sort of put us in the right path, we we've also learned that the way web funnels are successful tend to be very different than the way app on boarding flows tend to be successful and they're almost like 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 the user experience. So we sort of started from scratch about this is not at all related to the app, right? This is a web funnel and let's make that work unrelated to what works on the app and and that kind of kicked off a learning path that so far has been super you know promising and super productive. So happy to dive in in any any areas there.

>> Yeah. Well, let's get specific when you

say you need to treat it as a whole separate channel. What were the learnings like? What why is the app onboarding not working on the web? And then how do you make that web specific onboarding? Like what is it that people are enticed by and resonating with on the web that doesn't work in app and and why does it work in app and not on the web? >> Yeah. The 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 kind of paid marketing or kind of like any atcale 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 like people that might be exhausted in their lives and are looking for a solution. Right? That's a very kind of like 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, right? Whereas these are users that would happily buy stuff online. They're engaging e-commerce and they're happy to kind of 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 sort of the the bottomfunnel, hey, I'm going to download an app type audience. So it's a lot more higher, you know, top offunnel 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 are attracting essentially an e-commerce audience depending how you

do it. So it it ends up being because the audience was different and and you know, we can get into behavioral traits of the audience, but even down to demographics, the basic thing, right? like you might be able to attract uh 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 app you know the app the traditional app 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 so especially in the lens of of sleep and health right like the problems might be very very different so because the audience changes is then you're starting essentially with a whole new blank slate on on what works there. So that's pretty high level but it was pretty shocking that hey the audience is different and and that brings a flip side to the or a corlary to the marketing that is 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 webfunnel 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 like uncorrelated marketing performance between different types of campaigns, right? Like where you can have, you

know, everyone that markets might tell you, oh, this month performance is down and everyone's freaking out. And when you run kind of web and app separate, you realize like, oh, maybe like web is down this month, but app is up or the other way around. So you end up with a actually a very different sort of cycle that in a way just makes the ecosystem a lot a lot healthier and more robust to to you know flukes and performance. So that's a bit of the high level that

we've learned on the website. >> 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 like on meta is it more the Facebook placements than the Instagram placements or is it you know Google versus Meta? Like are you seeing any specific channels perform better than others? >> 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 the Facebook blue app than Instagram, but that's pretty high level and that es 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 some something that rhymes with hey you're exhausted or you're you know you have all these potential problems in your life and you might not have realize that sleep is the reason why you have those problems. So we have this app that will help you kind of take control and feel a lot better and kind of unlock that part of your life. So the the web funnel ends up sort of we had to unlearn a lot of the app on boarding 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 the app moment.

You have as long as you want but you really have to almost like impress the user and give them value before you kind of ask for a hard commitment of a trial start or credit card or whatever. on web, we realize that because people tend to be a lot higher on the consideration phase. Often you're 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 make realize like, oh, this is the problem you have.

Let's now talk through solutions later on the app. And it's sort of like 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 you know on the first 30 seconds because they're just higher on the consideration phase that they 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. 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 the app onboarding is to get you to a solution. When you're see an ad on the web and you're on a website, like I know when I'm like surfing the web or like reading about something, I'm I am more in the discovery phase. Like what is it about my sleep that's broken? What do I like

what do I need? And so it kind of makes sense that the web onboarding needs that more kind of exploratory framing the 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 or like 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? >> There probably are. We just don't think about it that way. We don't think about like oh web creative versus app creative. We think about our creative as a, you know, much more deeper into what customer personas we're trying to reach, what hooks and value props we're trying to kind of sell. And 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. Doesn't matter if it's app or web. at least for our current status. >> So then are you trying most creatives on both app and web simultaneously and just letting the algorithms decide what wins or or are you creating web specific campaigns and app specific campaigns?

>> So that's a deep question. That's very very deep. Creative testing at scale I feel is the neverending sort of there's always a hack always a system everyone thinks they're better. Facebook tells you or Meta or Google they'll tell you what to do and then the experts tell you to not do what the you know they tell you the other people tell you to do. you know, you got to try it all and I feel every 6 months things change. But uh 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 in Omega Google don't and Tik Tok and and whatever else you may be they don't have to deal with the sort of scan at privacy related constraints that hey data is delayed the attribution is broken you get only see like 50% of the traffic instead of 100%. So on 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 like 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 for web. So it's not necessarily about testing strategy. You know we do test a lot of most creative across both app and web separately but at the beginning I believe we may not even we might not have been doing that. So it depends on testing strategy and we're always iterating on on that. So >> I wanted to dive into a few tactical things since we are running short on time. Are are you spinning up a bunch of different funnels? Like is it like are you matching the funnel to the creative?

Like you know is there kind of a persona bent where the do a creative with a a specific persona in mind and then that leads to a very specific funnel with that persona in mind. Yeah, I think that's the holy grail of web funnels that 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 the way you know 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 order of magnitude more complex kind of 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 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 kind of huge wave 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, you know, struggling with, you know, sleepreated issues around menopause,

right? Which there's a whole kind of body of science around and and what you can do. So, very different personas. And yes, in the funnel you can get into like 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. >> 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?

>> 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 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 and you have the trust of the customer so everything from taking the payment to canceling ing 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 a table stakes because if not, you're either just making money on people that have no clue how to cancel subscription or even worse, right? Like that's just going to destroy

your app reviews and your credit card sort of you're going to get flagged with all the credit card system. So the billing sort of work stream of the the journey needs to be just super polished. everything from starting to cancelling to changing plans and that we just spend a tremendous amount of time polishing that as much as we can. So that cannot be sort of an understatement of like oh we'll do that later after with signal because the other sort of caveat is if you don't have all of that fleshed out when you're testing the signal you get you might see like oh your your trial conversion is super high and it's like oh well cuz you don't have a way to cancel the subscription. So like of course your child conversion is high but like everyone is like super upset at you because they don't have to cancel subscription. So, >> and you're getting high chargebacks and high refunds, which means your your um

payment acceptance rate is lower. And >> 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 like 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, you know, a minute later. So we have found through testing that that

works better for us. I know some people do find that free trials on web works just as well. So I don't think this is a like everything on pricing monetization 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 is very different than the app directly. >> 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? Um, anything our audience can do for you?

>> Yeah, of course, David. Like always, you know, download the Rise app and uh most people could use some help with 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 you know, feel free to reach out. You know, you don't have to find me online. Leon rice.com.

Awesome. We 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. >> Thanks. Thanks for having me, David. >> 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. [music]