iPhone Developer Finds Success in Lite/Free App By Hans Erickson in Case Study, Mobile Development

The creator of the iPhone application iCombat has reported getting conversion rates far greater than the norm.  In his post titled Just How Much Does a Lite Version Boost App Sales he reports global conversion rates of almost 9%, or 7% after being adjusted to account for downloads not driven by the lite version.  Here is a chart of his findings:

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This is much higher than what many application developers find upon releasing a lite version.  More typical is something in the range of .5% to about 5% as is detailed here and here.  Unfortunately there is no clearly presented reason for these higher success numbers.  We’re left to wonder.  However, he does have some nice takeaways for other app developers:

1. Should have released lite version from the beginning – There was no point to waiting and sacrificing the initial new release buzz.  Since it is harder to get featured once your app is launched, say for app updates, it is important to strike early and hard with your app release.

2. Lite does NOT cannibalize sales – If your app is a gimmick then it might not make sense but in all other cases it only helps to increase sales (see our previous post on this topic)

3. Get the bugs out for your lite release – users churn lite apps and are fine giving you 1 star if they don’t like the experience.  This is especially bad because the App store prompts users to rate an app when they try to delete it

4. Lite sales trail off too but paid sales remain higher – if you don’t have the x-factor that is needed to spread the word your lite downloads will fall as they have for iCombat, but in our case paid sales have continued to sell at a minimum rate several times higher than the pre-lite period

5. Frequent releases do juice downloads – Pocket God and other frequently updated apps have benefited from a weekly sales bump as they show up in the new releases section of the app store (users also like this episode style model)

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