We moved the entire onboarding + checkout to a web funnel to see if the math actually worked out.
What I learned in the first two months: gross receipts went up because we could A/B pricing, but the real win was margin clarity. App-store fees vanished, but gateway fees and VAT still mattered. After accounting for payment fees and refunds our net margin improved by roughly 10–15 percentage points versus app-store purchases. The biggest surprises were tax handling and refund costs — you need a plan for automated invoices and a clear refund policy or the savings fade fast.
I tracked install-to-pay time, refund rate in first 7 days, and effective ARPU. Those signals showed the web funnel attracted slightly higher-intent users, which helped retention too.
Has anyone else tracked net margin end-to-end after switching checkout to web and found different leak points?
I did the same on one app.
Cut app-store takes by moving checkout to web. Gateway fees stayed but the net was cleaner.
I automated invoice generation and set refund windows early.
I used an engine to export the checkout JSON and drop it into our flow which saved a week of dev time.
We measured net margin before and after.
Web checkout let us test price quickly and rollbacks were instant.
Changes showed up in revenue in days not weeks.
That speed alone paid for the initial effort and reduced churn from bad offers.
We saw margin improve once invoices and refunds were automated.
The web made those processes visible and fixable quickly.
Worth planning tax and refund rules from day one.
Net margin up fast
No app fees
Watch refunds
We tracked install to first payment time after the move.
That metric tightened up and churn in the first 7 days dropped slightly.
Margin improved mostly because fewer users abandoned after install.
We improved net margin too.
Key was automating tax and refunds so savings weren’t eaten by extra work.