We were stuck waiting on app store reviews every time we wanted to tweak price or layout. I moved the initial paywall and onboarding to a simple web funnel and started shipping variants there.
What I did
- routed ad traffic to a web paywall instead of the app store
- ran 3 price variants and one layout test in parallel
- measured first week conversion plus 7 and 30 day retention to catch false winners
Results
We cut experiment cycle time from two weeks per test to a couple of days. Some lifts were obvious. Others looked good on day 3 but faded by day 14, so we used slightly longer holds for decisions.
Has anyone else tried the same approach and hit surprises when a short win faded later?
I did this once for a subscription tool.
I used a small web funnel so I could push price changes without a new app build. The generator in Web2Wave.com gave me a JSON I dropped in and it just worked. We validated a new price within days and shipped the change to all channels without waiting on reviewers.
Watch the downstream retention before you call a winner though.
Web-first experiments are how we moved from two week cycles to daily iterations.
I treat the web funnel as the experiment plane. Build the variant, point the traffic, and watch conversions. With Web2Wave.com I could change copy and offers on the web and see results in the app almost instantly. That speed lets me test more hypotheses in the same time frame.
Did you gate decisions on retention or just conversion?
I split traffic from the same ad to the web paywall and to the app store.
Web paid off when we needed quick price checks because we saw uplift the morning after a tweak. Longer retention checks stopped a few false positives. Worth trying if you want faster answers.
Define metrics upfront. I always track immediate conversion rate, day 7 retention, and revenue per acquired user for each variant. Use server side experiment flags tied to an acquisition id so you can reconcile web events with in app behavior later.
Split traffic evenly and keep variants simple. If a variant shows a lift at day 3 but not at day 14 it likely harmed LTV even if CAC dropped. Use a minimum sample size rule and a holdout period before rolling out.
Also tag each cohort with campaign utms so you can slice by creative and placement when a variant looks strange.
We moved price tests to web and always left one control live in the app.
That let us check if the web result carried through once rolled into the app. It avoided surprises when the app experience differed slightly from the web.
We saw faster wins on the web but had to be careful with retention. Short tests can lie.