We tried routing the initial purchase through the web to avoid app store commissions and see if net margins improved.
What helped: lower payment fees on the web meant we could test slightly lower prices or aggressive promos while keeping better net revenue. At scale the difference is bigger because app store cut tiers matter more.
What hurt: extra friction for users who expect one-tap in-app buys, and more tax and refund work on our side. You cannot fully escape app store rules if you also support purchases inside the app, so plan how to map web purchases to in‑app entitlements.
Has anyone tracked net margin uplift after moving first purchases to the web? How did you handle refunds and VAT?
We saw a small but meaningful bump in net ARPU after moving the first purchase to web.
It took effort to automate EU VAT invoices and handle refunds but the revenue side improved. I used a web funnel generator to speed the rollout and the JSON integration made the hookup to our billing fairly painless.
Lower fees on web gave us room to test riskier offers that we could never run in‑app.
I treat web purchases as a way to optimize margins and creative combos quickly. We used a web platform to centralize VAT handling and to sync entitlements into the app so users saw no difference post purchase.
We tracked net margin per channel and saw web buyers cost less after fees.
It required a small team to manage tax and refunds, but once automated it was worth it for us.
web buys raised net margins handled tax later
Watch for install velocity impacts.
If you send all paid traffic to web you may reduce app installs and ASO signals. We only routed new budgets to web and kept some direct app spend to avoid losing visibility.
We saw higher net revenue but more refund requests.
Plan a playbook for support early.
Automate VAT where you can and track net revenue per channel.