How Do You Comparison Shop in the App Store? ⇥ lapcatsoftware.com
As an App Store developer myself, I’ve stubbornly resisted the trend, perhaps to my financial detriment, though I’m currently doing ok with upfront paid apps. One thing that drives me nuts about the In-App Purchase business model is that it creates massive customer confusion. How do you know in advance exactly how much the app costs, what exactly you’re getting for the price, and what functionality, if any, is free? And if you’re confused about any of these things, then how can you possibly comparison shop between various apps in the App Store?
Johnson mentions several ways, but I have one more complaint: Apple utterly buries this information on individual app listings. To get even a vague idea of how much an app is going to cost, a user must scroll all the way past screenshots, the app’s description, ratings and reviews, the changelog, the privacy card, and the accessibility features — all the way down to a boring-looking table that contains the seller, the app’s size, the category, the compatibility, supported languages, the age rating, and only then is there a listing for “In-App Purchases”. And, if they exist, a user must still tap on the cell to find the list of options and their associated cost.
This is almost at the very bottom of the app’s listing. The only things on the page after the In-App Purchases section are the copyright string, links to the developer’s website and privacy policy, and then the recommendations section. Apple thinks the cost of an up-front purchase is so important it replaces the text in the “get” button with the price. But for freemium apps? The possible costs are tucked away in a place I bet many users never look.
(For full disclosure: Johnson’s StopTheMadness Pro is sponsoring Pixel Envy this week, but he has not asked me to post this, and I would have linked to it regardless.)