Cross-Sell

An upsell is a sales and monetization technique where an existing user is encouraged to upgrade to a higher-value product, plan, or subscription tier. In mobile subscription apps, upselling typically involves persuading a user on a monthly plan to switch to an annual plan (often at a per-month discount), upgrading from a basic tier to a premium tier with more features, or offering an enhanced version of a specific feature the user already uses frequently. Upselling is one of the highest-leverage revenue growth strategies because it targets users who have already demonstrated willingness to pay — the friction is much lower than converting a free user to a first-time subscriber. Effective upselling requires precise timing (presenting the upgrade when the user encounters a limitation or reaches a milestone), clear value communication (showing exactly what additional value the higher tier provides), and frictionless execution (making the upgrade a one-tap action). For web-to-app subscription models, upselling can occur both within the app (in-context prompts when a user hits a feature gate) and on the web (email campaigns, web dashboard prompts, or renewal-time offers). When combined with downselling and cross-selling, upselling forms a comprehensive pricing optimization framework that captures maximum value from each user's willingness to pay.

A downsell is a monetization strategy where a user who has declined an initial offer is presented with a lower-priced or reduced-scope alternative to capture revenue that would otherwise be lost entirely. In the context of mobile subscription apps, downselling commonly occurs on paywalls or web checkout pages: if a user dismisses the primary annual subscription offer, they might immediately see a follow-up screen offering a monthly plan at a lower commitment, a discounted trial period, or a feature-limited tier at a reduced price. The psychology behind downselling is that the user has already demonstrated interest by engaging with the offer flow — they simply weren't convinced at the original price point. By presenting a more accessible entry point, the app captures a subscriber who would have otherwise churned at the paywall. Downsells are particularly effective in web funnel environments where the developer controls the entire purchase flow and can dynamically serve different offers based on user behavior. When combined with upselling and cross-selling strategies, downsells form a comprehensive price discrimination framework that maximizes conversion across different willingness-to-pay segments.

ARPU stands for Average Revenue per User, and it refers to the average amount of revenue an app generates from each active user. App growth teams that develop subscription or revenue-driven apps often include ARPU as a key performance indicator to measure their financial success. By calculating ARPU, you can determine the average amount of money you earn from each user. While ARPU takes into account the revenue earned from both paying and non-paying users, there is another similar metric used specifically for subscription-based apps. This metric is known as ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User), which only considers the revenue generated by users who have made a payment.

Mobile app paywall optimization refers to the process of fine-tuning the design and user experience of an app's paywall to maximize revenue from paid subscriptions or in-app purchases. This involves analyzing user behavior and identifying the most effective paywall placement, messaging, pricing, and incentives.

A web funnel is a structured, multi-step web-based experience designed to guide users from initial awareness to a conversion action — typically a subscription purchase, trial start, or app download. In mobile app marketing, web funnels have become a critical acquisition and monetization strategy, particularly for subscription apps looking to process payments outside the App Store or Google Play to avoid platform commissions of 15–30%. A typical web funnel for a mobile subscription app follows a sequence like: ad click → landing page → value proposition/quiz/personalization flow → pricing/plan selection → web checkout → payment confirmation → app download prompt → in-app activation. By processing the subscription on the web before directing the user to the app, developers retain significantly more revenue per subscriber. Web funnels also offer advantages beyond commission savings: they provide a larger canvas for communicating value (compared to a constrained in-app paywall), enable more sophisticated A/B testing of pricing and messaging, allow for richer attribution data (since web tracking isn't subject to ATT restrictions in the same way), and support more flexible offer structures (downsells, upsells, bundles) that aren't possible within native app store billing. The main challenge of web funnels is the additional friction of requiring users to complete a purchase flow on the web and then separately download the app — making seamless handoff and activation critical to overall funnel performance.