Lessons from a Lackluster Launch — David Barnard, Weather Up

Sub Club by RevenueCat

On the podcast: The many failures of his recent app launch, the surprising results of his first-ever A/B test, and the many reasons why you shouldn’t plan a big app launch.

Top Takeaways:

🔄 Continuous evolution over big bangs: For subscription apps, frequent updates create enduring value, outpacing the impact of sparse, major launches. This steady stream of enhancements keeps your app relevant and signals relentless improvement to your audience.

🌱 Opt for flexible launches: Avoid putting all your hopes in one major launch. A strategy that includes multiple, smaller launches allows for adaptability and maintains your app's presence against the backdrop of an unpredictable news cycle.

📰 Press is unpredictable: Understand that media coverage does not guarantee app success. The broad reach may not always align with your target audience and many factors are outside of your control. Keep swinging, though, as some hits will indeed make a substantial impact — just keep your expectations in check.

💰 Adopt value-based pricing: Pricing should reflect what customers value in your app, not just the costs to provide it. Value-based pricing doesn't necessarily mean charging more, it just means charging the perceived value. Users don’t care about the costs of providing a service.

🔍 A/B testing insights depend on the nature of the cohort. The origin of your app's users — e.g. via launch events or organic growth — plays a crucial role in interpreting A/B test results. What did or didn’t work for one group isn’t necessarily applicable for the next — so test and draw conclusions appropriately.

About Guest:

👨‍💻 Growth advocate at RevenueCat and indie developer of apps like Launch Center Pro and Weather Up.

🍎 Although he’s neither a designer nor a developer, David has been building the kinds of thoughtful, intuitive apps he wants to use since the App Store first launched in 2008.

💡 “The tough thing about getting attention is you do have to do something unique… and that’s the trade-off. The calculus for me was, ‘Let’s wait and try to make a big splash with all these things.’ But really, we could have already launched the widget, and just adding interaction would have gotten attention.”

👋 LinkedIn | Twitter

Episode Highlights:

[11:04] Just ship it: Don’t try to release a ton of new features at once — you’ll get more attention and benefits by releasing incremental updates.

[23:11] Failure to launch: What’s the worst that can happen on your app launch day? A major Apple announcement!

[32:09] Riding the wave: Offering a launch-day sale on your app is a great way to increase conversions when you release a major update.

[36:16] The value of value-based pricing: Set your app’s price based on your target customer’s perceived value of your solution, not your idea of how much it’s worth and costs to run.

[42:54] Dog-fooding the ’cat: David used several RevenueCat features (like Paywalls and Experiments) to set up and monitor the results of the Weather Up 3.0 launch.