Practical guides on screenshots, onboarding, paywalls and retention, based on real experiments and lessons from working with subscription apps.
Getting someone from install to the moment the app is worth paying for.
Get it right and retention follows. Miss it and nothing else will save you.
Read →Six apps put their setup checklist on screen. Only one names a number.
Read →Before a user sees your paywall, they’ve already made a dozen small decisions, each doing conversion work before any pricing shows.
Read →Users feel the app is responding to them specifically, not broadcasting to everyone. That difference retains.
Read →There are only two good positions for sign-up. The middle isn’t one of them.
Read →Half of iOS users decline notifications. Contextual timing and pre-permission screens change that.
Read →The first few sessions after payment are often where you actually lose the subscriber.
Read →Apple’s algorithm watches your first hours closely. Launching without a paywall wastes that window.
Read →The screen where the ask happens, what it should contain, and what to do after a no.
Not all paywalls are the same. Picking the wrong type can kill your conversion rate.
Read →Based on RevenueCat’s 2026 benchmark data covering 115,000+ apps, here’s what most paywalls actually look like.
Read →Localisation is four jobs, not one. Six screens, including Shopee doing all four at once in Indonesian rupiah.
Read →At the median freemium rate, proving a 10% lift takes about 154,000 users. The table, and what to do when you do not have them.
Read →Pricing is not just a number. It’s a signal about your product’s value and your business’s viability.
Read →The difference between a paywall that converts and one that gets dismissed isn’t just visual design.
Read →A 3-screen dismiss flow gives you three chances to convert, each addressing a different objection.
Read →More than 9 out of 10 users don’t convert on their first paywall view. A second offer catches many of them.
Read →Six screenshot sets I rebuilt, before and after. What changed in the captions, the first frame and the mockups, plus the real size limits.
Read →The guideline numbers worth knowing, quoted, plus five apps handling account deletion, the requirement most often missed.
Read →Four ways to check an idea, and the competitor teardown we ran before designing an app that launched at 32% trial-to-paid.
Read →It answers whether the app works, not whether it converts. How to set the duration from your own funnel.
Read →What ASO actually is, what Apple and Google really publish about ranking, a three-week setup, and where in-app events fit.
Read →Keeping the subscription after the first payment, and what happens when someone leaves.
Eight reactivation screens pulled apart. Four lead with what the user already saved, one of them with $0.05.
Read →Ten cancellation save screens from Uber Eats, Headspace, Duolingo and others. The biggest apps do not lead with a discount.
Read →Downloads are vanity. The metrics that tell you if your subscription app is healthy are the ones almost nobody puts on their dashboard.
Read →Dark patterns destroy long-term retention. Understanding the difference matters.
Read →A jump from 3.5 to 4.0 stars increases downloads by 30%. Timing your ask is everything.
Read →Conversion design for subscription apps.
Screenshots, onboarding and paywalls, connected around one goal: getting more users to pay.