Soft launching Pause 2.0 on iOS
Disclaimer: I only spend 30mins writing this article. The goal is to give some space for a weekly reflection, and documenting the journey. I hope it may grow into a routine. (Let’s see, I failed in building good habits many times before). I think it may also be valuable to share publically. I apologise for any bad writtings or Typo.
Pause may be a special example. It had it’s success when it was innitially launched back in 2015. With the help from my amazing Founding Partner ustwo, it became an instant hit, with Apple’s rare Editor’s choice promotion around the globe and all the major tech media writing about Pause. It did not last more than 1 week, until we started to see steep drop in downloads. It undoubtedly was an amazing launch, which made many people know and tried Pause. But Pause was not yet a product with plans for continuous improvement.
Most things change with time. This time, myself is in the driving seat to launch Pause 2.0. And the plan is to launch softly. As it is subscription model, I wanted to see whether there are some users love Pause so much, who wants to pay 3.99USD/Month, compare to previously 1.99USD for Life time.
It was quite an experience:
1. Launched without Approve from Apple on Subscription
As this was our first time launching Subscription. I did not know that APPLE needed to review the new Subscription as a seperate product from the APP. So, a strange situation happened, where Pause 2.0 was launched already on 2nd Oct, hundreads of users clicked to subscribe, but nothing happends. I felt terrible, as this gonna harm th relationship with the first customers who really wanted to upgrade.
I tried everything to speed this up. I got my case esclated inside Apple. Then I got rejected, because a screenshot I uploaded did not match Apple guideline (even though we already fixed that in the software). So the whole cycle started again. Luckily, this time, Apple approved in 1 day. By that time, Pause 2.0 has been on the market for 6 days, with non-functioning Subscription. The interesting thing is: the sky did not fall. Each day I see more and more users try to upgrade, and it became a test for customer’s willingness to upgrade. If I do it again, I may consider to launch a version with a fake subscription button before even building the subscription. (Only a thought 😅)
It was 8th of Oct, at Pause’s 5th birthday🎂, that I finally got approval from APPLE. What a beautiful coincidence, which I could have never planned!
2. Fixing subscription after the launch
As I was super excited to see the subscription becomes alive. I immediately subscribed to the 7 days free-trial. And it went wrong. I got charged immediately for 35Kr, without the Free-trial. I was shocked, as at any moment there can be a user starts a free-trial, and instantly got charged . That would be a really bad start. I called the dev team, and they jumped to solve the problem immediately. Luckily, the fix did not require to upload a new build, and it was fixed and tested in 1 hours. Luckily, I have not heard from any customer that they got wrongly charged. ☀️
3. The reality of soft launching (first 3 days)
To be honest, what I really cared about is that I hope there is at least 1 user upgrade to the free-trial. As that would be the foundation we can iterate and build upon. When I woke up in the morning on the 9th October, I saw 9 people signed up, and I was truly happy. Because it is the first sign that there are core customers in the world who wants to pay every month to have Pause 2.0.
3 days in, we got 61 customers signed up for Free-trial. So, if the experience we launched could keep them happy for a while, after 7 days we will get the 1st recurring payment from real customers. That is a significant step for Pause. I have my fingers crossed🤞.
I am already seeing the conversion rate slowing down. That is expected. As I think most of the 61 Free-trial users are from Pause’s existing user base. They loved Pause so much, that they wanted to give it a chance. For all the new users, it will require a period of time where we must demonstrate that we will continuously improve Pause by listening to their feedback and rapidly iterating.
4. The importance of sincere customer support
Every morning, the first thing I do is to reply the new reviews (good and bad) and customer Emails. I want to make sure the tightest cycle from customer to product. Yesterday, I got an email from a user from Japan. He asked some urgent questions that he wanted to know about Pause, and all in Japanese. Immediately, I thought Okay, I have to ask a Japanese friend to help me reply, and that will take some time. But quickly, I realised that it is more important to provide help quickly, even if it’s not perfect. So I started replying in Google Translate, and just copied the Japanese translation back to the customer. In the reply, I made it clear that I am not good at Japanese (In fact, I don’t know at all 😝), but I will try to answer.
Today, I got the reply back. I attached that email here, with google translate again. The customer decided to subscribe because of the answers we provided (and seem Google was doing a great Job💪).
This experience taught me being sincere sometimes work better than being perfect 🙂.
That’s the core learnings from this week. I just realised I spend 1 hour on the writing. But it is fine 🙂. I hope I will have the discipline to write a new reflect the next Sunday. Let’s see.