Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This GameTube invites NetEase Yun Music Senior interaction designer Yu Kangkang to share his experience and feelings in optimizing IAP payment efficiency!

Now please welcome Kangkang ~

The overall traffic of the Internet industry has peaked in recent years, but in order to ensure revenue to achieve the set target, we have to make efforts on the conversion rate and customer unit price. As the interaction designer of NetEase Yun music revenue business line, I have accumulated some experiences and methods to improve the conversion rate and customer unit price through my design practice in recent years. I hope I can bring inspiration and reference to you. What we share today is the experience of optimizing the efficiency of IAP payment.

What is IAP payment? the full name of IAP is "In-App Purchase". It is a trading system provided by Apple for the purchase of virtual goods or services in App. Users who purchase virtual goods (such as game props, e-books, members, etc.) in iOS system must use IAP payment, and third-party payment methods such as Alipay, Wechat are not allowed.

The internal purchase items of IAP can be divided into four types: consumable items, non-consumable items, automatic renewal subscriptions and non-renewal subscriptions. At present, the most widely used are consumptive items, automatic renewal subscriptions and non-renewal subscriptions. Consumptive items are usually used for items that can be purchased many times, such as recharged virtual coins in live broadcasts, equipment in games, and so on. Automatic renewal subscription is applicable to continuous access to content, services or advanced features in App. Users renew automatically regularly after purchase until the user manually cancels it, such as monthly (quarterly and annual) membership items of music and video App. Non-renewal subscriptions are suitable for providing time-limited access to services or content in App, such as monthly (quarterly, annual) card membership items of music and video App.

Although Apple's IAP payment has many shortcomings such as high percentage and lower payment success rate than domestic payment software (Alipay, Wechat, etc.), we can't get around it when we pay for virtual goods on the iOS side. Of course, some veteran drivers on the Internet will also share some experiences of bypassing IAP payments through big tricks such as "giving up the small to protect the big" and "changing beams for pillars". I would like to advise my friends (especially those products with large size and competitors looking around) not to be clever, otherwise they will fail the examination and receive a "big gift package" with App removed from the shelves and developer account deleted. Since we can't get around it, we have to settle down to study it thoroughly and think about how to improve the payment conversion rate by optimizing the process contact experience under the limitations of the existing IAP payment rules.

The characteristics of IAP payment by comparing IAP payment with Alipay, Wechat and other payment methods, we can find that they have differences in many aspects, such as sharing, technical realization, refund strategy and so on. Here, we only explain the "preset price" and "payment realization logic" that affect the payment efficiency.

Preset prices We can only choose Apple preset prices when creating IAP projects. These preset prices are intermittent and fixed integers in Chinese mainland. (at the time of writing, there are rumors that Apple will add some decimal IAP projects later), such as 1 yuan, 3 yuan, 6 yuan, 8 yuan, 12 yuan, 18 yuan, 25 yuan. If you want to set an IAP project with a price like 9.9 yuan, it is not allowed.

This kind of price strategy not only restricts the promotion that the actual payment amount varies with the preferential policy, such as discount and full reduction, but also makes users see two sets of price strategies on Android and iPhone with the same App account, causing confusion and confusion. In addition, the price of IAP projects can be modified in the background after the release of goods, but most of the internal purchase prices of App projects are obtained from their own servers, so if you want to modify the price, you need to deal with both sides together, it is still very troublesome.

Payment implementation logic some friends want to ask, what is the use of me as a designer to understand the payment implementation logic? Isn't that what developers should do? First of all, I would like to tell a short story that happened to a friend. A design director of my friend's company did not understand IAP payment logic. When he used IAP to pay, he forgot the lengthy Apple pay password and did not want to use face recognition, so he patted his head and produced a clever plan, that is, he only needed to input a 6-digit password like Wechat in their App to complete the IAP payment function. Let my friend go to the developer to communicate and push his plan, which was finally angered by the developer and made a joke. Therefore, planners and interactions must have some understanding of the logic of Apple IAP payments, so that they can work with developers to design payment solutions with a good user experience and high conversion efficiency, rather than slapping their heads and bringing up ideas.

Our daily payment transaction verification work using Wechat is completed in the communication between servers, while IAP payment is a kind of payment method which takes user equipment as the information transfer center, and the payment information is transmitted and verified between App Store and Developer Server with user equipment (such as iPhone) as the center, and finally completes the payment performance. The specific process is as follows: after the user clicks the payment button on the iOS device, the application sends a payment request to App Store, App Store processes the payment process and sends back the transaction completion information, the application takes the transaction receipt data and sends it to Developer Server,Developer Server to record the receipt data and establish the audit index. Developer Server sends the receipt data to App Store to confirm whether the transaction is valid. App Store analyzes the receipt data and determines that the result is sent to the application that Developer Server,Developer Server receives and confirms which product the user purchased and whether it was successful and sends the result to the user's device.

To sum up, the information flow path of IAP payment method is long and there are many nodes, and the network environment of mobile devices as an information transfer center is more complex. After successful deduction, issuing and uploading tickets will also be tested by network anomalies, App servers and Apple servers, which leads to much lower stability and fluency of IAP payments than Wechat payments.

IAP payment optimization strategy A peer once did an AB experiment, quietly cut part of the traffic from iPhone to third-party payments such as Alipay (Wechat) under the same conditions, and found that the success rate of third-party payments was about 2-3 times that of IAP, reflecting that the overall revenue was also more than 2 times that of IAP. Thus it can be seen that the payment efficiency of IAP is indeed low, and even if it increases the conversion rate of IAP payments to the ordinary level of third-party payments (Alipay, Wechat), the contribution to business revenue is huge.

This time, we will explore how to improve the conversion rate in the process after users click the "pay" button on the iOS side. Improving the purchase motivation and detonating the trigger point before clicking the button are not included in this discussion. According to the payment process described above, we can sort out the optimization contacts that can be intervened by the design side, that is, payment loading dynamic effect, top-up page (consumptive project), payment failure, payment success. Below we will explain the experience we have accumulated to improve the conversion rate from these four contacts.

1. Payment loading dynamic effect IAP payment process itself is complex, poor network environment, verification delay and other problems lead to the whole payment process takes a long time and low fluency. If we do nothing in this process and rely only on iOS's native "turn chrysanthemum" loading, users are bound to experience boredom (nothing to do, want to pass the time)-anxiety (how come no results, more and more irritable waiting)-give up (not successful yet) Forget it, don't buy it. It is a pity that users who are willing to buy and have clicked the "pay" button will be lost for nothing. Therefore, efforts must be made to pay for the dynamic effect of loading. At present, there are two ways to load dynamic effect: one is to use its own brand image replacement system "turn Chrysanthemum" to make loading dynamic effect, and the other is to show the user's order information to users in the form of dynamic effect.

Below is the scheme that the major platforms adopt the brand image replacement system loading. Compared with the system loading, this scheme is not only more interesting and low cost, but also can constantly strengthen the brand awareness to users in the process of waiting. NetEase Yun Music currently uses this scheme online. When it was launched in previous years, the experimental results compared with the system loading show that this scheme can increase the user stay time and have a better positive effect on the conversion rate. However, this loading approach also has the disadvantage of blindly displaying the monotonous and repetitive brand image effect, which will still cause disgust among users over a long period of time.

The following is a scheme to replace the system loading with order information loaded one by one. The loaded information attracts users to follow the visual movement line to view. Users can not only check the order information again in the process of viewing, but also forget that they are waiting for a long payment check in the process of viewing information. If you see additional gifts, it can also increase users' sense of surprise and waiting motivation. The principle of this scheme is to keep users busy while waiting, is to take advantage of people's "leisure aversion", that is, people are afraid of doing nothing, they need reasons to be busy, even if people are forced to be busy, but they will also feel satisfied and happy because they are busy.

two。 Top-up page when we buy consumable items on the iOS side, we usually need to go to the "top-up page" first, and then we can use virtual coins to buy virtual goods. What I am using here is the strategy of "one-step direct access" and "optimizing the top-up page". The core principle is to reduce user awareness and operation costs. What I want to share with you here is the optimization case of top-up pages in the process of selling digital albums in NetEase Music.

A few years ago, when I checked the payment process of digital albums on iOS, I found that when the price of digital albums was the same as that of the consumable IAP project we applied for, we still had to jump to the "recharge page" and users needed to click on the IAP project to complete the purchase of digital albums. In this scenario, can our platform help users automatically dispose of "jump to recharge page" and "user click IAP recharge amount" to reduce the resistance of users to pay? Therefore, a "one-step direct" solution is proposed, that is, if the price to be paid is equal to the IAP project price after the user clicks the "recharge and pay" button, the back end automatically helps the user complete the recharge and pay, and the front end no longer shows the two steps of "jump to the recharge page" and "the user clicks on the IAP recharge amount", which can be purchased exclusively on the current page. The developer students are also inspired by this and increase the "one-step direct" logic when the price that users need to pay is equal to an integral multiple of the price of the IAP project, increasing the price coverage of less than 100 yuan to 47%. After the launch, the data response is excellent.

When the IAP project unit price (or integer multiple) can not cover the virtual commodity price, it still needs the top-up page, which requires the designer to analyze the deficiency of the top-up page and then put forward an optimization plan to improve the conversion rate of IAP payment through page optimization. The following figure is the analysis of the original recharge page (left) and the description of the optimized recharge page (right). The optimized page has more organized information, lower finger movement and lower click cost. and according to the "default effect" for the user to select the option close to the required recharge amount and the cheapest price, the user can complete the purchase without thinking and clicking the "pay now" button. The advantage of the default option is to change the "select top-up amount" from a "multiple choice question" on the original page to a "judgment question" on the optimized page, reducing the user's thinking cost. After launch, the data feedback is good. Of course, there is still room for further optimization on this page, and the ongoing optimization scheme is being tested.

Note: for large virtual goods, try to persuade the pricing party to set the price to the IAP project price, because Apple's preset price strategy is to increase the difference between the two adjacent ladder prices as the amount increases. For example, we set the price of a virtual commodity to 699 yuan, because there is no IAP project with the corresponding price, so users can only buy it with a minimum recharge of 798 yuan. Then users will think, "the thing I bought is 699 yuan, why let me charge 798 yuan, and the extra 99 yuan can only be left in this platform, can not be taken out, too crappy, forget it, do not buy it". In the end, some large customers with unit prices have been lost in vain.

3. There are many reasons for IAP payment failure, such as the disagreement with users' previous experience in purchasing physical products, the payment method without binding App Store, the poor network, the failure of Apple server, and so on. Different user attributes and product performance of each product need specific analysis. Some need to send questionnaires to users who fail to pay. For example, a peer found that 75% of their users failed to pay because they were not bound to App Store payment methods. Some developers need to set up projects to find reasons to improve technical performance. For example, our developers have doubled the performance of the receipt interface verified by Apple, achieving the goal of shortening the waiting time and reducing the risk of payment failure.

The strategies of "failure retention" and "re-order" are commonly used on the design side. "failure retention" is the corresponding retention strategy and help guidance when the user fails to pay, which is divided into two ways: on-site and off-site retention. On-site retention is to directly adjust retention measures (pop-up windows, floating layers, new payment pages, etc.) in App at the moment of user payment failure to display different contents according to possible reasons for failure, including increasing users' purchase motivation, providing payment tutorials, guiding customers to find customer service to assist in purchase, etc., in order to help users complete payment operations. Off-site retention means that the user still does not complete the purchase within a certain period of time after the purchase failure, and guides the user to purchase through SMS, smart customer service phone and other channels, and the content conveyed will be different, such as discount price, extra gifts and so on.

The "reorder" is due to Apple's verification method, and a payment confirmation order will be generated within a certain period of time if the user fails to pay. If the user continues to pay on this order, there is a good chance that the payment will continue to fail, so although the front end presents to the user to continue to pay on the original order, the back end actually places a new order for the user.

4. Payment success now that the user has paid successfully, is there any contact that can improve the conversion rate? That, of course, is to avoid user refunds. The main reason for the user's refund is the delay in performance, that is, after the user has completed the payment of the member's rights or a virtual commodity, he or she finds that it cannot be used and angrily asks for a refund from the customer service. The delay in performance is mainly due to the transaction mechanism provided by Apple to ensure the completion of transaction verification. If a transaction does not end normally during the current App life cycle, the interrupted transaction can only be resumed after the next App restart. In this case, non-performance will be deducted for a long time.

We generally adopt the two strategies of "delay reminder" and "reissue of outstanding accounts" here. " The "performance delay prompt" is displayed after the user has made a successful payment, informing the user that the payment has been successful but the benefits may take effect later, and it can effectively reduce the customer claim refund rate when the rights and interests are issued late. " "reissue of outstanding account" is a strategy in which the rights and interests of users are not issued after successful payment in some extreme cases, and users can complete the acquisition of outstanding rights and interests by themselves through this function.

In summary, according to the current policy, IAP pay is the only designated trading system for purchasing virtual goods in Apple's App, which we can't avoid. As designers, we need to work closely with our fellow developers to put forward design strategies to improve the success rate of payment on the basis of fully learning IAP payment knowledge.

The above is a summary of the methods to improve the efficiency of IAP payment in my current work. I hope it can bring inspiration to all of you. There are some inadequacies or there are other strategic methods to improve the efficiency of IAP payment, welcome to add.

References:

Https://www.jianshu.com/p/59c73aa68023

Https://xiaovv.me/2018/05/03/My-iOS-In-App-Purchase-Summarize/

Https://www.jianshu.com/p/1d88ff4de8a8

Https://www.uisdc.com/design-payment-purchase-process

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: GameTube (ID:GameTube), author: Kangkang

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