Is international expansion your next growth lever? It’s almost inevitable that every app developer turns to opportunities for their apps to grow abroad.
There is plenty of opportunity when you expand, but it’s tricky to get right. If you approach expansion with an experimentation mindset and put in a little effort, you’ll give your app the best odds to grow in each new market.
In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the top markets and the monetization best practices we’ve seen work incredibly well in each one. Whether you’ve already launched internationally or are about to start, there are growth tips for everyone.
But first, what not to do
Before we go any further, we need to share a few problematic international expansion approaches we’ve seen (and some we’ve done ourselves 🙈).
The “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” method
We’ve seen developers simply flip the switch to open app availability to multiple new markets as a litmus test to see which ones their product resonates with, only to find nothing but silence.
And nothing is quite as scary as silence.
The problem is you have a chicken and egg situation. Users are far less likely to download an app that isn’t localized, but developers may not want to spend the effort to localize without knowing if their product resonates with that market.
Be warned that if this approach doesn’t work, the reason won’t be clear. Blind launching only works if your app installs and retention are sustainable.
Not localizing your app
Speaking of localization, this is a hands-down best practice. Some markets like the Phillippines have a large segment of users with their devices set to English, which may not require localization. But the majority of the time you’ll want to present your app in that market’s native language.
There are several tools we recommend to automate the process, including Lokalise, Crowdin, and strings.dev.
Not localizing your app store pages
If the app page isn’t localized, users will assume your app also isn’t localized.
We’ve personally seen this deter users from downloading our apps, costing precious downloads and potential paying subscribers. If you want to seriously compete in a new market, app page localization is a must-have.
Not taking device market share into consideration
According to Statcounter, 60.2% of all mobile devices in Japan are iOS. However, in India, that number drops to just 4.05%. If your apps favor one platform over another, each market can have an enormous impact on app downloads and revenue growth.
In RevenueCat’s annual State of Subscription Apps report they found that both Japan and South Korea seem to monetize Play downloads better. They attributed Samsung’s local dominance to this effect in South Korea, but it’s surprising for Japan. Do your research before launching and be sure to track results by platform.
Not tailoring price to the market or region
Pricing is a massive factor when you expand. Alessandro Rizzo, who works on product growth at PhotoRoom, shared this international pricing tip:
Pricing strategies are generally tied to cultural factors (for duration), GDP (for price), and even the payroll cycle (for weekly or yearly). Regarding paywalls, the copy of the CTA and having a prominent image or gif are two big factors.
Not tailoring your paywall for each market
By now you should probably get the sense that localizing your app also means localizing your paywall. This wraps everything we’ve covered so far, including design styles, pricing, and localization.
Each market will respond differently to each design, which is why experimentation is a must.
What increases mobile app conversions in top markets
Japan
PhotoRoom’s Larissa Morimoto shared that paywalls mentioning “priority customer support” in Japan led to more conversions, a signal that having a strong customer support team is a key to growth.
Additionally, we’ve found that paywalls with social proof, specifically displaying user reviews in your paywall design, led to increased conversions.
Germany
Germany’s purchasing behavior tends to differ from other markets. Specifically, we’ve noticed resistance to recurring payments.
We suggest testing longer subscriptions, such as one- or two-year plans, as well as lifetime purchases because of this.
China
China can be one of the more challenging markets for app developers to grow in. However, regarding paywalls, we found that designs with lifestyle imagery, images of people on their phone rather than the app UI, perform better.
India
We’ve found the top lever for increasing conversions in India is pricing. Adjust your app’s prices due to the difference in income to prevent charging a subscription that’s a huge portion of someone’s annual income.
Additionally, around 95% of people in India use an Android device which makes it the platform to lead with in this market.
Latin America
Michal Parizek, head of product growth at Mojo, shared these findings from his experiments in Latin American countries:
We've learned that specifically for LATAM (mainly Brazil 🇧🇷 and Mexico 🇲🇽 ) we need to be careful about pushing yearly plans too much. Since it's more expansive, pushing yearly plans resulted in lowering new revenue. In the rest of the world, experiments told us that the best trial length is 7 days for yearly and 0 days for monthly plans. But not in the LATAM countries. We are seeing much better performance there with the same 3-day trial length for both yearly and monthly. Also, in that region, we achieved (by far) the biggest lift in adding a copy
(equivalent to X/month)to the yearly price tag.
Paywall conversion levers for Latin America:
Shorter trial lengths for all plans
Be cognizant of a preference for shorter interval plans
Use weekly or monthly equivalent pricing to show the value of the yearly plan
How to localize your Superwall paywalls
We’ve established that localizing your app is a crucial step. If you’re already using Lokalise or Crowdin, you can integrate Superwall with these platforms in your account Settings, or upload strings using our template.
From there, you can localize each paywall in the paywall editor.
How to optimize your paywalls and pricing for each market in Superwall
Setting up a localized paywall for a new market is straightforward in Superwall. Within your existing campaigns, simply add a new audience with filters for each market or group of markets.
Currently, you can set up a filter using the device locale parameter, or set up a filter where device locale contains a country code. In late Q2 2024, you’ll be able to create filters for country codes and even the region within a country.
Just be sure to move this audience to the top of your audience list since they are evaluated in order.
Once you’ve set up your audiences, experiments with different prices, designs, and copy are simple to launch.
How to get started
International app growth is a challenge but doing your research and putting in a little effort ahead of your launch will lead to higher conversions much quicker.
Remember, when you’re launching in a new market, consider some (or ideally all) of these growth levers:
App and paywall localization
Pricing and plan options
Optimal trial length
Paywall design and content
