I totally remember the desperation for growth. Back when I was a founder, it was the top priority in any conversation: how can we grow faster? How can we increase conversion rates through the funnel? In the consumer app market, we are starting to see the consequences of ‘conversion at all costs’ strategy playing out. 

App businesses have never had more freedom over how they grow. Take checkout outside the App Store and you own more of the customer relationship, experiment more freely, and keep a bigger share of what you earn.

All good things. 

But owning more of the customer journey also means owning more of the responsibility for it. And if the tactics that lift conversion today damage trust, create compliance risk, or limit your growth tomorrow, are they really working?

I spoke about this at New York App Week 2026 alongside Vahe Baghdasaryan, founder and CEO of Tangent. Here’s how I think about it: art and science. The art is the feeling test. Look at your onboarding, paywall, or checkout, and ask: does this feel fair? Does it feel true? Are you hiding anything? 

Then comes the science. What happens when customers start paying? Are you seeing high chargeback or dispute rates? Are people complaining because the experience didn’t match what they thought they’d signed up for?

You need both. A flow can look compliant on paper and still leave customers feeling misled. Equally, what feels like a clever conversion tactic can quickly look less clever when the numbers start coming back.

And remember: it’s not just the App Store and your customers that are judging the experience. Regulators, tax authorities, and ad platforms are looking at it too. 

With that in mind, here are the five tensions I think every app business needs to get right:

1. The web gives you freedom, not a free pass

On the web you can try quizzes, personalized plans, social proof and tailored offers. But just because you can build something doesn't mean you should. Fake scarcity, timers that reset, unclear consent and pre-selected plans might get people through checkout. They can also trigger complaints and put your ad accounts and App Store relationship at risk.

Keep the best of high-converting funnels - relevance, personalisation, clear recommendations - and leave the manipulation behind. 

The simple test: would you be comfortable walking Apple, Meta or a regulator through every step?

2. Moving checkout to the web means taking on more than checkout

The fee savings get a lot of attention, and rightly so. But what often gets less attention is the work involved.

Move a transaction to your own web checkout and you take on everything the App Store handled for you: tax, refunds, disputes, cancellations, receipts, renewal reminders, billing support. And compliance rules that differ in every market.

That doesn't make web checkout a bad idea. Far from it. But it does leave you at a fork in the road. Build the whole stack yourself, or hand off the whole problem. Either can be right. Just cost up the whole job, not only the checkout, and make the choice consciously.

3. Don't make customers do the pricing math

There's a reason "just $X a day" is attractive. The number looks small. But if customers see that first, and then they’re charged a much bigger amount, you've created a gap between what they thought they were buying and what left their account. That's where you could lose trust.

Lead with value. Show the per-day price if it helps. But the amount you'll actually charge should be just as clear.

And don't treat renewal reminders as a conversion leak. Use them to remind customers why they subscribed in the first place. The goal isn't to make the charge easy to miss - it's to make the product hard to give up.

4. App Store pricing doesn't copy-paste onto the web

When you move customers to the web, it's tempting to keep everything the same: price, offer, experience. Tax is where that gets tricky.

The App Store has its own rules for how tax is handled and displayed. On the web, you need to meet the requirements of each market you sell into. In the EU and UK, that generally means showing tax-inclusive prices. In the US, sales tax varies by state and can depend on the product.

So, build your web pricing around the market you're selling into, and make sure the paywall and checkout tell the same story. More control over pricing is a big part of the opportunity. Just make sure you're ready to own it.

5. Experimentation still needs guardrails

I'm all for testing. Paywall layouts, plan order, trial-first offers - test all of it. In fact, the habit matters more than any single test. Businesses that change their price every quarter outperform those that don't - by about 103% on ARPU. 

But know the rules first. App Store requirements keep evolving around purchase options, pricing prominence, subscriptions, and linking out. A small conversion lift isn't a win if it creates a much bigger distribution problem. Just look at the stats - 42% of apps are rejected from the App Store because their billed price was not the most prominent price on the paywall.

The best growth teams I've seen aren't choosing between experimentation and compliance. They build compliance into how they experiment.

Remember: trust is a growth strategy. For years, conversion optimization often meant removing friction at almost any cost: make subscribing effortless, make cancelling harder, and make the headline price as attractive as possible.

Those strategies won’t hold up for much longer. 

Customers have more control. Regulators are getting stricter. App Stores and ad platforms have their own rules. 

What can we expect from the next era of app growth? Those who will win are businesses that are clear about what customers are buying, make it easy to manage, and give people reasons to stay - not reasons they can't leave.

The real opportunity isn't squeezing every last percentage point out of the first purchase. It's building a relationship that lasts.

Conversion gets you the first transaction. Trust gets you the next one.