Quick App2Web Test

Validate the strategy quickly

Jacob Rushfinn

Jun 04, 2026

Hey there, it’s Jacob at Retention.Blog 👋

I got tired of reading high-level strategy articles, so I started writing actionable advice I would want to read.

Every week I share practical learnings you can apply to your business.

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“You need to try web subs!!”

I’m sure you’ve heard this quite a bit recently.

Especially if your app’s main market is in the US.

How should you test and validate this approach?

Here’s a super fast tactic that should be pretty low lift.

Create a simple sale campaign

A one off sale campaign is a great way to validate and test new strategies

You can get a higher number of users exposed quickly be sending a blast like this
It’s low risk. If it doesn’t work well, it’s usually much lower revenue risk than changing your first paywall

Use your push notifications or email to trigger an in-app message

You can trigger an in-app message via CRM platforms, or building in your app, but it’s often way faster to launch a test this way

You don’t necessarily need to trigger the in-app message from a push notification, but it allows you to drive a larger audience to your app.

Flo uses this scratch off tactic to improve conversion and engagement

Obviously, this takes more development, but I see them using it on every sale campaign, so try it out. (tactic is independent from app2web)

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Flo then shows a paywall, but you don’t need to

You can trigger the in-app payment sheet directly from a deep link from your in-app message.

Now it may be faster for you to just show a paywall, than develop the capabilities to trigger an in-app payment directly, but this is up to you.

The key with app2web is that you also need to offer a way for users to subscribe via IAP. And show this offer alongside without misleading users.

Then we can trigger a Stripe checkout page.

Flo doesn’t use Stripe here and has a custom setup, but the fastest way for you to get a test live is with a 3rd party payment provider that has checkout pages you can link to.

Two other options:

Fastspring
Paddle

Here you can see their in-app payment sheet. As I mentioned above, you can trigger these via a deeplink from an in-app message if you build it without creating a whole “paywall”

Another way to test quickly on iOS:

Try iOS Offer Codes:

https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-subscriptions/set-up-subscription-offer-codes/

You can create an offer code on iOS, generate a URL for this offer, and the link to this URL from your in-app message, which then redirects to the app store to allow them to purchase there without you ever building a new paywall.

https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id={YOUR_APP_ID}&code={YOUR_CODE}

So you can:

Create a new in-app message
That in-app message has two CTA buttons
One button is the offer code link
1. https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id={YOUR_APP_ID}&code={YOUR_CODE}
One button links to a stripe checkout page: