On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Kostya Vasilyev <kmans...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm just concerned that it might deter purchases for lite to pro
> conversions.
>  For buying in-game gems or potions it shouldn't really matter, those are
> impulse purchases and for smaller amounts too.
>

Why would it deter payments?

Here's the main value I see in the refund period: there is something you are
purchasing, that you haven't actually been able yet to even try to download
and install, so really have no idea what you are getting.  Being able to get
a refund if it is not what you want, buggy, or has other issues is important
to have any confidence in buying in that situation.

Using in-app purchases within an app is entirely different though.  Consider
the same situation with a lite vs. pro version: you downloaded the app for
free, have been using it for however long you want (or however long the
developer will let you), and have no decided it is worth spending $X to
purchase it (or unlock a certain feature etc).  What benefit does a refund
period really give you here?

Or look at this another way: the beauty of using in-app purchases for all of
this is that *you* are in complete control of the user experience through
this thing.  All you need to do is get the user to download and run your
free app, and after that you get to decide exactly how you want to interact
with the user towards paying for the app.  All in-app billing provides is
the final point where the user has decided "yes it is worth the money, I am
paying."  So you can do all kinds of things:

- Have the full app running as a limited time trial, after which the user
must purchase to continue using.
- Have the full app running with ads, and the user able to pay to get rid of
the ads.
- Have limited features available in the free app, with a payment to unlock
the full features (or even multiple payment options to unlock different
features).
- Allow the user to try out for-pay features for a limited amount of time.
- Show a nag message every now and then encouraging the user to pay for your
app to encourage further development.
- And on and on!

And in all of these cases, it is clear that the interactions here are
directly between you as the app developer and your users, with Market now
just being the point where the user hands over some cash.

-- 
Dianne Hackborn
Android framework engineer
hack...@android.com

Note: please don't send private questions to me, as I don't have time to
provide private support, and so won't reply to such e-mails.  All such
questions should be posted on public forums, where I and others can see and
answer them.

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