Conversion to Paying Chart
This page describes Charts v3.
This chart is also available in our legacy Charts v2. See Charts v2 and v3 differences.
The Conversion to Paying chart shows what proportion of new customers become paying customers. For many subscription app businesses, this represents a successful completion of the acquisition funnel, and marks the transition of this customer from a subscriber to acquire to a subscriber to retain.
Available settings
- Filters: Yes
- Segments: Yes
- Conversion Timeframe: Yes
Customer cohorts
This chart is cohorted by the earliest date that a customer:
- Was "first seen" (first opened your app), or
- Made their first purchase (for purchases made outside of your app, like promoted purchases in the App Store)
Example: If a customer first opened your app on April 15th, 2022, but didn't make a purchase until May 21st, 2022, they would be included in the April 15th cohort.
Measuring conversion rates through a cohort of customers from a given period, as opposed to a count of events within a given period, is critical for accurate performance comparison.
Conversion Timeframe
The Conversion Timeframe selector limits the amount of time each cohort (period) has to convert within to enable accurate period-over-period comparisons. For example, at a Conversion Timeframe of 7 days:
- A cohort that is 14 days old includes conversions that occurred on calendar days 0 through 7, but none that occurred after day 7.
- A cohort that is 10 days old also includes conversions that occurred on calendar days 0 through 7. The additional time that the older cohort had to convert is excluded from this view, allowing an accurate comparison.
- A cohort that is 5 days old includes all conversions that have occurred so far. It is marked as incomplete because the cohort still has time remaining before calendar day 7 is complete.
Select the "Unbounded" conversion timeframe to see all conversions for a given cohort, regardless of when they occurred.
How to use Conversion to Paying in your business
The conversion rate to paying is a good indicator of how effective your app is at acquiring customers who are most likely to pay for your product and demonstrating the value of your premium products.
Since it may capture multiple steps of your acquisition funnel (e.g. the conversion to trial start, and then to paid from trial), try segmenting by key subscriber demographics and exploring other conversion charts to analyze your trends more deeply.
Calculation
For each period, we measure:
- New Customers: The count of new customers first seen by RevenueCat within the period
- Paying Customers: The count of those customers that made any payment (such as subscriptions not in their trial period, or non-renewing IAPs) within the specified Conversion Timeframe
Formula
[Paying Customers] / [New Customers] = Conversion to Paying
FAQs
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What types of payments get counted as a conversion to paying? | If a customer purchases any one-time product, starts any paid subscription, or converts from a free trial, they are counted as a paid conversion. This includes subscription starts with introductory offers; as well as one-time transactions such as non-consumables, consumables, and non-renewing subscriptions. |
| If a payment is later refunded, will that cause Conversion to Paying to decrease? | This depends on the conversion timeframe selected. A refund that happened after the conversion timeframe will not cause a decrease in the conversion rate, which keeps completed conversion windows from changing. For example, a customer that purchased on their day 4 and received a refund on day 10 will show as converted in the 7-day conversion timeframe, but not converted in their 14-day conversion timeframe. Learn more here. |
| What is the relationship between Conversion to Paying and other conversion charts? | Learn more about the relationship between conversion charts here. |
| Does this chart count how many conversions to paying occurred in a given period? | No, the Conversion to Paying chart is measuring what portion of a cohort of customers from a given period convert to paying – it does not measure when those conversions happened, or what other conversion to paying might have happened in a given period. To measure new conversions to paying within a given period, explore our Active Subscriptions Movement chart. |
| Why does the count of New Customers not change when filtering by Product, Product Duration, Store, or Offering? | These filters are only applicable to subscribers because a customer does not have a designated “product” unless they make a purchase. Because of this, when using filters that only apply to subscribers, only the conversion measure will be filtered. |
| Why does the count of Paying Customers in this chart differ from other sources outside of RevenueCat? | Though there are many reasons why different data sources may have different definitions, the most common difference between our conversion charts and other sources is our cohorting definition. Because this chart is cohorted by a customer’s first seen date, the count of Paying Customers in each period is likely to differ from other sources that either cohort based on event date, or have a different definition of a comparable customer cohort. |