What are Cross-Platform In-app Subscriptions?
Cross-Platform technology is used to develop mobile apps that work across several platforms. This seems simple but in reality there are a lot of complications as different platforms have a unique set of rules. Currently there are three major platforms for deploying mobile apps are IOS, Android and the Web. To enable uniform subscription processes for these platforms, the interface must consist of Apple’s StoreKit, the Google Play Billing Library, and a Web payment provider. With proper combination of the above platforms cross platform subscriptions are possible.
Why is It Difficult to Track In-app Subscriptions in Cross-Platform?
We have seen that different platforms are integrated to make this process possible but there are a lot of complications present. Each platform has its respective sets of guidelines and further software updates ,new features, increasing subscription tiers would increase the complexity immensely. Different platforms have no common ground. Apple’s Store Kit is developed with an aging legacy technology. Google play billing on the other hand is more new and is said to be more user friendly but has limited APIs. The definition of subscription is not standardized and hence different platforms have different actions for different scenarios. This makes tracking the subscriptions of apps a highly herculean task.
How to Track In-app Subscriptions Across Platforms?
Tracking in app subscription is a very important process, but due to the integration of different platforms as seen above, it becomes really complicated to track this. Tools and techniques are used in order to achieve the same and they are as follows.
Normalize data: Data differs from platform to platform. To mitigate the various problems and bugs faced by the cross platform, data needs to be uniform. The definition for terminologies also differ from platform to platform.Tools must be used to ensure that all the differences and discrepancies are solved and uniform data is provided.
- Identity validation: The subscription and other actions done must be associated with the correct user. This mapping must be accurate regardless of the device used by the user. This feature is pivotal and when compromised could cause massive confusion and huge losses for the company.
- Entitlements: Entitlements refer to the subscription, product bundles and other services purchased by the user be it active or expired. So this provides information as to whether the user is still subscribed or it has expired or if it's getting renewed or if there was a billing issue and so on.
- Adapting to platform changes: Changes to the platforms could result in serious confusion and added complexity in the case of cross platforms. These changes could cause a massive impact on the subscription data and hence tools and techniques must be used in order to keep up with the ever evolving platforms and adapt and integrate with the new best practices hence allowing us to keep track of the subscriptions.
Build in-app subscription infrastructure in-house or use third-party service?
We have established the concept of cross-platforms subscriptions but we need to understand the pros and cons of an in-house approach or use a third-party service like Appflow.ai.
The in-house solutions have a variety of concerns such as:
- There is a constant need to develop the server and the client side: for an in-house approach we can only rely on sources present in your organization alone to develop the server and client engines. They would be lacking in expertise and experience department compared to an expert third party like Appflow.ai.
- Requires constant tech support: An in-house approach would not be able to keep up with providing constant tech support. The developers cannot spend time and resources looking into the needs of each and every customer, gather the required data and mitigate the same.
- Importance to a single customer is abysmal: The in-house team’s work is to develop applications and not customer services as mentioned above, hence there will seldom be a team allotted to do the same. Due to being severely understaffed proper attention is not given to the customers and hence the process is slow and inefficient.
The above cons explains the need for a third party service as an in-house approach deviates your team from focussing and developing your product. It also runs a high risk of breaking payment.
Using Appflow.ai mitigates all of the above shortcomings as follows:
- Provides a better experience: The third party services have methods which have stood the test of time and have a dedicated team for analyzing the data and providing customer support.
- Appflow.ai ensures lightning fast deployment: It has the expertise and the tools to host apps and deploy much faster and more efficiently than an inhouse approach. Added to this it takes a measly 1 hour to integrate.
- Provides deep analytics and out of the box analysis: It does the complicated calculations and provides the numbers required by the developers. It has many features like graphs, charts etc which give a visual image for comparison.
- Other important features: Paywall A/B testing, push-notifications, integrations, subscribers management are all provided under the canopy of Appflow.ai, making it a must-have application to track and improve In-app Subscriptions in Cross-Platforms.
Conclusion
Application development has become highly popular and its deployment in multiple platforms has been a topic of high concern.Individual presence in just the Appstore or Playstore was no longer enough. In-app Subscriptions Analytics Platform for cross platforms subscription management is highly complicated yet highly rewarding. Especially for small startups in the mobile business, appflow.ai subscription management platform aggregate subscription analytics, intuitive charts, revenue growth suggestion, running experiments fast & easy in one place.
How to Track In-app Subscriptions in Cross Platforms
