In-app purchase (IAP) offers are one of the most popular and well-established monetization features in the mobile market. As many mobile apps are free to download, these IISA offers are basically the lifeblood of mobile games, and there are many different ways to design an attractive IISA offer for your game.
We covered most of these IISA offering apps in our last blog post on how to create your next mobile INSC offer. However, as there are so many different examples of IAP offerings and developers are constantly innovating with new features, we couldn’t fit everything into one blog!
If you haven’t already, we highly recommend you check out our original blog post on IISA offers, as it contains a lot of useful information about the background and popularity of IISA offers in mobile games, as well as many examples.
Assuming you’ve done that, we’ll pick up where we left off and come back directly to more examples of games that make up IAP offerings and give you all the inspiration you need to build your own.
Garena Free Fire: Change your destiny bid
Have you ever noticed that some bundle offers tend not to include the content you need right now? Garena Free Fire’s ‘Change Your Destiny’ IAP offering addresses this by giving players control over a pack’s items and price. How this works in practice is that players can purchase shuffle and replenish actions for the item pool, as well as a discount percentage.
This interesting app gives the player a sense of control over the bundle offer and also an element of excitement and surprise.
Royal Match: Infinite Treasure Progressive IAP bid
We all like to receive awards. As players, we are conditioned to open every chest and click on every red dot we put our eye to. Royal Match’s ‘Infinite Treasure’ offer begins by giving players free rewards on a “ladder”. The idea is that players can only “go down” the ladder (and receive additional rewards) if they claim the top rewards. And you’ve already guessed it: sometimes the prizes on the ladder require a purchase…
Provide players with visibility into future rewards IF make a purchase is a powerful mechanic that will help your players justify a purchase.
Merge Tales: Increased Event Rewards
As we all know, a solid event strategy such as increasing revenue with seasonal events is often the key factor behind the success of a mobile game. But outputting an event frame and pressing the start button is of course not enough. What you also need to consider is how you will monetize your activities.
Here is an interesting example from one of the best merge games, Merge Fables. At the start of an event, players are taken into the event’s quest mechanics. What’s more, it stands out with an attractive array of rewards should players choose to make a purchase.
Essentially what’s happening here is that the player is looking at this offer in terms of “I can work to get X amount of rewards OR I can pay to get the same things (and more) instantly AND I can still get the original rewards”. (completing missions if I want). There is also an element of urgency as players must make instant decisions when this popup is presented.
LINE Bubble 2
We’ve already featured LINE Bubble 2 in part one of creating IAP offers, but we can’t help but share one more app from the game! In this offer, players are encouraged to participate in the offer by completing missions. The more missions players complete, the better the discount for a particular bundle. This is a great way to encourage player engagement and tie that into an IAP offer.
Rise of Kingdoms: Team Draw gacha
I’m going to cheat a bit here because technically speaking, this is not an IISA proposal. Oops!
BUT – Rise of Kingdom’s Team Draw Gacha events are a mix of the most popular mobile terms imaginable: social, event, and gacha, so they’re definitely worth mentioning. The idea behind this gacha event is that the players participating do it with a group of other players. In practice, when you join the gacha, the game finds a certain number of other players to accompany you for the gacha draw. Each player then chooses a card, and after all players have made their choices, the cards are turned over to reveal what prizes the players have received. Seeing what other players get from gacha and comparing it to your own reward makes gacha a surprisingly social experience.
Solution
As you can see from the examples above, there are many different ways to enhance existing IAP offerings for your game, or perhaps implement entirely new ones. The mobile market continues to evolve, and ISA offerings will evolve with them, so if you’re a mobile game developer, it’s important to follow market trends so you’re never behind.
One of the easiest ways to follow information and examples of IISA offers related to your game is to register on the GameRefinery platform. And if you found this blog post helpful, we also recommend reading related blog posts such as how to increase your monetization with IAP mechanics and seven ways to take battle passes to the next level.