How ‘Pistol Whip’ Achieved a 7.5% Conversion Rate with Try Before You Buy: Insights and Best Practices

By enabling Try Before You Buy (TBYB), Cloudhead Games—the creators of Pistol Whip—was able to show that offering people free time-restricted trials has a positive impact on conversions in the Meta Quest Store. By tailoring its TBYB offering according to Pistol Whip’s gameplay, Cloudhead Games achieved a 7.5% conversion rate.

On a rapidly growing platform with a large library of brand-new titles, finding ways to increase purchase consideration can be a challenge whether you’re a new or experienced VR developer. Our internal research suggests that while people are eager to seek out experiences, unfamiliar IPs and new immersive experiences may cause hesitancy about whether they’ll enjoy the experience—and that hesitancy can ultimately prevent them from making a purchase.

Now, we’re excitedd to support you with a new service that can help you inspire buyer confidence and reach new audiences: Try Before You Buy (TBYB). This service lets you offer time-restricted trials in the Meta Quest Store, so people can experience your app first-hand, make a more informed decision about their purchase, and feel confident that your app is right for them.

Here’s what you need to know about how TBYB works:

Along with other self-service tools available in the Developer Dashboard—like product detail page A/B Testing—TBYB is designed to help you maximize benefits while mitigating risk. Not every app will benefit from enabling TBYB, but we’re here to show you key app aspects to be aware of and explain why free trials work for some apps better than others.

During soft launch testing conducted from July 20, 2022 through August 19, 2022, Cloudhead Games offered a free 20-minute trial of its shooter and rhythm game Pistol Whip—an app that proved to be optimally designed for a service like TBYB. Entrenched in fast-paced action and facing constant gunfire, people taking advantage of Pistol Whip’s free trial were able to experience a lot in just 20 minutes.

When choosing your trial’s time duration, it’s important to consider your app’s genre and user journey. Free trial experiences are identical to the experience someone has if they purchase your app, so knowing roughly how long it takes people to get value can help you determine your time duration—or if TBYB is right for your app. For example, if your app is a story-driven RPG with long introductory cut scenes, measuring the duration of the cut scenes can help you identify whether a time limit of 30 minutes is conducive for an enjoyable experience.

Pistol Whip’s introductory user journey is concise and jam-packed with action, while its core game loop is clearly established and encourages replayability. Players are propelled forward to shoot and dodge their way through various scenes designed around the game’s soundtrack. Each scene lasts as long as the song, which lets players have quick but complete experiences. After finishing each scene, players feel a sense of accomplishment, and this is key for driving conversion.

Early testing showed us that people are more likely to purchase an app if they feel a sense of progression. You might be skeptical about your app’s ability to cultivate feelings of progress in 30 minutes or less, but there are actually many ways you can accomplish this:

Pistol Whip also found success with TBYB through its Contracts system, which allows players to progress by completing rotating daily, weekly, and monthly challenges. The higher the score, the higher the rank for each Contract—this reinforces replayability and incentivizes users to come back to climb the leaderboards and become the ultimate action hero.

While Pistol Whip is a shining example of how one app uses free trials to drive conversion and grow its community, you can start leveraging TBYB settings and the results dashboard to tailor a trial for your app today. TBYB doesn’t require any review process from Meta—which means you can start your trial and start gathering data immediately. Trials created outside of business hours will be enabled the following business day.

The TBYB soft launch experiment was featured on a new shelf in the Store titled “Free Game Trials,” and the results showed positive improvements in product detail page (PDP) impressions and conversions. If you choose to enable TBYB for your app, it’ll be featured in a dedicated Try Before You Buy shelf on the homepage of the Meta Quest Store. Driving people to your app’s PDP is the first step towards a conversion, and we want to help give you the visibility you need for TBYB to be successful for your business.

Leverage Audience Size to Reduce Risk: If you’re still unsure about whether TBYB is the right fit for your app, consider enabling it with 25% or 50% of your audience. You can choose to disable TBYB at any time.

Boost Visibility with Cover Art A/B Testing: To improve the number of visits to your app’s PDP from the Meta Quest Store TBYB shelf, first consider using the A/B Testing Tool in the Developer Dashboard to inform your Cover Art strategy.

Run Your First Free Trial for 30 Days: Enabling your initial TBYB period for 30 days will help ensure you achieve statistically significant results to better assess whether it can help you drive revenue.

We’ll continue making updates to TBYB moving forward to better support you in growing your business, and we’re excited about the potential for free trials to boost conversion rates throughout our platform. For more information on TBYB, you can check out our blog post and documentation. If you have feedback on this feature, be sure to let us know in the Developer Forum.