Price A/B testing allows you to test different baseline prices for your app in order to understand if your app’s monetization or engagement would improve with a different baseline price. The tool is available to Meta Horizon Store developers.

Note: Currently, price A/B testing experiments are only supported in the United States.

Data about how your app performs at different price points can give you confidence in your pricing decisions. The price A/B test tool allows you to test different prices exposed to a limited audience in order to determine the effect on your app’s monetization and engagement. This allows you to make a more informed decision on how to price your app, including whether demand for your app fluctuates throughout its lifecycle.

For example, some apps may experience decreased demand over their lifecycle and would benefit from a price decrease sometime after launch to increase overall monetization and engagement. Others may experience increased demand as consumers show sustained interest in your app at a value higher than its current price, so you could decide to re-price your app.

Note: If you’re looking for information on creative A/B testing, see A/B Testing.

What to consider before testing

Before you start testing, consider the following:

Identify your primary goals: Are you trying to drive monetization or engagement lift, or both?

Consider whether or not you plan to participate in a sale in the next 30 days: Running a Price A/B test will ship a price change to a small population of users. If the Price A/B test ends within 30 days of a sale event’s launch, your eligibility to participate in the sale may be impacted.

When the test starts: Your experiment will begin and end at 11:00 am Pacific time on the dates selected for your experiment start date and end date.

Observe impact during the test: Throughout your experimentation, be mindful to observe whether or not observed gains offset potential losses driven by your price changes.

Review results after the test before testing again: Your results will be shared via email once your experiment is complete.

Types of price A/B tests

You can use this tool to create the following kinds of price A/B tests:

Price boundary test: This test identifies how users react generally to an increase and decrease in your app’s price. For boundary tests, you’ll enter a price that is above your current price and a price that is below your current price. A price boundary test is the first step to gather information about how your customers may react to a price increase or decrease. Testing these boundary prices will allow you to gather signals on how demand for your app may change.

Price incrementality test: This test identifies how much of a price increase or decrease would yield positive results to your engagement or monetization metrics. These price incrementality tests can help you determine how much of a price increase or decrease you should make to find the ideal price for your app.

Team permission requirements

In order to create and manage price A/B tests, your member account for your team needs the following permissions:

App Submission

Manage App

View App

For more information, see Create a Team and Manage Users.

Creating a price A/B test

Use the following steps to create your price A/B test:

Open your browser and navigate to the Meta Horizon Developer Dashboard.

If you’re in the Org Manager view, choose the app you want to test.

In the left-side navigation, click Growth > Price A/B Testing from the drop-down options.

Click Create Pricing Experiment.

Name your experiment and choose an Experiment Type.

Set the desired dates for your experiment, keeping the following in mind:

Your experiment start date must be 3-days after the date you set up your experiment within the tool due to the necessary time that must be allotted for verification and quality assurance.

The experiment end date will highlight the minimum date when your experiment could receive statistically significant results, based on your app’s most recent data. You may run your experiment for longer, up to a maximum of 90 days.

Add the Current Price.

Review your form for accuracy and then click Save and Publish.

After submitting your price A/B test

Once you submit your experiment, you cannot make changes. However, you may cancel the experiment and re-submit a new one. For some apps, you may not reach statistical significance by the 90 day maximum, but directional confidence in key metrics will be achievable.

App price changes after testing

Once you have completed your test and gathered your results, you may be ready to make a change to your baseline price. As you make your decision, you should first consider the following before making a change:

Do you plan to participate in any sales in the next 30 days? If you do, making a price change within 30 days of a sale event may make you ineligible to participate in the event.

If you’re making a price decrease, investigate ways to increase visibility of your new price point.

If you plan to make a price increase, note that you may wish to develop a communications plan in case users ask why you’ve increased your price.

Ultimately, a price change is your decision to make. The price A/B test tool lets you explore a baseline price change and compare that to results of your sales.

Before making a price change, the signals you gather from sales and discounts should be relatively consistent in how they impact your core metrics. If it is not consistent, there may be additional factors at play impacting your price that should be further investigated before committing to a new price.

Keep in mind that a change to your base price is most likely to improve your long-term sales over time. Conversely, sales and discounts provide an opportunity for increased exposure of your title on store surfaces at a lower price that is likely to provide a short-term lift in conversion.

If a user expresses concerns about seeing two prices for your app during an experiment period, by comparing the price they see with what another has seen, they can file a support ticket providing screenshots of the different prices. Meta will offer this user store credit equal to the difference in prices they observed, rounded up to the nearest $5, or relevant currency. You may direct users to this page to file a ticket.

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