Adding a Try to Buy feature increases your chance of sale by 82%

In recent post I talked about the benefit of adding Try to Buy 

With the Windows store we have found over 82% of apps which are offered as a trial convert to a purchase.

The try/buy option is a great USP for  Windows and Windows Phone stores each make it very simple to implement such an experience.

Try/Buy was also a recent question I had from the London Unity User Group Porting sessions we held.

 

Unity3d includes a simple API in its platform to check for a trial license from the store platform.

Here is a nice little step by step guide of how to get started with Unity3d and build a try to buy option within your game

Step 1 Decide on your trial method!

Is it going to be:

• 1 Level
• 1 day with unlimited access to features?
• 7 days with unlimited access to features?
• Unlimited with limited features?
• Somewhere in between?

Step 2 – Lets build it

Unity3d has included a simple API for probing the license information for the game from the Store platform. I wasn’t able to find any documentation for the API on the Unity docs site,

    1: using System;
    2: using UnityEngine;
    3:  
    4: namespace UnityEngine.Windows
    5: {
    6:     public sealed class LicenseInformation
    7:     {
    8:         public LicenseInformation();
    9:  
   10:         public static bool isOnAppTrial { get; }
   11:  
   12:         [WrapperlessIcall]
   13:         public static string PurchaseApp();
   14:     }
   15: }

Within your game you will want to query this function and call the API to see if I need to setup the purchase mode or the player can just proceed with normal and use the trail gameplay.

In a Unity3d game, there is a GameController object that will persist across scenes.

We recommend you setup this listener here.

In the file we need to store the status of trial mode in a public static field, so that other scripts that query it to limit features in the game.

    1: public static bool IsTrial = true;
    2:     void Awake()
    3:     {
    4:         GameObject.DontDestroyOnLoad(this); // cause this object to persist
    5:  
    6: #if UNITY_WINRT
    7:         IsTrial = UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.isOnAppTrial;
    8: #endif
    9:     }

What we now need to do is add a buy button to the GUI.

What we want to happen is when the player presses the BUY button, it will call PurchaseApp() to launch the Store purchasing process.

    1: void OnGUI()
    2:     {
    3:         if (IsTrial)
    4:         {
    5:             if (GUI.Button(new Rect(50, 30, 100, 25), "Buy me!"))
    6:             {
    7: #if UNITY_WINRT || WINDOWS_PHONE
    8:                 var receipt = UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.PurchaseApp();
    9:                 IsTrial = false;
   10: #endif
   11:             }
   12:         }
   13:     }

Dont worry if your debugging at this PurchaseApp doesn't return anything at all. You will get an empty string – This is simply because your debugging your app against a app that HAS NOT BEEN PUBLISHED YET.

So the key thing here is that this API appears to just be a fire-and-forget, so put in some logic to recheck the trial mode state when FixedUpdate runs, but only after 1 second has passed. So, while the app is in trial mode, we will check for a change every 1 second.

    1: void FixedUpdate()
    2:     {
    3:         if (IsTrial && (Time.realtimeSinceStartup - _lastTrialCheck) >= 1f)
    4:         {
    5:             _lastTrialCheck = Time.realtimeSinceStartup;
    6:  
    7:             // we'll detect if the trial state has changed
    8:             if (UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.isOnAppTrial != IsTrial)
    9:             {
   10: #if UNITY_WINRT
   11:                 IsTrial = UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.isOnAppTrial;
   12: #endif
   13:             }
   14:         }
   15:     }

As a reference here’s the full source for a sample GameController class.

    1: using UnityEngine;
    2: using System.Collections;
    3:  
    4: public class GameController : MonoBehaviour {
    5:  
    6:     public static bool IsTrial = true;
    7:  
    8:     private float _lastTrialCheck = 0f;
    9:  
   10:     void Awake()
   11:     {
   12:         GameObject.DontDestroyOnLoad(this); // cause this object to persist
   13:  
   14: #if UNITY_WINRT
   15:         IsTrial = UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.isOnAppTrial;
   16: #endif
   17:     }
   18:  
   19:     void FixedUpdate()
   20:     {
   21:         if (IsTrial && (Time.realtimeSinceStartup - _lastTrialCheck) >= 1f)
   22:         {
   23:             _lastTrialCheck = Time.realtimeSinceStartup;
   24:  
   25:             // we'll detect if the trial state has changed
   26:             if (UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.isOnAppTrial != IsTrial)
   27:             {
   28: #if UNITY_WINRT
   29:                 IsTrial = UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.isOnAppTrial;
   30: #endif
   31:             }
   32:         }
   33:     }
   34:  
   35:     void OnGUI()
   36:     {
   37:         if (IsTrial)
   38:         {
   39:             if (GUI.Button(new Rect(50, 30, 100, 25), "Buy me!"))
   40:             {
   41: #if UNITY_WINRT || WINDOWS_PHONE
   42:                 var receipt = UnityEngine.Windows.LicenseInformation.PurchaseApp();
   43:                 IsTrial = false;
   44: #endif
   45:             }
   46:         }
   47:     }
   48: } 

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 06, 2015
  Hi Lee, Your title is a bit misleading. Saying, "Adding a Try to Buy feature increases your chance of sale by 82%" and then "With the Windows store we have found over 82% of apps which are offered as a trial convert to a purchase." aren't the same thing. I'm sure some apps that don't have trial to paid still have sales, right? ;-) Thanks for the post, though. I'm tweeting it out tomorrow! -Rob