Ivan, thanks for taking the time to chat with us. You’ve been deeply involved in mobile growth – first with Adapty on the monetization side, and now as co-founder of FunnelFox focusing on web funnels. Let’s start at the beginning of your journey. How did you get into this field?
Ivan Dorofeyev: Thanks for having me! My journey started in the mobile SaaS world with Adapty, where I worked on helping apps optimize in-app subscriptions and monetization. I was a Product Owner there, working with developers, marketers, and product teams to build data-informed paywall experiments, conversion funnels, and retention strategies. That experience was a crash course in mobile growth: we ran hundreds of A/B tests on paywalls for all kinds of apps – meditation apps, productivity apps, fitness apps – you name it. Over time, I became obsessed with how even small changes in timing or messaging could move key metrics like conversion rate or lifetime value.
One thing I noticed was a major need for better funnel visibility. At Adapty we were laser-focused on what happens inside the app – but I kept wondering about what happens before the app install. We’d have clients who got a lot of traffic to their website or landing pages via SEO, influencers, content marketing, etc., and they’d ask us: “How do we connect our web experience to our app revenue?” That question really stuck with me. We could optimize in-app paywalls all day, but if we were blind to the earlier steps – the web-to-app transition – we were missing a big part of the picture. That’s what eventually led me to co-found FunnelFox. Our goal there is to make the entire funnel visible, from the first click on the web to the moment a user becomes a paying customer in the app.
Question: Adapty is known as a leader in paywall A/B testing and subscription optimization. What were some key insights you gained from working on so many paywall experiments?
Ivan: One big insight is that paywall performance is heavily about timing and context, not just design. You can have the most beautiful, perfectly-designed paywall screen, but if you show it at the wrong moment, it won’t convert. We saw this over and over. For example, in many apps we found that showing the paywall right after the user completed a meaningful action – like finishing a meditation session or completing a workout – yielded much higher conversion than showing it on app launch or at a random time. That “earned moment” when the user has received value or accomplished something is golden. Tie your offer to that moment and users are more willing to subscribe.
Another lesson is that data trumps intuition. We had cases where a very plain, even “ugly” paywall outperformed a gorgeous, professionally designed one. Why? Sometimes the simple one communicated the value more clearly, or had copy that resonated better. It taught me to never assume – always test. Every audience is different. We also learned the importance of segmentation: the best result often came from tailoring paywalls to different user groups (for instance, showing different pricing to users in different countries or tweaking the message if a user had used the app for 3 days vs 3 minutes). But again, figuring out those things came from experimentation and looking at the data, not just theory.
Question: During your time at Adapty, how did Web2App funnels factor into the customer journey? Were you looking at that intersection between web and app at all?
Ivan: Increasingly, yes – although back then I’d say we were only scratching the surface. Initially, Adapty’s focus was all in-app: once the user was inside the app, how do we convert and retain them. But as I mentioned, more and more clients started driving traffic to the web first, then funneling users to the app. So we started paying attention to that. We looked at things like: which landing page did a user come from? What content did they view on the website? Which call-to-action did they click to go to the App Store? And then we’d try to tie that to what they did in the app.
One pattern we saw was that if you can maintain continuity from web to app, it really helps. For example, say a user searches for “best budget app” and lands on your marketing blog page about budgeting tips. If that page then prompts the user to install the app, and after installing the first thing they see in the app is directly related to budgeting (the same topic that brought them in), they’re more likely to stick around. We tried to encourage clients to set up those flows – with deferred deep links and tailored onboarding – but it was complex. Attribution was fuzzy, tracking was messy, and as a third-party service focusing on subscriptions, Adapty didn’t have a product to solve that web-to-app step. And often the marketing team (handling the web campaigns) and the product team (handling the app onboarding) weren’t in sync, which led to a fragmented experience. Those challenges are exactly what I’m tackling now at FunnelFox. We want to make it much easier to track and optimize that whole journey across platforms.
Question: So tell us more about FunnelFox. How is your work there building on what you learned at Adapty? What problems are you solving for clients now?
Ivan: FunnelFox is all about giving growth teams a full-funnel view and control – from the very first touchpoint on the web all the way to retained revenue in the app. At Adapty we did a great job optimizing paywalls and in-app events, but many clients struggled with the upstream part: the web traffic, referrals, and user behavior before the install. FunnelFox is basically zooming out to include that.
What we’ve built is a platform to track and visualize multi-platform funnels. Imagine a dashboard where you can see something like: User A came from a blog post or an ad, they hit a web landing page, then a smart banner led them to install the app, they signed up for a free trial after 3 days, and eventually converted to a paying subscription on day 5. We show that entire chain. And not just for one user, of course, but aggregate patterns: which sources yield the most paying users, how web engagement correlates with in-app purchases, etc. That kind of visibility is gold for marketers and product managers. It helps answer questions like “Is my SEO content actually bringing high-value users?” or “Do users who go through our web funnel retain better than those who come direct to the app store?”
We’re also working on automation on the funnel. For instance, if we detect users dropping off consistently at a certain step – say a lot of users click an install button but don’t open the app after installing – FunnelFox might trigger an automated nudge, maybe an email or a push notification, to remind them to open the app. Or adapt the funnel in real-time; for example, if a user scrolls but doesn’t click the download button, maybe show a different message or offer. It’s like what we did with paywalls at Adapty (iterating to improve conversion), but applied to every step of the funnel, not just the payment step. In many ways it feels like the natural next step of what I was doing: optimizing beyond the app, bridging the gap between marketing and product.
Question: What are some of the biggest misconceptions people have about Web2App funnels and this whole cross-platform journey?
Ivan: Great question. One misconception is that it’s simple – like you just put a banner on your website that says “Download our app” and done. In reality, doing this well requires a lot of coordination and fine-tuning. A successful Web2App funnel needs:
Targeted landing pages that match user intent (you can’t send every visitor to the same generic homepage and expect high conversion).
Deferred deep links so that after install, users see content in the app that matches what they saw on the web – that continuity I mentioned earlier.
Consistent messaging across web and app, so the user isn’t confused. The branding, the value prop, the visuals – they should feel like one journey.
Unified tracking. This one is a nightmare if not done right – you need to stitch together web analytics with app analytics to truly see what’s happening, otherwise you’re optimizing blind in one channel without seeing the whole picture.
Another misconception is that Web2App is only for new user acquisition. It’s fantastic for that, but it’s also huge for re-engagement. Say someone visits your web site but doesn’t install the app – you can retarget them through web channels (email signups, cookies for ads, etc.) and still convert them later. Or a user who used to subscribe in your app churns; maybe they’re browsing your website’s blog now – a smart web funnel can identify that and try to win them back into the app. The funnel isn’t a linear thing that ends at install; it can loop and branch over time. Web, app, and even other platforms like email or messaging bots all play a role in a holistic funnel strategy.
Question: Looking back at your time at Adapty, what were some of the most impactful strategies you saw clients use to increase user LTV (lifetime value)? Any that you carry forward in your approach now?
Ivan: A few come to mind that were consistently effective:
1. Personalized paywalls and offers: Apps that really segmented their users and showed different pricing or offers based on behavior or profile saw big lifts – often 20–50% better conversion compared to one-size-fits-all offers. For instance, offering a student discount to users who signed up with an .edu email, or highlighting different features to a power user vs a casual user. It requires more setup (and a tool like Adapty to manage it), but it pays off.
2. Value-first onboarding: The best teams made sure the user experienced real value before asking for money. For example, one fitness app changed its onboarding to let users complete a full workout and see their progress stats before ever showing a paywall. It’s counterintuitive because you’re delaying the paywall, but it built trust – users felt the value and were more willing to pay. We often saw trial start rates jump when the paywall was shown after an “aha” moment rather than immediately. In one case, an app removed all pricing info from the first screen and instead asked something like “What’s your goal?” to engage the user – that experiment led to a 27% increase in trial starts. It taught me that how you frame the offer can matter more than what you’re offering.
3. Cultivating an experimentation culture: The companies that consistently grew their LTV were the ones that were not afraid to test even wild ideas. They weren’t complacent after one win. They would test pricing changes, new onboarding flows, completely different paywall designs, even entirely different subscription models (like adding a cheaper trial or a higher-priced tier). Not every experiment worked – in fact many failed – but the wins more than made up for the losses. That mindset, to always be iterating, is something I’ve definitely carried into FunnelFox. We try to make it easy for our clients to adopt the same approach for their web-to-app funnels, to test and learn continuously.
One anecdote: a client of ours once tried something that seemed almost crazy – they removed the dollar amount from the subscribe button (so it didn’t say “Start $9.99 Trial”, it just said “Continue”) in one variant. The hypothesis was that maybe the price was scaring users off before they saw the value. It felt risky, but they ran the test ethically (users saw pricing on the next screen before confirming). That variant actually improved conversion significantly for certain cohorts. Again, it reinforced – users don’t always behave how you’d expect, so test everything if you can do it in a user-respectful way.
Question: What advice would you give to mobile-first companies trying to implement better Web2App strategies today?
Ivan: First, map out the full journey from the user’s perspective – from the first ad they might see or Google search they might do, all the way through to them becoming a loyal user in your app. Draw it out. Identify the touchpoints and make sure you’re messaging appropriately at each. Many teams only focus on their piece (marketing focuses on the ad and click, product focuses on in-app), and nobody owns the in-between. You need someone – or a collaborative effort – to own that entire funnel experience.
Second, align your teams. This is organizational advice: get your marketing and product (and even data/analytics) folks working together, using the same definitions of success, looking at the same funnel dashboards. If marketing is optimizing for clicks but product is looking at day-7 retention, you might have disconnects. I’ve seen companies where marketing would promise something on the web (“Download for a free reward”) that the app didn’t actually deliver well, leading to disappointed users. Alignment would have caught that. When we built FunnelFox, we intentionally designed it to be used by both marketing and product teams – it’s a shared tool so it sort of forces collaboration through transparency.
Third, invest in the right tools. Shameless plug: tools like Adapty for monetization insights, or FunnelFox for funnel visibility, exist because doing it manually is really hard. You absolutely need analytics that span web and app. You need a way to do deep links and attribute installs back to web campaigns. If you try to build all that in-house, it’s going to consume a ton of time. Not that it’s impossible, but most companies are better off focusing on their core product and using existing solutions for the growth infrastructure.
And finally, test everything – from the copy of a smart banner on your website (“Get the app” vs “Try our app” vs “Continue in app”) to the timing of when you prompt for install, to what you do when the user first opens the app. The mobile ecosystem changes fast – what worked last year might not work now (for example, user privacy changes have made some old tactics obsolete). The advantage will always go to those who are iterating and learning the fastest.
Question: What excites you most about the future of mobile growth and these cross-platform experiences?
Ivan: Honestly, it’s the convergence of web and app that really excites me. We’re moving toward an experience where users don’t really care whether they’re in a “web” or “app” environment – it should feel seamless. Things like Instant Apps on Android and App Clips on iOS are blurring the lines. A user might start using your product via a tiny slice of your app without even installing it, then later install the full app if they’re interested. From a funnel perspective, it opens up possibilities to acquire users with virtually zero friction – no big download upfront. I love that idea: let users engage however they want (web, app, instant trial, etc.) and as long as it’s seamless, you remove a lot of barriers.
Also, I have to mention AI – not just because it’s a buzzword, but genuinely for growth it’s going to be huge. We’re already using AI in FunnelFox to dynamically personalize funnels; I think we’re heading toward a place where every user gets a slightly different experience optimized for them. Imagine an AI that predicts a user might drop off, so it adjusts the funnel (maybe offers a bigger discount, or changes the flow) just for that user in real time. Or AI-generated content and images that tailor the marketing message to each user’s context. It sounds a bit sci-fi, but we’re already seeing early versions of this.
Overall, I’d say I’m excited about anything that makes the growth experience more natural and user-centric. The less it feels like marketing and the more it feels like the product just smoothly guiding you to value, the better for everyone. It’s like the best onboarding is the one you don’t realize is happening. If we can make funnels that feel less like funnels and more like helpful experiences, that’s a win.
At FunnelFox, we’re trying to build towards that future – leveraging new tech like AI, but also just making sure the basics are solid (tracking, deep links, etc.). The landscape is evolving fast. Five years ago, few talked about Web2App funnels; now it’s a must-do strategy for many. Five years from now, who knows – maybe the term “Web2App” will disappear because the distinction between web and app might not matter to users. They’ll just interact with your brand, period. And our job is to ensure that interaction is smooth and that we can grow our businesses while delighting users. I find that pretty exciting.
