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Comment by orky56 | Hacker News Reader

To get someone to pay, you need to prey on their impulses. Games accomplish this with instant gratification and addiction. For productivity apps, people can justify a purchase because their productivity is worth at the least that price. These are typically pay per downloads and then involve a user to switch to a completely new system. I wouldn't be surprised if engagement & retention are very low despite these high revenues.

Disclaimer: I'm working on a productivity app.

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Based on some early customer development, I have found that people who want to be productive go on a spree of gathering too many productivity tools around them. As I mentioned earlier, some people feel productive just by getting a productivity tool. So even if a user has downloaded the app, they now have to migrate their existing items and start to fully incorporate this new tool into their life. It's much easier to purchase and download a tool than to actually dedicate their lives to it.

So from that perspective, I would say retention and engagement are low since not many are willing to put the time and effort to do that tool justice.

aaah Ok. Its easy to buy something but hard the switching effort and learning effort is higher so retention is lower. Interesting.

Curious as to why would engagement and retention be low? As regard's pay per download models...looks like "Attach" business model's are becoming more popular.

"Attach" means charging for something outside of the app store. Dropbox, Uber, Square all do it. I remember seeing a Chris Dixon post about this on HN a few months ago.

I have several of the pay-for-use productivity apps mentioned, and my experience was like the parent comment said. Initially got the app to fix a problem (content creation/editing is difficult on an all-touch device). But just fooled around a little and never really got engaged. I still do that stuff on my laptop.

My take-away was that I wanted precise pointing and a keyboard and a big screen for those tasks, because I'm fussy about the results.

But like a lot of the HN audience, I'm not very typical, so my experience may mean little ;-).

Regarding payment model, payment wasn't the issue. It was functionality.

Every experience means a lot! People seem to be very purchase-friendly when it comes to mobile these days even though from a productivity standpoint, most work is still done on laptops/desktops. You need that larger screen, tactile input, etc., in order to complete complex tasks that involve switching among various tasks that require more than swipes and taps.

Yep, I thought it would be fun to use a touch-based app for drawing diagrams.

Turns out that to get the lines straight, group/ungroup objects, line everything up, choose fonts and colors, etc., etc., it takes a lot of input that is not particularly well-done using touch.

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