Friday, September 26th, 2025
https://youtu.be/Dyy26r8xl78?feature=shared
LovePrinter has been live for just a bit over a month now and we’ve grown to approximately one-hundred active users. Of these one-hundred active users, only two of them have converted and purchased a credit-package. Both users purchased the Starter Pack at $2.99 for 40 credits.
Despite the small sample size, this low conversion rate of approximately two percent is worrying to me. I look at this through the lens of:
That’s a lot of hoops to jump through, so the marketing portion is definitely working. Capturing someone’s attention to explore your product is a critical part of the process. I know this firsthand because very few videos/posts have ever captivated me enough to check out a product. Therefore, the bottleneck must be once the user arrives in the app. But if they sign-up for an account, that only leaves the pricing-system to complete the conversion. If they’re not converting, that’s the only possible explanation. Let’s break down why I think that is.
The credit system is well-intentioned, but has several fundamental flaws in its current implementation.
New users receive a 25-credit signup bonus. However, this is not enough to complete a single basic workflow (which costs 30-55 credits). A user can’t even get one design exported without paying. This is a major barrier and likely the primary reason for the low conversion rate. Users want to experience the full value proposition before they are willing to pay.
The app’s strength is simplicity. We offer several templates for users to choose from, and the user then just fills out a form to personalize it. The credit system, with its per-action costs, works directly against this. It forces users to perform mental calculations for every step, adding cognitive load and detracting from the creative experience. The last thing you want to do with creative apps like this is to interfere with the user’s creative flow, and have them rationing their credits.
The pricing model was designed to compete with Canva. I was under the impression I had to consider total value offered. And obviously, Canva is king with respect to that. $20 per month subscription unlocks access to millions of templates, a complete design editor, etcetera. Therefore, the only way I could compete with these complete and mass-market design tools was to offer my unique templates individually. By that I mean, a user is only charged for what they ultimately export, and because most occasions are a one-time thing, users pay for exactly what they need. This helps reduce the costs greatly e.g. $20/month on Canva versus $1-2 per template on LovePrinter.
But this logic, even if it makes sense, was completely irrelevant. I never needed to consider total value offered and yada yada. I’ve learned it’s simply a matter of: