Subscription apps are moving to the web — not because it’s trendy, but because it works. Web2app flows, web onboarding, and full web funnels now sit at the center of user acquisition for teams that need better attribution, stronger intent, and more control than ATT and SKAN allow.
But don’t treat web as a shortcut: it demands tracking, iteration, resources, and real budgets. And the teams that win with web are the ones treating it as a serious part of their growth stack, not a quick experiment.
Still, when it’s used right, web can outperform app campaigns, unlock new audiences, and speed up your 0→1 learning cycle. That’s why the industry is talking about it.
This post is a curated recap of a recent FunnelFox webinar, where I talked with two growth experts with deep hands-on experience in subscription apps and web conversion funnels:
- Gessica Bicego — Fractional CMO, formerly at Blinkist and Paired, with 10+ years in subscription apps.
- Jessica Gotti — Head of Performance Marketing at Paired, previously at Bending Spoons.
Read on to learn when web funnels make sense (and when they don’t), how to use web without web payments, how to track performance in the midst of attribution chaos, and other stuff we wish someone had told us sooner.
Quick reality check: Is web worth it if your app campaigns are doing fine?
Web funnels aren’t a hack to bypass product gaps. If the core experience isn’t valuable, web won’t turn things around.
They also aren’t low-effort. Web funnels take work — setting up tracking, coordinating with design and dev, iterating on flows, and investing real budget into testing. Even with no-code tools like FunnelFox, success won’t come from a one-shot launch. A web funnel quickly becomes a full-quarter project with creative production, quiz logic, and optimization loops.
But it can speed up marketing, even when the product’s not ready
What web can do, though, is reduce time to insight.
You’re selling before people ever see the product. So if you have a very good funnel and your product isn’t there yet, you can still run profitable campaigns.
That makes it especially powerful in early-stage growth. You can test value props, positioning, and pricing on the web, while the product team is still building. For some teams, that’s what gets them to positive ROAS long before the app is fully ready.
So, when do web funnels work, and when do they just get in the way?
Products that don’t fit into a single screen
Not every product can be sold in one swipe. For apps in emerging or complex verticals like relationship care, mental health, or long-term habit building standard app store pages and short ad flows just aren’t enough.
These products often need a slower, more emotional onboarding experience. Something that helps users understand not just what the product does, but why it matters to them personally.
A web funnel creates space for that. With multiple steps, questions, and small “aha” moments along the way, it can build the kind of buy-in that’s hard to generate through app-only flows.
When the quiz gives real value
One classic pattern is: “Take the quiz — get something personalized.” That might be your ideal bedtime, a custom learning path, or a relationship action plan.
If your product can deliver a clear, self-contained artifact like that, the web quiz becomes more than just lead-gen. It’s a value moment in itself — one that builds trust and primes users to convert.
For products where that kind of personalization feels natural, web funnels aren’t just logical — they’re often the most effective entry point.
When you need to build emotional connection
Some products aren’t just about functionality — they’re about how people feel. Apps like Noom or Flo rely on emotional relevance to drive engagement and conversion.
A long web quiz gives space for that. Step by step, it helps users recognize themselves in the problem and feel understood. That repeated “this is me” moment builds momentum, so by the time they reach the offer, the buy-in is already there.
If your product benefits from that kind of emotional warming-up, a web funnel is your best shot.
When web just gets in the way: Products built for instant gratification
For casual games, simple utilities, or any product where users expect instant value or fun, adding a web layer usually hurts more than it helps.
These users don’t want to read, scroll, or answer questions. They want to play the game, try the tool, or get results right now, so every extra screen becomes a friction.
In those cases, sending traffic straight to the app is a better strategy.
Not just quizzes: Other types of web2app flows
Web2app without web payments: using “mid-web” for tracking
At Paired, web2app campaigns are now a core part of their paid acquisition across Meta, TikTok, and early tests on Google. They mainly use two setups:
- Mini landing page: a short page with a quick product snapshot and a single Download button, which redirects to the app store.
- MMP auto-redirect: no page at all — the user clicks the ad and is sent straight to the store.
Both flows skip web payments, but still run through the browser, making them eligible for user-level attribution (depending on the channel).
This setup also unlocks new audiences that don’t always respond to native app ads — often older, in new placements, or more comfortable engaging via web first. In many cases, these users show higher LTV than direct-to-app traffic.
How it works: MMP redirects and website sales campaigns
The trick behind MMP auto-redirects is that you’re not running an app campaign, you’re running a website sales campaign.
Here’s how it works:
- The campaign uses a special redirect link (OneLink, Branch, etc.) as its destination URL.
- When a user clicks the ad, they’re sent straight to the App Store or Google Play.
- Behind the scenes, the MMP logs the web click and maps any resulting app installs or events back to the web campaign using web-based integrations like “Facebook Web” or “TikTok Web.”
This lets you pass conversion signals back to ad platforms even without relying on App Store data. But it’s not foolproof.
Some setups are slow to start attributing. Depending on the MMP and platform, you might see a delay before conversions appear in the ad network dashboard. It’s functional, but messy.
Mini landing pages as an attribution “hack”
Jessica Gotti’s team built a workaround to make attribution even more reliable. Instead of relying solely on MMP redirects, they used mini landing pages with dynamic parameter handling.
Here’s the flow:
- The campaign link includes UTM parameters.
- These get passed into a mini landing page.
- On page load, the parameters are injected into an Adjust link, triggering attribution as soon as the page loads, not when the user clicks “Download.”
In Meta’s in-app browser, this behaved almost like an auto-redirect: the user barely sees the page before landing in the app store, but Meta still gets the signal.
The team suspected that straight MMP auto-redirects sometimes dropped parameters, leading to fewer events recorded in Meta. This setup gave them more control and, occasionally, better results (even if not rigorously A/B tested).
Content pages, articles, and the “classic Blinkist” playbook
At Blinkist, web content was a core part of how they grew. Up to 80% of their spend went into article-style pages: native-looking stories, influencer tie-ins, and long-form content that fit seamlessly into the Facebook feed.
These weren’t hard-sell pages. They looked and read like editorial — “Forbes-style” stories that built interest before the pitch ever appeared.
Why it worked:
- Meta’s pixel and SDK had years of training data on Blinkist’s web campaigns, giving the algorithm strong signals to optimize against.
- Placement skewed toward Facebook Feed where users expect to read, not just scroll.
This approach worked for Blinkist — but to make it work for you, you’ll need a team that knows how to make performance content feel like native media.
Where else web works: Influencers, re-engagement, and quiz funnel variations
Influencer and podcast pages
One of the simplest (and most effective) tactics is to give each influencer their own custom landing page — like paired.com/pacman. It’s easy to track, human-readable, and gives a clear view of which partner is driving results.
It also creates space for a dedicated offer: “This deal is only available via [Influencer Name],” which helps build authenticity.
ManyChat automation via comments
For more interactive formats like Instagram or YouTube, some teams use ManyChat to automate access to the offer.
Here’s how it works:
- The influencer asks followers to comment with a word or emoji.
- ManyChat picks it up and sends them a link to a personalized landing page with the offer.
Re-engagement and post-cancellation flows
Web doesn’t have to be just for acquisition. It can also bring users back, especially those who dropped off before finishing onboarding, or recently canceled their subscription.
In these cases, email becomes the re-entry point:
- A targeted message with a link to a web landing page
- That page can include a special offer, a new value explanation, or a re-framed subscription plan
It’s low-friction and gives teams a chance to re-engage users without relying on the app to do all the heavy lifting.
Search-driven (Google Ads, etc.) and discovery-driven funnels (Meta, TikTok)
When users already know what they want — think “best couples app” or “how to improve communication” — short web funnels can get straight to the point.
These flows are:
- Minimal: just a few questions or even none
- Fast: users land directly on an offer or plan
- ROI-driven: optimized for people with purchase intent
But when traffic is coming from discovery platforms, like Meta or TikTok, the playbook changes.
These users weren’t actively looking, so it’s up to the funnel to create intent. That’s where longer, emotionally engaging quizzes shine:
- More questions
- Narrative-driven copy
- Gradual value build-up
Tracking, attribution, and the eternal chaos of numbers
Pixel + CAPI as the base layer for web funnels
Pixel tracking alone isn’t reliable, especially after paywall. That’s why most teams send events through both Pixel and CAPI — to keep signals flowing even when client-side data disappears. This dual setup gives ad networks more consistent signals, even when client-side data gets lost.
MMP web SDKs aren’t silver bullets
Some teams try swapping in the MMP’s web SDK instead of using the Meta pixel, hoping for cleaner tracking. But it doesn’t guarantee complete accuracy. In one case, Gessica saw the SDK report four times more purchases in Meta than what Stripe actually processed. That kind of over-attribution can throw off performance signals fast.
Why Meta wins the web2app game
Meta’s web campaigns rely on click attribution, and that’s a major advantage over the probabilistic models used for in-app campaigns. Even if you optimize toward app events, sending them back as web events helps improve signal quality.
Another reason Meta performs better for web2app: its web campaigns tend to reach an older, higher-LTV audience. App campaigns, by contrast, often skew younger — many are trained on 25–34 as the core age group.
TikTok struggles with signal and economics
TikTok is strong in upper-funnel engagement, but harder to read when it comes to performance. Tracking isn’t as reliable, and even when performance looks weak, it’s unclear if that’s due to actual economics or broken attribution.
Optimization: events, creatives, pricing, and LTV
Always optimize for purchase
At Paired, trial funnels didn’t deliver. Too many payment failures when converting from trial to paid, higher churn, and generally weaker retention.
As a result, the focus at Paired shifted to full-price purchases from the start, across multiple plan types (monthly, quarterly, annual). Introductory pricing and paid trials remain on the roadmap, but only as controlled experiments, not the core growth motion.
What’s a “good enough” ROAS or payback window for web2app?
Paired looks for ~50% Day-0 ROAS as the baseline. That’s the number that gives enough headroom to break even in ~3 months, assuming your renewal rates and refund hold.
But ROAS is only part of the picture. Plan length and renewal rates matter too:
- Quarterly plans: 60–70% renewal at Day 91
- Weekly plans: massive churn after week 2 or 3
In short: don’t read ROAS in isolation. It only makes sense when mapped against your subscription cadence and actual renewal behavior.
How to test creatives when conversions are expensive
Creative tests only work when they’re based on actual purchases, not proxy events like quiz starts or button clicks. Those signals might be cheaper, but they often crown the wrong winners.
Still, testing for purchases burns budget fast. That’s why Gessica’s team doesn’t test one creative per ad set. Instead, they group related angles into the same ad set and evaluate performance at the ad set level. It’s not lab-grade insight, but it’s realistic, and it works.
Another key learning: creative isn’t just a visual swap — it rewires the whole funnel. Each ad sets a promise. If the first page of your quiz doesn’t align with that promise, users bounce early or behave unpredictably later in the flow.
That’s why high-performing teams customize the first quiz screen to match the intent and message of each top-performing creative angle.
Segmentation, web data, and connecting to in-app onboarding
Segment by angle, not by age
Forget “women 35–44.” At Paired, funnels are built around motivations, not demographics — “fix communication,” “navigate long-distance.” Each one gets its own ad angle, quiz entry point, and flow logic.
That makes the full journey feel personal and keeps the ad promise aligned with the quiz experience.
On Meta, broad targeting lets the algorithm find the right segments — often better than setting age or gender rules manually. On TikTok, light demographic filters might help, but over-targeting hurts delivery.
How to use web data for personalization
Web gives you real signals: which angles convert, what pain points resonate, what headlines pull. Smart teams feed that back into:
- refining creative and ad copy,
- customizing quiz intros by angle,
- and scaling with dynamic funnels (FunnelFox makes this easy).
No need to build five different funnels from scratch — dynamic logic lets one backend support dozens of personalized paths.
How web onboarding connects to the in-app experience
In an ideal setup, once someone completes the web quiz and subscribes, a deferred deep link opens the app with the account auto-logged and quiz data pre-filled.
While this is still tough to fully implement, some teams are experimenting with partial versions using FunnelFox and their own CRM tools.
Backup plan: email and smart recovery
If users drop off before reaching the final page, a smart follow-up email picks up the slack:
- a reminder of what they bought,
- a magic login link,
- and instructions to download and get started.
Some even add a custom in-app onboarding step: “Came from the web? Tap here to restore your quiz and log in.”
It’s a simple fix, but it saves a lot of churn (and support tickets).
Key takeaways: What to remember about web funnels and web2app
Web funnels won’t save a broken product. But if your app delivers value — especially in complex or emotional categories — they can seriously accelerate growth.
This is where quiz funnels shine. They give space to explain, connect, and deliver value before the app even opens. For products in wellness, relationships, or learning, that’s often what tips users over the edge.
You don’t need to take payments on the web to make it work. Even a simple redirect flow or landing page can unlock better attribution, reach older or underserved segments, and — in many cases — drive higher LTV than straight-to-app traffic.
Just don’t skip the hard parts. The teams that win:
- Optimize for purchase, not proxies.
- Tailor creatives to each funnel angle.
- Match the first quiz screen to the ad promise.
- Connect web onboarding to app experience (or at least clean it up with email + magic links).
Repurposing your app ads won’t get you there. Web is its own channel, so treat it like one.
