International expansion and localization

TL;DR

• Localization was Yuliya Lennox’s biggest win of the year (2026); with AI you can translate a product in hours, so test more languages.¹²
• Start where you have an edge, not automatically the US: Blinkist started in Germany; Eva Learn English won its home market first, then expanded.³
• Use similar-converting, cheap geos for creative testing (Indonesia at ~$10/day vs ~$1,000/day in the US) — see Creative volume and hit rate — why you need dozens of ads per winner.⁴
• Price per market with your own purchasing-power index, not FX conversion: Simply’s “Big Mac index”-style model, rolled out across all geos at once as a test, gave a “significant, dramatic” ARPA increase in most geos.⁵⁶
• Localize consistently (first-run, deep product, store page, creatives, currency, tone like German formal address) — partial localization breaks trust. Start with limited scope at top quality, then go all in.⁷⁸
• Expect best practices to flip: in Japan, Simply’s clean paywall underperformed; a long, colourful page with company/founder story, values and many quotes made conversion “skyrocket”.⁹¹⁰

Details

Picking a deep-localization market (Simply). Model each geo’s incremental audience × incremental ARPU and your confidence in capturing it; Japan won for Simply Piano. They localized songs (incl. anime), UX, App Store, creatives and currency — every metric rose except paywall conversion, which even dropped, until a Japanese country manager explained users expect a detailed story.¹¹⁹

Pricing index details. Started years ago from the Big Mac index itself, then evolved to include category-specific willingness-to-pay factors (what people spend on learning an instrument). Some geos didn’t respond and had to be adapted; re-price as the app matures and audiences change.⁵¹²

Hard markets. Replika bet on Japan with a Japanese speaker culturalising the app — “it didn’t work in any way”. Turkey, by contrast, converts surprisingly well. Don’t over-invest in cultures you can’t understand; look for similarities, not only differences.¹³¹⁴

Disagreements / caveats

• Yuliya: “don’t even try it, but also try it very much” — cheap translation is worth testing; deep culturalisation is expensive and uncertain. Simply’s success came with a country manager and full investment.
• Yoav’s ARPA lift is unquantified; Simply is large and can afford per-country teams.

See also

• Creative volume and hit rate — why you need dozens of ads per winner
• Web paywall and checkout best practices for web2app — the Western default the Japan case contradicts
• Yoav Sharon, Yuliya Lennox

Footnotes

1. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 1:09:30 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

2. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 27:42 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

3. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 26:50 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

4. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 28:32 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

5. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 50:53 — Yoav Sharon ↩ ↩²

6. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 51:55 — Yoav Sharon ↩

7. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 54:16 — Yoav Sharon ↩

8. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 55:04 — Yoav Sharon ↩

9. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 57:26 — Yoav Sharon ↩ ↩²

10. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 58:18 — Yoav Sharon ↩

11. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 56:37 — Yoav Sharon ↩

12. How Simply Finally Cracked Facebook Ads with Web Funnels – Yoav Sharon, Simply @ 52:43 — Yoav Sharon ↩

13. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 30:09 — Yuliya Lennox ↩

14. Make Ugly Ads to Grow Your App – Yuliya Lennox (Solid Starts) @ 31:49 — David Barnard ↩