Paywall visuals: video, photos, social proof

TL;DR

• Hierarchy Steve has seen repeatedly: video > photos of real people > graphics/illustrations.
• Momingo (transit app, soft paywall): graphics 2.5% → real person 4.7% → feature video 6.8% conversion.
• Add social proof on or right before the paywall (ratings, user counts, testimonials) — it beat no social proof in Steve’s tests.
• Test a money-back-guarantee line: it was beating control on initial conversions in a live RevenueCat experiment.
• A “preparing your plan” screen with animation + social proof before the paywall: +10% reported by one founder.

Details

Media. John (Momingo founder) shared on a livestream: graphics paywall converted 2.5%, swapping in a real person 4.7%, adding a video showing the features 6.8% — with a soft paywall.¹ Steve’s summary rule: photos better than graphics, video better than photos.² Momingo also found photos worked better on the paywall itself.³

A client copied Cal AI’s flow (video paywall plus extra screens behind “continue”); when tested, the simple video paywall won over the longer variant.¹⁴

Social proof. In the two-paywall test, the trial paywall had social proof at the bottom; Steve has seen this outperform versions without it.⁵ Momingo’s onboarding repeats proof on every screen (“over 5 million riders”, “50,000 five-star” ratings, quotes).³ Better Sleep shows a plan-preparation screen with “trusted by 65M people, 91% sleep better, 4.8 stars, featured 65 times” while it “builds your plan”; another founder told Steve that adding animation before the paywall raised conversion 10%.⁶

Guarantee. Steve’s team ran a RevenueCat Experiment adding money-back-guarantee language to a custom paywall; after four days variant B led on initial conversions and trial starts (not yet significant; he checks LTV/revenue at the bottom of the report before calling it).⁷

Disagreements / caveats

• Sample sizes are small and mostly anecdotal; the guarantee test was only four days old at recording.
• Video costs load time; test on slow networks.

See also

• Paywall content — sell the outcome and add context (long paywalls)
• RevenueCat charts and features worth using

Footnotes

1. We’ve Tested 100s of Paywalls. Here’s What Actually Converts. @ 10:00 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²

2. The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56% @ 18:00 — Steve P. Young ↩

3. App Monetization Tactics No One Is Talking About @ 08:31 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²

4. We’ve Tested 100s of Paywalls. Here’s What Actually Converts. @ 10:55 — Steve P. Young ↩

5. What Happens When You Show 2 Paywalls? (Result) @ 01:52 — Steve P. Young ↩

6. This Sleep Sounds App Makes $800K a Month (Copy Their Onboarding) @ 05:05 — Steve P. Young ↩

7. Are You Ignoring These RevenueCat Features? (Stop Losing Money) @ 07:43 — Steve P. Young ↩