Getting players to your web shop

The traffic problem, in the studios’ own words

Getting players to the web shop is the problem studios name most. In the Appcharge and GDC survey of mobile studios, the two most-cited barriers to direct sales were player awareness (50%) and player acquisition (41%). Appcharge sells web shops, and the survey drew on 130 mobile games respondents, so treat it as a view of the industry’s mood rather than a measurement.

This page covers the routes in, starting with a link from the game itself. Where that link is not allowed, the channels outside the app do the work.

Where an in-game link is allowed, and what it costs

The rules differ by store and by country. The table shows the position as of 3 October 2026. Each row links to a full rules page.

Two things follow for traffic planning. First, the in-game link is the highest-intent placement you have, and outside the US it now carries a fee in most places where it is allowed. Second, the attribution windows (7 days for Apple, 24 hours for Google) mean a player who taps the link today and buys next week from an email may or may not owe the store a fee. Your provider needs to record where each purchase started.

Channels outside the app are allowed in every country

Apple’s guidelines ban in-app steering outside the US and the regional exceptions. They do not stop you talking to players elsewhere:

Guideline 3.1.3(b) then lets a player spend web-bought currency inside the iOS game in any country, provided the same items are sold as in-app purchases. Together those two rules are the legal basis for every non-US web shop on iOS.

The published traffic data shows how large the outside-the-app share can be. Sensor Tower estimates that 56% of visits to the Supercell Store came direct and 37% from social; for Raid: Shadow Legends the split was 47% direct and 49% social. Stash, a web shop vendor, reports that organic visits to the Brawl Stars store rose 112% between July and December 2024, from about 44,000 to over 93,600 a month. In the Appcharge and GDC survey, studios rated social media (69%), influencers (45%) and gaming events (36%) as their most effective channels.

Email and CRM

Email is the one channel you own outright and can target by spend. Three practices make it work for a web shop.

Collect a contact address at account creation, inside the game, with consent recorded for each market’s marketing rules. A web shop with no account system has nothing to send to.

Segment by in-app spend. The players who spend most in your store gain the most from a web price and cost you the most in store commission. They are also the players most likely to become repeat web buyers.

Send the player to a page that is already logged in. Every extra step between the email and the payment form costs buyers (see the conversion evidence below).

Social, creators and creator codes

Social posts and creator content reach players who are not in your CRM, including lapsed players. The Supercell and Raid traffic splits above show social carrying a third to a half of web shop visits for those games.

A creator code gives the creator a share of the sale and gives you attribution by creator. Pay on net revenue after refunds and chargebacks, and set a clawback window, so the code does not reward traffic that disputes its purchases. Creator programs also carry advertising-disclosure duties. In March 2025 EU consumer authorities took a common position against Star Stable Entertainment covering, among other things, influencer marketing disclosure in a game aimed at children. If your audience includes minors, have counsel review the creator brief.

Logged-in deep links

A logged-in deep link sends the player from the game (where allowed), an email or a social post straight to a specific offer with their account already attached, so the purchase lands in the right game account without a login form.

In the US, the April 2025 contempt order barred Apple from restricting “dynamic links that bring consumers to a specific product page in a logged-in state”, and the Ninth Circuit left that part in place in December 2025. Outside the US, the same link works from email and social. Ask any provider you evaluate to show you the flow on a phone, from tap to currency in the game.

First-purchase offers and the third purchase

Appcharge’s 2026 report, based on about $700m of transactions it processed, gives the clearest public picture of how web buyers behave. It is vendor data from one company’s clients. Its main findings:

If most revenue comes from repeat buyers and the repeat rate jumps after the third purchase, a first-purchase offer is an acquisition cost. Size it against the value of a player who reaches purchase three, and design the second and third offers at the same time as the first. Appcharge also reports that about 25% of payment-link buyers went on to make a first web store purchase.

Monopoly GO shows another approach: gate the web shop. Stash reports that its Tycoon Club store is invitation-only, open to players at board level 10 or above who have played for at least a month. A gate keeps the web shop for committed players and reduces the pool of new accounts that dispute a first purchase.

The pricing side of these offers, including how much bonus currency top games give, is on the offers and bonuses page.

What the conversion evidence says

There is no neutral, published conversion benchmark for game web shops. Three data points exist, and each has limits.

The pattern is consistent with how the flows work. A web checkout adds a browser hop and a payment form, so fewer visitors buy. The web shop pays anyway because each sale keeps more of the price, and because the buyers who come back are the high spenders. Build the business case on the share of high-spender revenue you can move, and measure it with a holdout (see measuring D2C).

Traffic plan checklist

1. List every storefront you sell in and mark where an in-game link is allowed, with its fee and attribution window, from the table above.
2. Build the logged-in deep link first. Every channel on this page uses it.
3. Capture email with consent at account creation, and segment by in-app spend.
4. Brief creators with a tracked code, a net-revenue payout and a clawback window; have counsel review disclosure if minors play.
5. Design the first three web offers together, aimed at getting high spenders to their third purchase.
6. Tag every purchase with its source (in-game link, email, social, creator, direct) so you can report store fees and conversion by channel.
7. Run a holdout before you scale spend on any channel.