For Mac apps sold from your own site: where licence buyers come from.

01How they sell

• One-offA licence bought once, sometimes with paid upgrades for major versions, each a new sale that keeps its own source.
• SubscriptionA yearly plan for updates or sync, renewing on the date of the first purchase.
• FreemiumA free download with a time-limited trial or locked features, so the website visit and the purchase can be days apart.

02Payments it reads

• PaddleLong used by indie Mac developers as merchant of record, handling tax and licences; transactions, upgrades and refunds are read.
• Lemon SqueezyCheckout links with licence keys; orders and refunds are read, and the checkout's custom data carries the visitor's id.
• StripeUsed directly by apps that run their own licensing; Checkout and invoices are read.

03Where buyers come from

• Reviews and roundupsA mention in a Mac roundup or a review site can sell for months; its referrer and revenue sit side by side.
• SearchSearches for a task plus mac bring buyers who compare a few apps, often visiting more than once before buying.
• Reddit and forumsA thread in a Mac community sends a burst of curious visitors; revenue per visitor shows how many buy.
• DirectTrial users coming back to buy often type the address; Readable Direct tells those returns apart from shared links.

04What Tally answers

1. How long does a trial take to become a licence?

   Path to purchase measures the median time and visits from a buyer's first visit to their purchase, which for a downloaded trial includes the days they spent trying it.

   Path to purchase

2. What is all that Direct traffic?

   Readable Direct splits visits with no referrer into typed or bookmarked, shared links, returns from checkout and in-app browsers, so returning trial users stand apart from links passed around.

   Readable Direct

3. Which pages lead to a download?

   Count the download button as a goal and the goals view gives its completions, converting visitors and the revenue of those visitors.

   Goals and funnels

4. Which review actually sold licences?

   Each sale's receipt shows the visits behind it; a buyer who read a review, came back by search and bought shows both visits, with the credited one marked.

   Receipts

05Numbers worth watching

Goal conversion

The share of visitors who download, by source, which separates curious readers from people who try the app.

First-visit buyers

How many buy on their first visit; for a trial-based app this stays low, and a jump can mean returning trial users arrive without a referrer.

Revenue per visitor

Revenue per visitor by source ranks review sites and forums by what they sold, not by how many people they sent.

06An example

07Setting up

1. Any HTML siteAdd the tag to the head of every page of the app's website, including the download and buy pages.
2. PaddlePass the visitor's id in customData when you open Paddle.js checkout from the buy page.
3. Mark the download button with data-fast-goal so downloads count as a goal you can compare by source.

08Questions

• Which of my sales does Tally read?

  The ones that go through Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar, which for a Mac app sold direct is usually every licence and upgrade bought from your site. Sales through Apple or a bundle service aren't among them.

• A buyer purchases from inside the app. Is it linked?

  If the in-app purchase opens your checkout with the visitor's id, yes. Otherwise it can link by email when your site identified that buyer on an earlier visit; if neither, it's counted as unlinked.

• Are paid upgrades counted separately?

  Yes. A paid upgrade is its own payment, credited to the visit that led to it, and it appears beside the original licence on the customer's row.