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For Mac menu bar utilities: which clip, list or launch sold the licence.

A menu bar utility does one small thing well, costs little, and is often bought minutes after someone sees it work in a short clip. Tally ties each licence to the visit that sold it, so you can see whether a clip on X, a best-utilities list or a launch day moved copies, and whether those buyers came back for version two.

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01How they sell

  • One-offA licence for a few Macs, bought once; a paid upgrade to a new major version is a fresh sale with its own credit.
  • FreemiumA free version with one feature locked behind a licence key, with no trial clock to watch.

02Payments it reads

  • Lemon SqueezyLicence keys and one-off orders for low-priced utilities with tax handled; orders and refunds are read.
  • PaddleUsed by makers with several utilities under one account; each transaction and refund is read.
  • PolarPicked by developers who also publish open-source tools; one-off orders and refunds are read.

What Tally can't read

  • Copies sold in the Mac App Store are paid out by Apple and never reach Tally.
  • Setapp's payouts aren't read, so an app that does well there shows no revenue from it.
  • Licences sold through a Gumroad checkout, or in a bundle on a deal site, aren't read.
  • Installs through Homebrew skip your website, so those users show up only when they visit to buy.

03Where buyers come from

  • Short clips on XA few seconds of the menu bar in action can sell on the spot; first-visit buyers shows whether it did.
  • Best-utilities listsRoundups of menu bar apps send readers who try a few and pay for the one they keep.
  • Product HuntLaunch day brings buyers at a launch price; repeat rate later shows whether they paid for your upgrade or next app.
  • Mac newslettersA mention in a Mac or productivity newsletter brings a morning of buyers, which peak hours makes visible.

04What Tally answers

  1. Do people buy on their first visit?

    Path to purchase gives the share who pay on the first visit. For a low-priced utility it should be high; if most buyers need several visits, the page may not be showing what the app does fast enough.

    Path to purchase

  2. Which roundup sold the most copies?

    The referrer breakdown puts each list's visits beside the revenue its readers brought, so you can see which roundup sold rather than which one sent traffic.

    Sources with revenue

  3. Did launch-day buyers pay for version two?

    Lifetime value by first source gives each source's repeat rate, so a launch's buyers who came back for the upgrade show up against search's.

    Lifetime value

  4. Can we watch launch day as it happens?

    Live shows who's on the site now on a globe or flat map; with sale alerts on, each licence arrives in Slack, Discord, Telegram or email as it's linked.

    Live

  5. Do visitors scroll past the demo to the buy button?

    Heatmaps show clicks and scroll depth on the page, so you can see how many reach the buy button and what they click on the way.

    Heatmaps

05Numbers worth watching

First-visit buyers
The share who buy on their first visit, the number a cheap utility lives or dies by.
Revenue per visitor
Revenue per visitor by source, which tells a newsletter that sold from a viral post that only got looked at.
Repeat rate
The share of customers who paid again, for an upgrade or another of your apps, by first source.

06An example

Example

Path to purchase

Last 30 days · 105 of 124 new sales, the ones linked to a visitor

Median time to buy

3days

from their first visit

Median visits

3visits

the one they paid in included

Bought on the first visit

12%

13 of 105

Pages before buying

11

median pages viewed

Where buyers came from, and who closed the sale

105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.

50% of new sales were credited to the source that first brought the buyer in. Hover or focus a flow for its numbers.

  1. Googlecredited toGoogle26
  2. x.comcredited tox.com10
  3. Other (3 sources)credited toOther (3 sources)10
  4. Directcredited toOther (3 sources)9
  5. ChatGPTcredited toChatGPT9
  6. Other (3 sources)credited toNewsletter9
  7. Redditcredited toReddit8
  8. Googlecredited toNewsletter6

6 smaller flows in the table below.

Show the flows as a table
105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.
Brought them inCredited with the saleNew salesShare
GoogleGoogle2625%
x.comx.com1010%
Other (3 sources)Other (3 sources)1010%
DirectOther (3 sources)99%
ChatGPTChatGPT99%
Other (3 sources)Newsletter99%
RedditReddit88%
GoogleNewsletter66%
DirectGoogle55%
x.comGoogle55%
RedditGoogle33%
DirectReddit22%
ChatGPTGoogle22%
Other (3 sources)ChatGPT1<1%

Time from first visit to purchase

  1. 13Same visit: 13 sales (12%), bought in their first visit
  2. 13Same day: 13 sales (12%), a later visit, under 24 hours after the first
  3. 301–3 days: 30 sales (29%), 1 to 3 days after the first visit
  4. 194–7 days: 19 sales (18%), 4 to 7 days after the first visit
  5. 151–2 weeks: 15 sales (14%), 8 to 14 days after the first visit
  6. 102–4 weeks: 10 sales (10%), 15 to 28 days after the first visit
  7. 51–3 months: 5 sales (5%), 29 to 90 days after the first visit
  8. 03+ months: 0 sales (0%), 91 days or more after the first visit

Pages buyers saw before paying

Share of the 105 buyers who viewed each page before paying

  1. /pricing96%, 101 of 105 buyers
  2. /71%, 75 of 105 buyers
  3. /signup63%, 67 of 105 buyers
  4. /docs38%, 40 of 105 buyers
  5. /blog/stripe-fees26%, 28 of 105 buyers
  6. /compare21%, 23 of 105 buyers
  7. /changelog8%, 9 of 105 buyers
  8. /blog/launch-week5%, 6 of 105 buyers

Only new sales count here. Renewals and upgrades belong to the visit that won the subscription, so counting them would count that journey again.

Fig. 1Path to purchase on the example site. For a menu bar utility, start with the share who bought on their first visit, then look at the pages the others saw.

07Setting up

  1. Any HTML sitePut the tag in the head of the app's one-page site and its download page; a static page needs nothing more.
  2. Lemon SqueezyOpen the Lemon Squeezy checkout with tally_visitor_id in its custom data, so each licence links with high confidence.
  3. Link the app's Buy menu item to your site with a UTM, so purchases started from the menu bar itself have a source.

08Questions

  • We sell through Gumroad today. What would Tally read?

    Visits only: Gumroad's checkout isn't read. Sales start linking to visits once the checkout runs on Lemon Squeezy, Paddle, Polar or Stripe.

  • Is a paid upgrade to version two linked to the first purchase?

    It's a sale of its own, credited to the visit before it. In lifetime value the two payments add up under the buyer's first source.

  • Our site is one static page. Is that enough?

    Yes. One tag in the head counts visits, sources and engaged time, and the checkout's custom data does the linking.

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