I stopped doing trials about 3 years ago. It didn't stop customers from buying. If anything it gave them a whole month to enjoy my sites and most of them stay beyond the first month.
The mentality of most "trial" buyers is to automatically cancel before they've even taken a look at your site.
Originally posted by CaptnInsanio In my experiences anything over 20% is awesome. (for TGP traffic anyways)
So what kind of rates do you guys get from your trials?
Be honest please.
Right now CuteCouples is doing about 33% + about 1/4 - 1/5 people go straight for the full membership option. We are currently working on ways to improve the 33% conversion ratio or at least squeeze the mose out of the professional trial jockeys.
I don't doubt that alot of people cancel before even logging into the members area with all the people that complain that they cancelled in plent of time and get rebilled anyway. What I would do if I was a surfer would be to get a trial, cancel immediatley, then if I liked the members area I would sign up again, this time for a full month's membership. I wouldn't want the risk of being rebilled for a site I didn't like, either.
This issue has come up many many times with clients here and we've done quite a few tests over time where we run a trial then run the same site without. The majority of the time the trial has led to a greater profit margin with the exception being MPEG only sites.
Essentially here's how it shakes out:
Say you do a $29.95 join and a $4.95 trial.
If you do the no trial test and convert 1:1000 across the board with 100,000 uniques, you'd have 100 new members worth $2995 (before fees, etc...).
If you do a trial with the same traffic and having that option increases conversion to say 1:400 (trials will almost always be higher conversion) and 30% of the trials convert to full, it's worth:
So, you have to watch how much your conversin is helped by trials and what % of your trials convert to full members. Knowing those numbers you can make the right decisions for your site. All it takes is a test period of a good 30 days for each option (with similar traffic sources during both periods).
Originally posted by MarkTiarra This issue has come up many many times with clients here and we've done quite a few tests over time where we run a trial then run the same site without. The majority of the time the trial has led to a greater profit margin with the exception being MPEG only sites.
Essentially here's how it shakes out:
Say you do a $29.95 join and a $4.95 trial.
If you do the no trial test and convert 1:1000 across the board with 100,000 uniques, you'd have 100 new members worth $2995 (before fees, etc...).
If you do a trial with the same traffic and having that option increases conversion to say 1:400 (trials will almost always be higher conversion) and 30% of the trials convert to full, it's worth:
So, you have to watch how much your conversin is helped by trials and what % of your trials convert to full members. Knowing those numbers you can make the right decisions for your site. All it takes is a test period of a good 30 days for each option (with similar traffic sources during both periods).
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