

Ask HN: Review Preceden's paid conversion funnel - matt1
http://www.mattmazur.com/2010/05/precedens-revenue-conversion-funnel-infographic/

======
matt1
HN, I put together the infographic in this post to show my success so far with
charging for my web app, Preceden. I don't have a lot of experience charging
and am looking for any feedback you all may have.

Two specific questions:

1) What's a "good" conversion rate for a freemium web app? And since the
answer is almost definitely "it depends", what factors go into it?

2) What do you think of the site's current free/premium breakdown (you can add
less than 20 events for free, more than that is $29 for unlimited events). As
mentioned in the post, both the max event limit and the price are hard to get
right and I'm not sure how to arrive at the optimal numbers.

Also, and unrelated, when I submitted this through the "submit" section on HN
it removed the "Ask HN" from the beginning of it. I went back in and added it,
though I'm not sure if it was intentionally removed because it linked to an
outside URL. I didn't see it in the FAQ, and am curious.

~~~
nudge
Nice infographic! In answer to your questions (just my opinions, mind):

1) The industry average (at least from sources talking about it) is around
1-2% of all signups upgrading, so you're at par there. I think, however, that
this is not very helpful. Continuing the 'par' theme, what would you say is a
'good' handicap in golf? There's no such number, really, except in relation to
certain goals. Likewise, I think your conversion rate should just be one of
the things that you tweak in order to maximize your profit, which is most
important thing in the end. Be aware that it may be much better to have a 1%
conversion rate at a higher price than a 5% conversion rate at a lower one. Or
vice versa.

2) I'm not sure about whether this is good or not, I'm afraid. It's quite a
unique service you're providing - there's not a lot to use as a benchmark.
Something to take into account is that people generally upgrade when they hit
a 'pain point' in the app. That's when I go over my dropbox free storage
limit, for example. For Bingo Card Creator it's when you want to print the
cards you've created (I think). The pain point in your app is unclear. What is
it people are using it for? Perhaps you don't want to limit the number of
events, but rather the usage of the created timeline? Upgrade if you want to
save it as an image, print it, embed it in your website, save it online etc.
Remember that the more people put into something, the more willing they will
be to pay to get past the pain point (it is a hassle for me to signup with
anyone other than dropbox if I'm already using them, for example). Also think
about the scenarios in which you are saving people a huge amount of time. For
Bingo Card Creator, it's teachers spending hours messing about with Word
trying to make different cards. The app saves you that time. Is there an
equivalent for your users, or a particular subset of them?

Just some random thoughts there.

As a final thought, related to some of the above points, think about whether
it is a good idea to stop people entering all the data they want to enter,
which you're doing. Perhaps it might be better to let them enter as much as
they want, but require an upgrade to stop it all just disappearing (or all but
10 events of it disappearing) as soon as they leave the site (or 24 hours
later, or whatever). Then you've got people putting more into your app, and
you're introducing a more natural pain point: pay up to keep all the work
you've just done, or to print it, or to share it in its entirety.

~~~
nudge
One last thought - I see the 'Gantt Chart' box on your front page. This is
possibly one of those subsets-of-users-more-willing-to-pay I mentioned:
workers or teams in need of a quick gantt chart to plan their work. Last time
I looked for a quick way to make a gantt chart I found nothing good - your app
looks like it could do it really well. Plus then you've got professionals, who
are generally more likely to pay. It might be worth you having a whole
separate page for business use.

If I ran a team of workers and wanted a gantt chart for our work, and put X
minutes/hours into creating it (dozens of sub-projects) in your app, and then
you asked me for $29 to keep it, I'd pay, no question.

~~~
matt1
Hey, thanks for the feedback.

I think you're right in that I need to do a better job at addressing the pain
points. One of the interesting dilemmas about it is that people are using the
app for many different uses, which is great, but it makes it hard to sell to a
specific audience. You might be right in that I need a business section,
similar to what I think RescueTime does.

I'm not sure about charging folks to keep their data from disappearing though.
As a user, I think I'd get really frustrated with an app that did that. It's
kind of like ransoming off the user's data, isn't it?

Bingo Card Creator has been a big inspiration for me. That's where the $29
price came from.

Again, appreciate it.

~~~
nudge
You're right. I didn't express it very well, but my point was really about
where you choose to cut people out of your premium offering. As it stands,
you're doing it 'on the way in', as it were, i.e. while people are entering
data. I was suggesting you do it 'on the way out', i.e. when people have taken
the time and effort to build something for themselves using your app, and now
want to do something with the timeline.

That's separable from the question of how to actually make the cut-off (and
deleting data, as you suggest, may be too brutal)

But anyway, it's just thinking out loud rather than a definite suggestion.

