
I Eliminated the Free Plan from my Web App for a Month: Here’s What Happened. - matt1
http://www.mattmazur.com/2011/01/i-eliminated-the-free-plan-from-my-web-app-for-a-month-heres-what-happened/
======
idlewords
I think all you've discovered here is that users find it annoying to be taken
through a bunch of signup screens before finding out a website is not free.

You've drawn a lot of conclusions out of a very small experiment with a lot of
uncontrolled variables. I'm glad to hear you're thinking of testing again more
carefully.

~~~
dmix
If you have a paywall with no-trial, you must very clearly demonstrate the
value proposition on the sales website.

Hiding the price until after the user enters their email is also bad UX. Not
everyone is going to the pricing page before clicking sign up.

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swombat
That's a terrible analysis. I don't see how you can come to those conclusions
at all from the way you conducted this "test"...

My deconstruction of this "analysis"'s mistakes here:
<http://swombat.com/2011/1/2/data-is-dangerous>

~~~
sjtgraham
Your points are valid, although I fail to understand why you feel it's
necessary to adopt such a condescending and superior tone both in your comment
and in your article.

~~~
swombat
It's hard to tell someone they failed at something basic without coming off as
condescending or superior. I'll try to do better next time, though. I don't
like posting negative/attacking stuff, generally. :-/

~~~
aaronblohowiak
I have had a hard time with the tone thing in the past as well. One thing that
worked for me is trying to think about how my favorite educators in the past
would try and reach out to me to "lift up" my level of skill instead of "put
down" the work that I had done. I know that you are correcting the OP because
you'd like to help, but your help is more effective if it is seen as a helping
hand and not a disapproving glance.

A basic formulae could be a) acknowledge the positive attributes of the
attempt (it is great to see you trying to optimize, and you are right to keep
detailed numbers about what was going on, your funnel analysis was also spot-
on.) b) Point out that he could do better. This emphasizes the growth
potential instead of the shortcoming (one has an implicit expectation that the
person can and will do better, the other is frequently taken as a rejection of
the person.) An example might be: "you ran the test, but your test would be
more helpful if you did it in a more controlled way..." c[optional]) suggest
additional resources so the person can follow-up at their own pace, in the
manner they prefer. Ex: (see this great post about having a control when
testing your site...)

Now, if someone has ignored your previous feedback and it is your obligation
to help them, things get a bit more nuanced.

~~~
sjtgraham
There is definitely scope for sentiment misinterpretation in written
communication, and these are excellent pointers addressing the problem.

This is exactly why I love this community.

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judofyr
503 Service Temporarily Unavailable is what happened? :-)

Mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cac...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:www.mattmazur.com/2011/01/i-eliminated-
the-free-plan-from-my-web-app-for-a-month-heres-what-happened/)

~~~
matt1
Oh wow, never had that problem before. I'll work on it -- in the mean time
thank you for posting the cache (sorry guys!).

Edit: Apparently the maximum number of connections for a GoDaddy Linux shared
hosting account is 50 [1].

[http://blogulate.com/content/godaddy-503-error-service-
tempo...](http://blogulate.com/content/godaddy-503-error-service-temporarily-
unavailable/)

~~~
cromulent
Thanks for sharing, good post.

While you are working on things, I got a javascript alert on your homepage:

SyntaxHighlighter

Can't find brush for: vb

~~~
matt1
Normally I don't have a problem with it so I think it's related to the current
traffic. I deactivated the plugin until things slow down a bit. Thanks for
pointing it out.

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StavrosK
Rather than doing this, I opted for a resource-based trial for historious.
Free users get 300 bookmarks, if that's enough for them, that's great, if not,
they can pay to get more. This way they don't put very much strain on the
service but can still use it.

Another good idea, if your app can work with it, is to not let free users
create any data. For example, for a website screenshot service, you could let
free users access screenshots that paid users have created, but not create any
of their own. This makes free users almost free to host but doesn't work for
many apps.

~~~
dmix
I would be interested in a experiment comparing resource based limitation vs a
time-based trial.

For ex. "upload 20 screenshots before paying" compared to "try the app for
14-days before paying".

------
JeffJenkins
This is a good idea to try, but November and December are weird months and it
might not be reasonable in your space to assume they are comparable. I work in
comparison shopping where it's _really_ not true. You mentioned A/B testing,
and I think you should try this again as an A/B test so that you can eliminate
seasonality.

~~~
dmix
Why are November and December weird months?

~~~
requinot59
holidays, christmas & new eve

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yesimahuman
Just curious, what is your reasoning behind requiring a username and an email?
I've been experimenting lately with super minimal signups and the two seem
more and more redundant for most web apps, but I want to hear your thoughts
(and maybe it's a potential optimization point?).

~~~
matt1
It was a part of the restful authentication plugin I originally used to set it
up [1] :)

For this app its necessary because I allow users to share the timelines they
create and I display their user names on the shared timelines. Your train of
thought is good though.

[1] <https://github.com/technoweenie/restful-authentication>

~~~
yesimahuman
Yea public facing stuff seems like the only time it's really needed. One way
is maybe to defer that until they actually share something and then have to
pick. I sometimes take their username from the email (before the '@') and use
that if necessary but it's not a great solution.

Good luck!

------
kevin_morrill
Thanks for writing up this analysis and sharing.

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revorad
I'm pleasantly surprised to see a good percentage of your free users upgrading
to the paid version. Why don't you test a time-bound free trial before
switching back to freemium?

~~~
matt1
Great idea -- I'll consider it and may give a try in the future.

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aaronblohowiak
I think your example timeline doesn't show off a lot of the cool features you
have, and that is unfortunate. In your future A/B testing, you may want to
explore a timeline that includes pictures... perhaps of something like the
Homestead Act or such.

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Khroma
I noticed that you changed your colors to a lighter color.

From what I see, many logos can be modernized so easily by switching to
"pastel colors", or colors with more white in them. These are duller, but in
my opinion, much more modern.

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astrange
Why would I want a web-based timeline? Isn't that just something you put in a
PowerPoint slide and then nobody else cares so they don't read it?

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bkorte
"Here's what happened."

A 503 error? ;-)

Hopefully the article is available soon, I'd really like to read it.

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andrewljohnson
You need more data. This is not particularly significant.

