I recently started highlighting a demo option next to the sign up button on my site. The total number of people who signed up for a free trial dropped, but that's only because there are a bunch of people who aren't a good fit for the service, and the demo weeded them out. So the total number of signups dropped, but the total number of people that paid at the end of the trial period went up significantly.
> the total number of people that paid at the end of the trial period went up significantly.
That's what I would have suspected as well. Weeding out the users that are not a good fit is very interesting indeed!
I suspect too that asking for CC info straight after the demo would be less of a repellent, once the visitor has actually tried the app (and it will probably lead to less chargeback, too).
> The total number of people who signed up for a free trial dropped, but that's only because there are a bunch of people who aren't a good fit for the service
This is the real benefit of free/no signup. If you can weed out your customers that aren't a complete fit your support costs drop dramatically.
Did you run it as an A/B test to be sure that the eventual rise in people paying wasn't because of some other change that you made which you're not thinking about?
Yes, it was a pretty informal test, but the results were clear. Before adding the demo option, about 21 people signed up for the free trial each day. After adding the demo option, that dropped to about 16/day, but 30+ people tried the demo each day (including the 16 that signed up). So basically, and extra ~10 people per day tried the product with the demo option.
There's a 30-day period before those people have to decide to pay, so I didn't run a full A/B test during that entire period because we were clearly getting more qualified signups, so I don't perfect data on exactly how big the increase was.
