How to Boost Conversion Rate by Optimizing the Length of Free Trial

Overview

Determining the ideal duration for your web or mobile product's free trial has become a hot topic for subscription firms lately. This article aims to discuss the importance of trial duration, offer useful trial length benchmarks, and investigate potential trial strategy optimizations using natural usage habit analysis.

Plotting the duration of the free trial period is a crucial part of the process of creating a new user experience. Your conversion rate will increase if you ask your consumer to upgrade at the ideal moment.

The research from subscription management software RevenueCat reveals that while most apps (in all categories) chose the typical trial time options of four, seven, 14 or 30 days, about 60% of apps offered a free trial experience of some kind. On the other hand, if your product offers free trials on a different schedule, it might be better suited to your target market's Natural Usage Habits. Product Usage Intervals are another name for natural usage habits.

Various trial models are described.

As the name implies, free trials allow consumers to test a product for free for a predetermined amount of time. After that, users have the option to continue and pay or to cancel. Users must be adequately onboarded to the product during this trial period in order for them to comprehend its value and, more importantly, form a habit around its primary features that will encourage them to return.

Trials can be categorized into three types based on time: reverse, standard, and freemium.

• Limited product features can be accessed without time constraints with freemium models. The user has to upgrade to a paid tier in order to use your product to its full potential. The best trial length is irrelevant in this case, as the data indicates that this model has the lowest Conversion Rate among the others.

• New customers can try paid services for free for a limited period of time via reverse trials. They have the option to purchase or downgrade to a completely free tier at the conclusion of the trial.

• Standard trials provide customers the opportunity to test your product out for free for a predetermined amount of time before requiring them to pay to utilize it going forward.

Trial length configuration and benchmarks

From a commercial standpoint, determining the ideal trial duration will increase conversion rate since, well, asking a user to upgrade at the appropriate time increases the likelihood that they will do so.

Apps can set free trial periods ranging from three days to a year on Apple. Google provides even more flexibility by allowing users to create their own trial durations, ranging from three days to three years. In the meanwhile, developers are free to choose any duration for desktop products. Because of this flexibility, experimenting with different alternatives is crucial to determining the ideal trial duration.

While longer trials are likely to result in higher costs, shorter trial durations (seven to fourteen days) can help keep the CAC down because fewer resources are needed to serve these free consumers throughout the trial period.

What the true cost might be is well illustrated by the guided meditation trial offer from the Balance app!

Users can select the amount they want to contribute during Balance's one-year free trial; the maximum amount each user can pay is 75 EUR. Balance has made it clear that their goal is to enhance the mental health of its customer population, therefore this is a commendable and appealing offer. It also begs the issue of how successful this acquisition approach will be in the long run given the competitive nature of the health and fitness app market, which will mostly rely on Balance's users' lifetime value.

Ensuring that habit-forming and CAC are balanced

Although the LTV and CAC should guide your choice of trial duration, if your solution is very technical, consumers may not fully benefit from seven to fourteen days until they have a "a-ha" moment. As a result, you can be ignoring users who could eventually contribute large LTV.

Apps for planning, budgeting, and investing, for instance, frequently require a drawn-out registration process before the user can use the app and begin to gain benefits. Additionally, the user must successfully complete internal security checks and KYC (know-your-customer) procedures.

The social media management tool Hootsuite provides a 30-day trial period because, in addition to letting users plan posts for many social media platforms, it also provides benchmarks and data for monitoring performance, all of which take time to gather.

At Mars, we've noticed that, as opposed to being used daily or weekly, apps with three- or seven-day trial periods are frequently used on a monthly basis. Even if the CAC is probably going to be lower in these situations, customers don't have enough time to experience the app's value proposition and become a habit. For instance, a three-day trial is presently available for Digital Planner. Users have a very limited amount of time to establish habit trackers or to-do lists.

Under these circumstances, it may be beneficial to investigate and consider the Natural Usage Frequencies or Habits (NUH) of your product.