How should a SaaS with a 30-day trial go mobile?
As some of you may know, I've been working on everydayCheck, a simple and beautiful habit tracker, for the web. It costs $12 / year and it has a 30-day trial period.
Now, I'm polishing the last details for its mobile application, and some doubts related to how the mobile app world works have arisen.
Most of the mobile saas I can find out there follow a freemium model. You can sign up for free and use forever for free with limited features. Then half of the mobile/web UIs link you to the "upgrade" option. Of course, this option is worth considering. However, since I have a trial period or said otherwise, I drive my users to the point where they have to decide if they find enough value in my app to pay for it, and it's been working quite well, I'd like to take this to mobile. Do you know any SaaS with closed trial periods on mobile? What are your thoughts on this regard?
Mobile users seem to be used to not pay or pay very little to have the right to use the app forever. Even the app store and google play platforms seem to be designed having this in mind, where you have to set a price or define if the app contains "paid upgrades". I understand that an app with a trial period should be transparent from the beginning about it and let users know the app is worth $12, how easy would it then be to let them know that, however, they can try it free for 30 days?
Any thoughts are very welcome :-)
We went through this exact same situation in early 2016. In the end, we ended up pivoting to freemium with a monthly/annual subscription plan.
I don't know if it's possible to offer a fully trial-based mobile app, to be honest. I remember that we had a lot of problems with Apple, in particular, when we tried to launch the first iteration of our app - and the first iteration didn't even include billing/subscriptions at all! I would review both Apple/Google's terms and see if they explicitly say whether trial-based apps are allowed.
One thing to keep in mind is features, and whether App/Goog will ever feature your app if you lock users out after 30 days (I find this unlikely). Features are incredibly valuable for both initial traffic and a boost in keyword rankings over the long-term. And both stores like to feature quality new apps.
I strongly disagree with louisswiss's comment about organic traffic, with the caveat that I have only have experience in the App Store / Play Store with my current app. If you can rank for keywords with reasonable search volume, you will likely have sustainable organic traffic that you can then work to convert to your paid subscription plan (if you go this route). I'd encourage you to do research into App Store Optimization (ASO) techniques. We've really gained value in this area.
Depending on what you learn after reading both stores' terms, I'd suggest that you strongly consider what your app could look like with a freemium business model. Also consider what you're looking to achieve with your app - if you want a nice, small simple(r) business, sticking with a trial-based model on web may be the best idea. You could still release the mobile apps, but only allow paying subscribers to use it.
If you want to (potentially) make a larger impact, to increase the complexity of your business, to commit to working on ASO, getting featured, and converting users to you paid plan, then changing your business model may be a good option.
Good luck!
Hey Jeffrey, thanks for your answer, really valuable stuff.
By exact same situation do you mean you also started with a web app and transitioned to mobile? (Your landing page makes me thing you are now mainly focused on mobile and use the dashboard as a feature). I understand that you didn't manage to have a trial-based model.
Since you summarize it so well I have to say that my initial idea was to start small. To start with the simple(r) business, where the web app was still the main product but where the mobile app was a great feature (obviously with a lot of importance). Using a trial-based model (so users, independently of if they started on mobile or on the web, would have 30 days to try the app out and then would be asked to subscribe). This also means that when someone discovered the mobile app first, they'd still need to create an account. This is another important question, since many mobile apps don't require to sign up. Since my app stores data, I could allow users to use the app for free but without any data synch/storage and use that as a premium feature (in a potential freemium model). To summarize, I'd like to start small and have the mobile app as a feature while I improve it, and it'd be then that I could decide if the mobile app should be my main focus, which would change my marketing strategy (ASO, landing, etc) and probably the business model. I'm not sure of what "starting small" would mean later on if I decided to change the strategy, but right now, as the side project this still is, it looks as the most reasonable approach.
Thanks again!
To give something back: I checked out your app and I'd say your sign up process is a bit confusing. I figure that if you have 500k users I'm probably the idiot, but I still want to say it. You click sign up and then a 4 step process shows up, without a button to go to next step or more importantly to "just sign me up i'll fill the data later". Actually, this button exists only after you click the 4th step (which is reasonable insofar it's the last step) but it isn't very intuitive imo, especially because it's different to most sign up processes. You have to click each step separately without a "next", I don't know but it feels a bit off. I understand this is probably an import from the way you do it on mobile, and you probably do it because most of your business comes from mobile... A quick browse made me think you also have a web app dashboard and even though you prioritize mobile I am not sure that sign up for the web is as good as it could be in terms of CR. Again, I might be very wrong :P Love the idea by the way!
You're welcome!
That sounds reasonable (re: starting small). If you do decide to go freemium, data/sync as a premium feature makes a lot of sense to me.
Yes, we first had a trial-based SaaS web app. Then we transitioned the web app to freemium, released the mobile apps, and moved our focus to mobile. The web app still runs and has 90% of the functionality of the mobile apps, but the traffic/revenue it generates pales in comparison to mobile, so we haven't updated it in awhile (other than adding new recipes, which are pushed out to all platforms).
I appreciate your feedback! I agree that the web sign-up process could use some work. We've put the bulk of our optimization work into the mobile sign-up process, which is currently quite different than web. But, as the web isn't a driver of much business, we've intentionally avoided this work.
Thanks again. Good luck! You should post after launching on mobile with a status update. I'm interested in hearing how things go.
Hi Joan,
Cool project and tough challenge!
I'm not going to go into whether a 30 day free trial is a good idea or not (are you asking for a valid CC at signup?)...
Instead I'll get directly to the question :)
Firstly, I think it's important to realise that basically no organic traffic comes from the iOS/Play app stores. So 99.99% of people who download your mobile app will either already be a paying customer, have been referred by a friend/online review/marketing, or will have come from your website/landing page.
Secondly, people with an app on their phone don't tend to delete it once it has been on there for a while. You're trying to hook people on being consistent with their good habits - so if they are using the product, they won't want to stop (which is great for you).
So my approach would be slightly different than a thirty day trial - I'd change that to 30 successful 'streak' days (non-consecutive). Or maybe more/less depending on when users tend to get 'hooked'. Another approach would be to say you have to pay when you reach a 5-streak (or 10 streak days in two weeks, for example). That way you're laser focussed on the right things, because making the product better will result directly in more money for you ;)
Also, if the user tries it out for a week but then gets lazy, forgets/goes on holiday and wants to try again, they can!
And bonus - they won't delete the app from their phone as quickly :)
Your reasoning makes a lot of sense but I don't really like the idea of having a "variable trial period end". Even though I think it's an idea worth considering I think end users don't like to have to make an extra effort to understand when will they have to start paying. It's like making them think too much. I think it's better if they just start with the idea of "ok, i'll try this for 30 days and if it works, I'll pay". This is the approach I'm using now on the web app and it's working quite well. I do understand that mobile is a different world, precisely for the reasons you highlight, so the alternative would really be going freemium. With freemium users would always have the chance to get hooked but would also never have to made a real decision to buy the app unless I am very restrictive... another option is to have the app open for 30 days with full features access and then after 30 days narrow it down to what a free account on a freemium model would look like.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts btw, really valuable! :)
I run an app-based SaaS. It is a freemium app. People who use apps are resistant to SaaS models unless they feel like the app gives them more than they are paying for. In my case, it often takes time for people to feel that value, so I don't put a time limit on the free features.
I don't think what you're doing is wrong, but you are on the hotseat in terms of demonstrating that value before the trial is up. Also, with a consumer app, people start using it maybe because they want to solve a problem, maybe on a whim. It's not a priority most times and people sometimes fade in and out. For my app, about 20% of people subscribe the first day. For the other 80% the average is 441 days. That's a little misleading because the bulk of that 80% subscribes in the first 60 days. I should probably use a median, but the harshness of an average keeps me on my toes.
Honestly, I think the challenge for you will be facing is keeping people engaged. The challenge of any app is getting people to change their behavior, but you'll need to change people's behavior for an app that's about changing people's behavior. #meta
I think the biggest bounce risk is when people break a streak. If they have two weeks of awesome and slip up one day, they go back to a white block. That's going to make a lot of people say 'f- it, I'm done with this app.' We all have bad days... or three. What if it was more like a game where completing a goal boosted that goal's 'health' by an increasingly larger number of points until it hits 100 points. Then, if you miss a day, you don't go back to 0, but maybe you lose 20 points off of your score. That way, if you miss a day, you're not dead, you're just set back a few days. It's good to give people credit for the effort they've put into something which in this case is achieving their goals and using your app. When people lose everything, they're more likely to bounce. When there's something left for them to lose after they have a setback, they have something to fight for. Maybe switch from 'streaks' to some measure of consistency. That way, if someone misses one day in a month, you could go from saying 'you had a 14 day streak to saying 'you met your goal 96% this month.'
I'm sure you've spent way more time thinking about your app than I have this past 30 minutes, so take this with a grain of salt.
could you please keep talking?
Haha, just kidding :) You are so on point I'm not sure what to add.
I think that because my app sells people "a better you" with a message that we all know is true (we just have a hard time committing to it) people might be more on the "let's give it a try" side. And that's why I somehow believe that the fact that I force a point of decision after 30 days (enough to see if you are using the app to your advantage or not) is working out pretty well for me on the web app. You say the challenge of any app is getting people to change their behaviour and that mine is precisely about that, I think I can use that in my favour. I don't need to come up with useless spammy features. The app is precisely about that and it makes it clear that in the end it depends on your willingness to fight for your goals every day.
This brings us to your last point, streaks vs % completion (or some other way of feeling progress even when you slack off). The newer version I'm working on already considers that, but I still need to find the balance between them, because challenges/streaks bring the extra motivation to break through, those are the ones that really make you change your behaviour, while % completion (or a goal health like you suggest) are a more defensive kind of motivation, more to stick to the app and feel certain progress than to break through. Let'sa say one is for the "highs" and the other is for the "lows", if that makes any sense!
Obviously, mobile gives me the option to keep users more engaged, and that's why most of these kind of apps are on mobile, that's why changing the biz model might be a good idea. However, I still think I want to start trying it out with a closed trial period while I improve the app for those who are already using it from the web and so I have time to see how it works for me to have it without a freemium. Also, because I want to keep my app minimalist, and freemium generally leads you to create more advanced features I am not sure my app really needs.
Thanks again for your thoughts! :)