For a free trial, should I collect payment info up front or not? Why?
At Summit, we're offering a 14 day free trial. I'm thinking about the pros/cons of collecting credit card info at signup vs. collecting at the end of the trial.
Has anyone had experience with this?
When we changed to not collect the payment information up front it improved our sign-ups however it has also increased the drop offs in conversion as more sign ups have been from "Tyre kickers" rather than interested parties.
This definitely seems to be the trade-off. I'm willing to have many signups that are never really interested if it ultimately brings more users with high CLV.
I recently watched this video https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=1263 and one of the ideas is to offer a x days money back, no questions asked guarantee and not a free trial. The video explains the benefits in detail.
TLDW: Stronger validation (people not committing vs churn vs no churn). Don't lose free trial period of revenue in positive case.
From my experience it's better to not collect the cc info upfront
-> Removes the friction & improves numbers at the top of the funnel
-> Lets you have multiple conversations with the customer in the trial period
I'd say don't collect credit info upon signup if you're just starting out and got no brand reputation yet. Maybe later as you scale, when you've built a brand reputation, and fraud cases increases, you can reduce fraud cases by collecting card upfront as validation.
Here's what I'm referring to about the fraud case. It's a thread on Twitter by John, founder of Ghost.org:
That was a fascinating tweet storm.
I know, right? Can't imagine myself handling porn sites abuse, lol.
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