Getting free users to pay up

Last week, I posted about the ongoing debate between free trials and free tiers. But regardless of which way you lean, it's important to optimize your product so that your free users actually convert.

Here are the best tips I’ve seen for indie hackers. 👇

Good conversion rates

Real quick, what is a good conversion rate? It depends on so many things. For example, who is your target customer? What is your price point? How white-glove are you with your onboarding? But here's a general idea.

From what I've seen, free trial conversion rates are usually between 2% and 20% on average.

Freemium models are usually between 2% and 5%. But keep in mind that they also tend to get more free users in the door, so it may come out in the wash.

I'd be curious to hear whether those numbers seem accurate to other indie hackers — let me know what you think.

Conversion tips that apply to both freemium and free trials

Ok, so how do we blow those conversion rates out of the water? Let's skip the obvious stuff (good product, copy, CTAs, etc.) and get down to the less obvious opportunities.

These are the tips that apply to both acquisition strategies — free trials and free tiers.

• Make sure your onboarding is on point. Ok, maybe this one is a little obvious, but it's important. It needs to be low-friction, with killer UX and whatever else is needed to make onboarding easy: guides, demos, checklists, tooltips, tutorials, etc.
• Add sample data. Landing on an empty screen when you start using a product can be daunting. Increase the likelihood of them using the product and converting by showing them what it'll be like. As an added bonus, it also acts as sort of a tutorial. But be careful not to make it seem like there's nothing left for them to do — greying out the sample data could be a good idea.
• Offer free migrations. If users have to migrate a lot of data during the onboarding process, offer to do it for them. Once data is on your servers, they will be heavily invested in your product.
• Leverage "Aha!" moments. Guide users to these moments quickly. After they experience one, prompt them with an option to convert.
• Personalize your upgrade prompts. The more personalized a prompt can be (within reason — privacy is important), the more likely someone is to convert. Use their name, highlight features that they'll actually use, etc.
• Make sure upgrading is dead simple. If it takes more than 3 clicks to upgrade from anywhere in your product, you've got a problem.
• Make your pricing as simple as possible.
• Leverage your welcome email. It will have more opens than most emails, so link to everything that will help the user find value. FAQs, case studies, etc.
• Allow the user to personalize their account or experience. The type of personalization will depend on the product, but in general, allowing some personalization allows them to invest more time and energy into the product, increasing the likelihood of conversion.
• Put on your white gloves. Sales-assisted service will convert more. Of course, lower price points will make personal sales and onboarding difficult, so this may not be feasible. But that's an advantage to indie hackers, because we're able to do things that don't scale.
• Offer stellar customer support. I posted about how indie hackers can do that without breaking the bank here.
• Drip campaigns. Send emails based on specific actions. Onboarding emails are good example. Nurture your new users, but make sure you are actually providing value! Otherwise, email fatigue will ruin your chances of converting them.
• Provide a summary of benefits received. Remind them about what they achieved with your product. This could be an email sent regularly, or it could be an email sent toward the end of a trial.
• Offer no-hassle cancellation.
• Offer no-hassle refunds.
• Offer a lifetime deal to users who aren't converting. Make sure this makes sense financially, but it can be a good way to incentivize fence-sitters.
• If people don't upgrade, ask them why. If it's something you can help with, do it. Offer a discount if it's too expensive. Jump on a call if they've stuck. And keep track of what your users are saying so that you can make necessary improvements.

Conversion tips for free tiers

Here are some opportunities that only really apply to the freemium model:

• Make sure you can afford it. Free users can get expensive with regard to both money and time.
• Provide just enough value, but not too much. Your free tier has to strike a very delicate balance of giving enough away to useful, without giving away features that users will pay for. I posted about how to do that here.
• Display the premium features. And trigger upgrade prompts when they click them.
• Put upgrade banners unobtrusively around your product.
• Implement upgrade email campaigns.
• Add in-app messaging at “Aha!” moments for upgrades. Don’t do this and email campaigns — do one or the other. In-app has the advantage of being in-context.
• Make it clear how easy it is to upgrade, downgrade, and cancel.
• Monetize free users who won’t convert. You can do this via ads (but be careful not to cheapen your brand — only use these if it’s already expected in your niche). You can also offer user a new revenue stream and take a cut.
• Leverage free users for growth. You can do this by including branding on anything your product produces (on the free version).

Conversion tips for free trials

And if you’re doing free trials, here’s how to convert:

• Give trial users full access. The exception here is features that cost you money and one-and-done features.
• Require a credit card. Most companies don't, but it's a good idea for early-stage companies. Explaining why you require it can be a good idea too (Crazy Egg did this.
• Don't require a credit card. Here's the other side of that coin. You want as many people on your free trial as possible, so why scare people off?
• Get your trial duration right. It should be as short as possible, while still showing the product's value and getting them invested in it. Consider your product's complexity, time-to-value, usage frequency. Longer trials give more time for finding value and becoming invested. But short trials have the benefit of urgency and shorter sales cycles.
• Offer a personal demo when someone starts their free trial.
• Offer personal support during trials.
• Invite trial users to a shared Slack channel. It keeps the brand top of mind and allows you to speak with them directly.
• Build habits around your product. If you’re thinking that this applies to just about any product, not just products with free trials, you’re not wrong. But it’s more important with free trials. How can you make your product an integral part of your user's day so that they convert?
• Reduce the possibility of people gaming the system. This is more of a problem for more expensive products, so you may not even need to worry about it. Either way, requiring a CC should reduce the number of times it happens. And there are products like @caydenm's Upollo that can help.
• Notify users a few times before and after a free trial ends. Let them know when it'll happen, what'll happen, why it's a cool idea to upgrade, how much that would cost, and so forth. This has the added benefit of adding (real) urgency.
• Give a trial extension when users ask for it (once).
• Implement win-back emails for users who don't convert. You can offer trial extensions, add value, etc. etc. to get them back.
• Offer last-minute, targeted perks. For example, after a user's trial ends, you couldsend an email with a survey asking, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely they are to recommend the software to a friend. If the score is less than 6, just thank them for their feedback. If it's 6-8, extend the user's free trial. And if it's 9 or 10, offer the user a discount to upgrade. Mention did that and cut churn in half.

What to do if your conversion rate still isn't good

What should you do if you've got crap conversions and you've already tried everything listed above?

• Talk to your users. Always a good idea, but particularly when conversions just aren’t happening.
• Consider a paid trial.
• Consider a “paid freemium" model.
• Reassess your acquisition strategies. Perhaps your approach finds users who won’t pay rather than user who will.
• Use data to understand what they find most valuable. Accentuate that, and consider paywalling it (in the case of free tiers).
• Decrease time-to-value in whatever way you can.
• Pivot if necessary.

And let's wrap up with a couple of solid tips from other indie hackers:

@tilikang: The first thing I'd look at is how active the ~295 free users are. There's a big difference between "none of them are using the service at all" vs. "they're using it, and they aren't choosing to upgrade to a paid tier". Understand the problem first, and then try to find a solution.

@scottwaters: This is something I see over and over again. There is obviously no harm in increasing your conversion rates, but for small numbers, widening the funnel is the way to go (especially if you can reach potential customers in a cost effective way).

What did I miss?

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