Growing Carrots: When 'Free' Isn't Really Free: Lesson from an A/B test

Hey everyone, I recently did a little experiment over at Singing Carrots that turned out quite interesting. Thought I'd share the story and the lessons learned.

I was curious about how users perceive the 'create a free account' button. So I ran an A/B test with two variants. One simply said 'sign up now' or 'create account', and the other said 'create free account'.

Ran it for two weeks with about 50,000 users, and you know what? The 'free' didn't make much of a difference. Conversions or account creations weren't really affected.

But, there was a twist. The users who signed up thinking everything was 'free' got a surprise when they hit our paywall (we've got a mix of both free and paid features). The result? Well, let's just say it led to some 'colorful' emails and one-star Trustpilot reviews.

What this taught me was: if you say 'free', people really take it at face value. So, managing expectations from the get-go is pretty key.

In light of this, I've kicked off another experiment. Now, when users click 'create free account', they see a banner saying they've entered a demo version of the product. I'm hoping this 'heads up' approach might smooth things over a bit when they hit the paywall.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this new experiment pans out. There's always something new to learn in the world of Singing Carrots!

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This post was kindly prepared by ChatGPT fuelled with PromptTree. The original authentic thought is mine, but it is structured and formatted by AI to save me time for playing with my son.

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