Ran a Trial offer for 10 weeks. Here's what I found.

In August I launched a trial offer and my sales poofed out of existence. I held my breath for 10 weeks to give it a fair chance and to find out what would happen. Here's are my findings. Let's dive in.

Why have a trial version?

I wanted to reach developers working for Webdesign agencies. In my experience (as someone who worked as a front-end dev) these devs don't want to have to convince their boss or their bosses boss that they require the company credit card to try out some piece of software they found on the internet.

So, at the start of august I published a 7 day trial version of Doka Image Editor.

How the Trial worked

The trial had a duration of 7 days.

Customers downloaded by registering a free account at the PQINA customer portal. They get sent the following welcome message inviting them to reach out if they had any questions.

Hi!

Thanks for trying out Doka Image Editor.

Even though this email is automated, I just wanted to say hi and let you know I'm a real person.

If you have any questions or run into trouble during the trial period, just reply to this email and I'll try to help out as fast as I can.

Have a great day!

Rik at PQINA

When the trial ended they would receive this email.

Hi!

Thanks for trying out Doka Image Editor. I hope it's a good fit for your project.

Just reply to this email if you have any questions or feedback. I'd love to hear your input, always happy to help.

Cheers!

Rik at PQINA

I choose a casual format. Hoped that it would set up a dialogue so there was as little friction as possible to ask questions.

The 7 day trial included:

• 7 days of free support.
• The full version of the product with a watermark on top (source files weren't included).
• After the trial expired access to the download was disabled.
• The package would still work as it runs on the client and doesn't need a server.

I considered disabling the package after 7 days. I didn't because it could prevent devs from running internal customer demo's.

The Data

• 128 total trials, 67 total sales, 25 trial converted to sales

• About 50% open rate.

• Increase in trials on the weekends.

• Customers rarely reached out, maybe once a week.

• Sales dropped immediately which kinda was to be expected.

• I saw no increase in conversion in the 10 weeks the trial ran.

Thoughts

I didn't see a noticeable conversion difference. The group the trial was intended for wasn't obviously part of the trials that ran. I stopped the trial.

This is what happened.

While the trial version made it easier for customers to quickly try out Doka, I suspect it also made it easier to discard it.

When you've spend money you're more invested to make it work.

If customers purchased Doka it also automatically gives me an opportunity to help them out if they wanted to request a refund. This is lost with a trial.

Next steps is to reach out to the devs that registered to try and learn some more.

Hope this was interesting. Happy to answer any questions.

If you're looking to offer better image editing to your customers, give Doka Image Editor a try, the 60-day refund will stay in place 😊