When do you require payment details?

Me: After the trial

If you decide to ask for credit card information before the free trial, make sure your landing page is very clear to understand what problem you are solving and how you solving that. Customers may be hesitant to input their card information before they have a chance to try out your product.

I believe you want to demonstrate you can help people by actually helping them. If you ask for a credit card upfront, that becomes difficult.

If you can rely on brand equity, that needn't be an issue. However, if you're like us solopreneurs, then no one knows you.

This means you have to show (not tell) the user you're a value add. So let them use your product for free and ask for the credit card after.

From a behavior science perspective, everything that introduces friction will lower the total number of people who'll execute the behavior you want.

There are two arguments for asking for a cc upfront:

1. You have very clearly defined and well-explained positioning. That means the audience can self-select easily (sample bias working in your favor). And if the perceived value derived from your product exceeds the value of keeping the amount of money you're asking for, they'll sign up. Read this on value exchanges.

2. It prevents tire kickers. If the free tier is so good that it solves most people's problems, they may not sign up altogether (I've literally been paying Spotify for years solely to block their ads. If the free tier didn't have ads, they'd miss out on my patronage). This never used to be much of a problem but since there's so much VC in startups, there are quite a few users who expect (and demand) everything should be free.

All in all, I think cc after is the way to go. I'm also a fan of a freemium tier.

You're familiar with the typical freemium approach where you give away part of the solution but another one I like is what I call "Chiral Freemium" where you give away something that helps the user identify the problem.

E.g. If you're building an AI email copy tool, you can upload your email and it helps you understand which parts of your copy are problematic and why.

After the trial = More Users, and users can refer to others (potential paid).

before trial = You make more money but your customers are angrier, you can auto charge them when 30days have passed if they forgot to cancel their subscription or used feature that aren't free.

We are collecting the payment details after the signup if they intent to purchase. If you ask before the trial, then your conversation may drop.

If you have a free trial, then conversions will def go up if you don't require them until after the trial, but you will also have a lot less engaged/committed ppl.

An alternative is to require payment upfront and have a refund window (i.e. 15-day refund period). I like this approach better b/c you can focus on selling them on the product, and a paying customer is more committed than a non-paying one. Keeping a paying customer is easier than having to sell someone twice (first selling on the product to sign-up for a free trial, then selling them on paying after they sign-up).

In my experience I always ended up requesting it after the trial.

This is something that can be nicely tested though. Make sure to look not only at the CR to Trial, but also how much did each variant make.

After the trial is my answer!!!

After the trial.

I approached it thinking about how I would like things to be if I were a user.

Entering a card is a fairly large barrier to entry for me.