Ask HN: How to get customers signed up for a free trial?
I'm looking into the UI aspect of getting customers to sign up for a free 30 day trial and then convert them into paying customers.
Do you think it's best to use wording "a month" instead of "30 days"?
How about getting rid of "trial" and just using "Try namehere"
Examples: Try namehere for a month, free! Try namehere free for a month!
Free trial for 30 days! Free trial of namehere for 30 days! Free trial of namehere for a month!
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I have 2 variants on my homepage :
"Free Trial" http://www.zookshop.com/?comb=1-b
"Sign up : 30-day Free Trial" http://www.zookshop.com/?comb=2-b
The first one is way more effective than the other.
I have no data with "a month" because I haven't tested it, but it seems to be common knowledge that "30 days" is better, because it looks longer.
These experiments by 37signals might give you some useful insights:
http://thinkvitamin.com/web-apps/how-to-increase-sign-ups-by-200-percent/
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2705-behind-the-scenes-37signalscom-redesign
Test all this stuff. Use a tool like Optimizely to create a few variations and see what works best.