YEAR
2018
ROLE
Lead Product Designer, UI/UX
PROJECT
EdTech SaaS / Desktop + Mobile
URL
3 min read
ORIOn FREE TRIAL CASE STUDY
When launching any new SaaS product, a big challenge is converting users into paid subscribers. With ORION, it took some time to figure out the happy medium that worked best for our students while also satisfying our business goals. We started A/B testing different types of free trial methods and subscription interactions until we found our sweet spot. In doing so, it led us to implement an entirely different strategy that proved to be a success.
THE INITIAL GOAL
Learn whether our students are more motivated to purchase a subscription after their ORION trial and what effect does a shorter trial have on conversion rates. Results that maintained the current rate or increased it by 5% was considered a success.
CONTROL CENTER
In order to get started, we first controlled our variables. We set a standard subscription price and ran an analysis on how many students finished their mission within the current 15 day trial. We discovered that a majority of students were really motivated and completed multiple missions by the time their trial ended. So we ran A/B tests of the following:
TEST A: 7 day free trial with the current credit card flow, capturing their payment information at the beginning of sign-up
TEST B: 7 day free trial capturing their payment information at the end of the trial
AGILE TESTING
We soon discovered that our initial A/B test wasn’t solving a growing problem. By their 7th day of the free trial, many students had made it through a good portion of their study mission and didn’t feel the need to subscribe. On a positive note, it allowed us to rethink how users could try our product while being engaged enough to become a subscriber.
An AHA moment came when we thought of implementing a ‘Freemium’ model. Students would have full access to their first mission and practice test but would need to subscribe in order to unlock the rest of their study plan.
THE RESULTS
By allowing users to only have access to the first part of their study mission, it created a sense of agency to unlock the rest of their plan. Soon after this roll-out, user referrals went up by 16% and those that converted to a subscription increased by a whopping 8%. At its peak, ORION had over 300 students with 98% reporting a score improvement.
