Individual conversion rate isn't the whole story, either. There are people like me (and I suspect many others here) who will play with just about anything that looks interesting, whether we have an actual long-term interest or not. Asking for a credit card up front will lose most of those people. No big deal, you think? Well, those people also tend to be the ones who tell their friends about your new site, and whose friends trust them to make such recommendations.

Personally, unless I really, really, really need whatever service you're offering, I close the window if any of the following are requested: 'phone number; credit card; "secure" password; social network logon.

We are having this very same debate internally now at https://starthq.com

I'm thinking that individual users should be put on a free trial without the CC being asked up front. However, group plans that will be paid for by IT managers will be CC up front.

The reasoning behind this is that by asking for the CC up front from managers, we will 1) make them value the service more 2) retain more of them as customers.

What do you think?

Update: this has been fixed, so I'm happy now. :-)

I utterly hate, loathe and despise the scrolling and keyboard hijacking on this article. (Yes, I really do feel that strongly about it.)

I pressed Space and what happened? I got taken an entire page down, rather than not quite an entire page.

So I pressed Shift+Space to go back up and what happened? I got taken another page down, rather than back to the top.

So I pressed Ctrl+PageUp to go to the previous tab so that I could report these issues and what happened? I got taken one page up instead.

Scrolling with my laptop's trackpad isn't working smoothly at all, and quite unpleasantly. Ditto with the arrow keys. The whole experience, in fact.

Please remove this behaviour and let browsers do what their users expect.

You should also consider the possibility that your potential customer does not have a CC. Here in Germany, that applies to quite a lot of people (sry, I have no numbers).

@toumhi Please turn off your inertia scrolling. I am on a Mac and inertia scrolling is already activated, but it is much smarter so that if I stop scrolling but keep my fingers on the trackpad then it doesn't use inertia scrolling. The scrolling on saasfoundry.io however just keeps going. Very annoying.

EDIT: toumhi contacted me by email and has now fixed the issue :)

I think this is a dark pattern that actually works. You sign up for a free trial with a CC where they promise you can cancel anytime. Your plan is to cancel before the trial is over but you forget it and start paying. It happens to me all the time.

First, every site will get a completely different result. Keep in mind that just dropping in a cc requirement into your a sign up process created around frictionless trials will probably fail. To get a person's payment details, you need to do more work upfront. You can't have 2 second landing page->signup for people who have never heard of you before. They won't give you a CC just to find out what you do.

Credit card frost has two big advantages:

1- It's easier to optimize. The conversion process is simpler and more controlled. With a fricitonless trial, improving your process of herding people into a free trial can be like pulling on a string, it gets shorter on the other end. You signed up more unengaged/uninterested people, so your trial->payment rates are lower. Obviously, this is only an advantage if you put a lot of effort into the optimization.

2- It takes advantage of some human psychological tendencies. (a) Once they make the credit card details commitment, they are much more likely to thoroughly try out the app. (2) Entering CC details is like paying for something. They get the positive psychological effect of a purchase. When people buy something they want to justify and reenforce their decision, to themselves and to others. They are yours to lose at this point. If you do a good job on #1, you will have gotten this advantage at a discount, because the friction can be much lower than actually paying. They are yours to lose at this point.

There is no canon here. There are lots of advantages and disadvantages to each strategy that apply in different measures to each case.

Why Free Plans Don’t Work [2010]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613852 [114 comments]

A lot of lifestyle entrepreneurs have recommended getting the card for a long time.

What about this? 1 day free trial without credit card, with 29 additional free days when you enter it.

It depends on the service; if it can be used for malicious purposes (hosting, emailing spam etc) or it carries a liability then definitively ask for a credit card.

How about doing it in 3 stages: 1. Brief free trial (1-2 days) with no CC required. 2. Next, your typical 30 day free trial, but require a CC. 3. Paid service.

Anecdotal evidence vs Anecdotal evidence. I guess its a matter of picking your preference.