Is it a good idea from a business perspective or am I just missing on potential customers' emails?
Here is what I will do. Give them access to a sandbox but let them create their own userid for it if possible using their email etc. This way, you now know how many actual users are trying your app.
This will also reduce the number of non-serious users as well. Yes this may cause some users to not try the app but in my experience, any user who does not give you at least their email to try your app is very unlikely to become a paying customer.
You could think of intent to explore sandbox as a slightly advanced stage in engagement with potential customer. The top of the funnel could just be a visitor who downloads a fact sheet about your space or just download pricing sheet from your website (mapbox does it nicely without being intrusive). And they don't spam. That is one good way to populate top of the funnel.
The sandbox access is another stage in your funnel. I am assuming you would like more folks to try your sandbox, without friction or as less friction as possible without giving too much information.
1. You could just let them play in a generic sandbox site without even email / registration and then subtly ask them to register and reserve the site, if they would like to come back.
This is like Stripe. Classy and confident that your product is loved and folks will register.
2. You could ask only for email id and allow them to get to a separate sandbox site. They could name the site later if they like it. You know that only those who complete registration process are more likely serious users to engage later with smart follow-ups. Those who bounce off & abandon are more likely not interested in your product. This is what we do at Chargebee - our product is serious in nature (shameless plug: we do billing with REST API on top of Stripe, Braintree & other gateways with all kinds of payment methods including card) .
3. If you are a 2 member team and only want to focus on very few serious users, then having a card upfront for trial acts as entry barrier. This allows only serious users to get in but with better conversions. I think you are not inclined and very few SaaS services do this. (aweber.com has a paid $1 trial as well).
You should definitely test one or more of these options. But to start with a simple sandbox to explore product is definitely a good way to measure engagement, see where they click & explore product. And then derive insights based on that.
Then you could iterate to see if having email id for registration as a filter helps bring in serious users.
In our case we implemented #2. In our first iteration we asked for email, site name & password and when we removed site name & pwd fields we doubled conversions for trial as well as paying customers. We are not testing how simplifying the registration / account claimed would impact conversion.
P.S: When I say engage smartly, I am assuming we are all talking about non-spammy, subtle but showing enough intent to earn a serious trial user's business, like we all prefer to be treated. :)
Thoughts?
- dummy data may not be of any value or interest to users
- you will have to promote the demo for anyone to hear about it
- if you are still months from launch there will be limited retention, zero if it's not functional or enticing