> The number of users that take part in trials doesn't matter to your bottom line. The percentage of people that convert does.

I stopped reading at this point. What actually matters is the absolute number of people that sign up and pay for your product. Making it harder for people to try out your product obviously lowers the absolute number of users who get to know your product, which has knock-on effects that you can not measure in A/B tests.

If your product requires me to provide credit card information, or even contact sales, it better be exceptional for me not to bail instantly. If it is exceptional, your marketing probably does not matter much anyway.