15 Ways to Optimize your Subscription Model | Hacker News Reader

15 Ways to Optimize your Subscription Model

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57 pointsscottieh14 comments

Some cool, non-obvious tips in there, although (9) (JavaScript countdown) seems downright insidious. I'd never buy from a site that did that.

it seems crappy but it totally works. also, you have to consider who is really purchasing your products. if it's educated buyers who take longer to purchase than that will seem childish vs other things.

Okay, fair enough. I was thinking of more of a business audience - I can't imagine such a stunt would go down well with them. I wouldn't do it on my site, regardless.

That and (10) Intellichat are shady practices, regardless of how they affect your subscription rate.

Wow, I completely missed the intellichat thing. That sounds pretty nasty.

intellichat is the best thing ever. you've got to be kidding me. you can't talk to everyone one of your customers and this may help answer some questions they have about why they aren't buying your product at that point. if only i could be next to every one of my customers while they are thinking of paying!

#5 says that pricing specials for the first month have been shown to work better than free trial. Is that from personal experience or is the auther referring to some studies that have been conducted?

We're selling a SaaS solution to small businesses and our entire process is built around a free 15 day trial. I imagine that if we required payment info upfront, our sign ups would drop dramatically, our cancellation rates would go up and I'm not sure what would happen to the customer acquisition rate. If the net result is positive I wouldn't care about the change in our metrics.

Does anyone know of any articles written about that topic in particular?

thanks, some very good thoughts here for sure but if im to understand intellichat the idea is to hustle up a better offer for people that are leaving. this starts to feel like att or even a car dealership.

no doubt something like this increases numbers but it produces weaker customer relationships and less room for your company to act with integrity - which is what people adore. you dont need to upsell when your customers are begging for more; more fun and inspiring for you too.

engineering an immediate dollar machine has the same effects as most short term strategies so keep "t" in mind when performing an optimization.

Noah brings useful info to the table once again. The post could have some more meat to it, give more exposition on each point but it's also to read a short and sweet list of tips and advice.

glad you like it. i can add more meat in a future post. it was just a sampler:)

definitely needs some more meat -- I'd love to hear more

good stuff, hits on a lot of important things we often overlook or push off till later, but we could benefit from by doing now. Most of his suggestions can apply to any startup. Every Friday I like to bring out the comb and not worry about feature improvements... definitely added a some new things to our list.

Glad Noah is hanging out, building cool games, and eating burritos in Austin. :)

Good stuff. I'm going to audit my subscription page right now and see what I can improve. No way I'm gonna add a js countdown, though.

I never though about a discounted first month vs. 30 days free (that's what we do now). Why is this better? Less attrition?

Austin is the place! glad you like the advice. just some tips i picked up along the way. let me know how they work for you.

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