Before the test, GetResponse offered a free trial for their service – but it wasn’t prominently displayed on their homepage. Instead it was buried deeper on the site, on other pages. Bottom line: is wasn’t a well promoted option for browsing customers. On the other hand, the “buy now” button, allowing people to directly purchase their services, did have prime real estate on the homepage.

They wanted to know what would happen if they displayed their free trial option directly beside the “buy now” option. Would it significantly decrease the number of paid accounts?

There was a perception that providing a “Free Trial” button will decrease the number of signups so it was quite a critical test. They used Visual Website Optimizer to quickly setup an A/B test in which variation had an extra “Free Trial” button next to the “Buy Now” button.

Here’s what A looked like:

And here’s what the B variation homepage looked like:

What they found was that not only did the prominent free trial button increase free account signups by 158%, it led to no significant decrease in the number of paid accounts that people were signing up for via the homepage button.

Agnieszka Dabrowska of GetResponse had this to say about the results:

It’s worth testing different variations of Call to Action (CTA) on the homepage. We expected that by adding a free trial button on the homepage the number of paid accounts would decrease. We were positively surprised by the results. Not only did we manage to keep the sale at the same level, but we also noticed a huge increase in the number of free trial accounts, which will also result in a bigger number of upgrades in the future.

Of course a case study is just that – a study of one case. There’s no guarantee that adding a “free trial” button to your homepage would produce similar results. But it does show that it’s probably worth a try.

Can you attest to the advantages and disadvantages of this? Let us know in the comments.

The Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, David C. Vladeck, along with officials from Visa and the Better Business Bureau (BBB) are cautioning consumers about the free trial feature, known as a "negative option." In a negative option feature, a company takes a consumer’s failure to cancel a free trial offer as permission to begin charging for the service.

 The FTC says many businesses use this billing process appropriately, others pre-check consent boxes, bury details of the offers in fine print, terms and conditions, and make cancellations or returns difficult, landing people in a cycle of recurring charges for products and services they do not want.

"Free trial marketing can be convenient for consumers-if the terms are clearly spelled out beforehand," Vladeck said. "Legitimate marketers don’t hide critical information about costs or cancellation policies to get their customers to agree to future charges."

The FTC, Visa and the BBB offer the following tips to online shoppers on how to spot misleading free trial offers and how to deal with unauthorized charges:

•     Take time to read and understand all terms and conditions, so a free trial doesn’t turn into a costly purchase you didn’t intend to make.
•     Pay particular attention to any pre-checked boxes before you submit your payment card information for an order. Failing to un-check the boxes may bind you to terms and conditions you don’t want.
•     Review credit card statements when you get them for any unauthorized charges, and notify the card issuer promptly of any unusual activity or unauthorized charges.
•     Try to resolve the situation with the merchant. If you’re unsuccessful, contact the card issuer immediately to dispute the charge.

Consumers who think they have been victims of deceptive marketing and who have not been able to resolve the issue with the merchant should call their credit card company to dispute the charge. Consumers can also file a complaint with the FTC or their local BBB.
 

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They found that providing free content immediately is a plus. eMusic makes such an offer before visitors land on its home page. The company says that they have converted around half of its free members into paid subscribers.

A third of the sites surveyed offer trials after users click on content that is available to paid subscribers.

Over half of sites that offer a free trial after users click on a subscriber only section put up a complete barrier, not displaying any content. Members have to sign in and non-members have to join the site.

Just over a quarter of sites show a partial view of content above a barrier requesting users to sign in or register.

Free trials can be helpful to the user in deciding the value of subscriber only content.

Allen Klepfisz of free-to-consumer music firm Qtrax said, "Free is important. In an Internet context, people expect things to be free. News is free, video is free, search is free, so why should music have to be paid for?"