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I met an entrepreneur recently and was shocked to find his free trial period runs for 60 days i.e 2 months, Wow awesome isn’t it. I was wondering isn’t it too too long free trial period and they should focus on migrating customer into a paid customer. Question arises what is an ideal duration for free trial period 1 week, 10 days, 2weeks, 1month? And also what information you should seek from users before initiating the free trial offer

But before that another question arises why you are offering free trial. You have come out with a new product/web service and would like to pull in users to use your system. So in order to pull users into the system you have to offer dry run of your system. So would you enable all features to be accessed by user during the free trial period or would like to insulate some features in the free trial period.

In general as a norm companies offer free trial period of 30days, i firmly believe if a customer will become paid customer after 30 days, it can happen in 14 days also. If you can’t show them the value in a week-10days time, time to look at product positioning and product features. In free trial period onboarding of customer should be the primary goal and show value by making sure you have designed fantastic product which will address customer need after they input information.

I personally believe you should never ask for Credit card information during trial period, though u will charge their credit card after the trial period but this act can really put off your potential customer and they will drop out.

Do share your stories on free trial.

-Hitesh, vcBytes.com

Freemium is a business model that works by offering basic Web services, or a basic downloadable digital product, for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features. In simple words Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc. then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

Things to consider before implementing Freemium business model-

• Freemium may work for u if u have: great long term retention rate, product value increases over time, low variable costs.
• Create a business service with business processes which is highly robust, so it is scalable and doesn’t need large numbers of people to grow.
• Analyse how user use your system and assess the data, you will come across gaps in the system which you can address through premium service and it means more sales.
• Make sure you show them the value of features and how they can leverage features coming with premium subscription.
• Have reasonable pricing for premium subscription, if its too high competitors can cause dent to your business. High free user base tends to keep away the competition.
• Tease users with data on premium stuff and thus continue to entice them.
• Dont try to target 40-50% user base to convert into premium users, 10% conversion is too good rate.