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Sharing a bit of my own experience: I used to do a lot of demos for my SaaS (usually 1 to 2 hour long, because it ended up in some form of coaching session on c

Sharing a bit of my own experience: I used to do a lot of demos for my SaaS (usually 1 to 2 hour long, because it ended up in some form of coaching session on cash-flow forecasting habits), but after a while I realised that I got more churn from such users ultimately. I later replaced those demos (which I still do occasionally) by 2 things : - An in-app onboarding tour (fully self-service), implemented with mock data (see https://gist.github.com/thbar/6036b30ddbc2b00b7656987a930ea5b2 https://gist.github.com/thbar/6036b30ddbc2b00b7656987a930ea5... for a full write-up on how to implement that with Rails & Hopscotch) - A git-based detailed knowledge base (also self-service), https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog/lessons-learned-creating-a-git-based-knowledge-base-for-my-saas-product https://www.wisecashhq.com/blog/lessons-learned-creating-a-g... And I also moved from a CC-upfront trial mode, to a no-CC trial. Applying those 3 measures slashed my "customer support time" to almost zero & fewer churn. I suppose I'm attracting more savvy, self-service users too now.

encoderer 9y ago
How did the trial conversion go? Do you have a lot of in-app prompting and email around conversion? We tried that at Cronitor in 2015 but we saw less engagement from users who started a trial without a cc and less engaged users, predictably, converted at a lower rate for us.
- thibaut_barrere 9y ago
  I have no in-app prompting at all, and I have a simple 5-email benefits-oriented email series (via customer.io). I don't have enough numbers for things to be meaningful (it's a small-scale SaaS), but I seem to recall that removing the CC without onboarding initially was not great, and things improved with the onboarding tour (sorry if I cannot be much more specific!). Removing the CC avoided the need to handle refunds for some people, which was a bit of hassle to handle.
  - softawre 9y ago
    > sorry if I cannot be much more specific It's much appreciated anyway. Sharing of the secret sauce is what makes this forum so valuable to the tech community.

encoderer 9y ago

How did the trial conversion go? Do you have a lot of in-app prompting and email around conversion? We tried that at Cronitor in 2015 but we saw less engagement from users who started a trial without a cc and less engaged users, predictably, converted at a lower rate for us.

thibaut_barrere 9y ago
I have no in-app prompting at all, and I have a simple 5-email benefits-oriented email series (via customer.io). I don't have enough numbers for things to be meaningful (it's a small-scale SaaS), but I seem to recall that removing the CC without onboarding initially was not great, and things improved with the onboarding tour (sorry if I cannot be much more specific!). Removing the CC avoided the need to handle refunds for some people, which was a bit of hassle to handle.
- softawre 9y ago
  > sorry if I cannot be much more specific It's much appreciated anyway. Sharing of the secret sauce is what makes this forum so valuable to the tech community.