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I'm sorry, but what's the context for this? I assume it's because I mentioned conversion. I added that part because I expected someone would ask what happened

I'm sorry, but what's the context for this? I assume it's because I mentioned conversion. I added that part because I expected someone would ask what happened to conversion rate when we started requiring credit cards for trials.

deeviant 12y ago
My point is instead of trying to play whack-a-mole and forcibly herd your customers into an intended path, why not just offer clearly a visible path that provides them with something they care about at a price they are willing to pay. In my experience, it is not easier to convert somebody on a trial to paying than it is to convert a non-customer to a paying customer, and your value prop (and the customer's understanding of it) is always the single biggest factor. Obviously, this calculus changes if you're going for an eyeballs-matter model. Admittedly knowing little about the specifics of your situation, I still would feel comfortable saying the engineering/man-hours effort would probably have been best spent refining the portal and giving customers a greater insight in your value prop. I think it is important to note that after you took the step of filtering out temp mail using customers, you said the conversion rate was unaffected, said with a positive tone. Unless there are significant marginal costs, this can be hardly be called a win.
- nirvdrum 12y ago
  The problem as I've noted elsewhere is the abusers were adversely affecting others. If I could have just ignored them as an annoyance, I'd have been with that. But that's sort of a total side comment. The point was in no situation did Mailinator users ever become customers but they still were a significant resource drain. As for the conversion rate, it was a positive outcome. I probably should have been clearer that Mailinator users weren't factored into the calculation any more than any other widespread source of spam would have been. Strictly speaking, removing them increased conversion rate because a whole bunch of sign-ups with 0% conversion went away. My point was removing the Mailinator traffic, all other sources continued to convert at nearly the same rate and revenue didn't drop because Mailinator traffic truly wasn't converting anyway. I'm willing to accept we just had an absolutely terrible business with an absolutely terrible business model and an absolutely terrible product. But if that's the case, why would so many people come from Mailinator and repeatedly use it?

deeviant 12y ago

My point is instead of trying to play whack-a-mole and forcibly herd your customers into an intended path, why not just offer clearly a visible path that provides them with something they care about at a price they are willing to pay. In my experience, it is not easier to convert somebody on a trial to paying than it is to convert a non-customer to a paying customer, and your value prop (and the customer's understanding of it) is always the single biggest factor. Obviously, this calculus changes if you're going for an eyeballs-matter model. Admittedly knowing little about the specifics of your situation, I still would feel comfortable saying the engineering/man-hours effort would probably have been best spent refining the portal and giving customers a greater insight in your value prop. I think it is important to note that after you took the step of filtering out temp mail using customers, you said the conversion rate was unaffected, said with a positive tone. Unless there are significant marginal costs, this can be hardly be called a win.

nirvdrum 12y ago
The problem as I've noted elsewhere is the abusers were adversely affecting others. If I could have just ignored them as an annoyance, I'd have been with that. But that's sort of a total side comment. The point was in no situation did Mailinator users ever become customers but they still were a significant resource drain. As for the conversion rate, it was a positive outcome. I probably should have been clearer that Mailinator users weren't factored into the calculation any more than any other widespread source of spam would have been. Strictly speaking, removing them increased conversion rate because a whole bunch of sign-ups with 0% conversion went away. My point was removing the Mailinator traffic, all other sources continued to convert at nearly the same rate and revenue didn't drop because Mailinator traffic truly wasn't converting anyway. I'm willing to accept we just had an absolutely terrible business with an absolutely terrible business model and an absolutely terrible product. But if that's the case, why would so many people come from Mailinator and repeatedly use it?