Is your product a good candidate for free trial?

In my last post, I discussed a number of considerations for offering free product trials. Today, we will look at what it takes to create a successful free product trial.

4 Requirements for a Successful Free Product Trial

1. The free trial does not require specialized skills to become operational.

The person who signs up for the free trial must be able to get it operational on their own. The minute you require someone else with specialized skills or different authority and access, you doom your trial to failure. Though the person initiating the trial may be willing to invest their time, it is much more difficult for them to convince other people to volunteer their efforts.

2. The free trial does not require significant investments of time to become operational or to use.

Best intentions aside, most trials fail because they require a product ownership-level of time investment. Most people who initiate a trial are busy. They won't have a great deal of available time to devote to installing, configuring, and testing out your product. They will be able to grab a little time here and a little time there. This means that their experience will be disjointed and out-of-context.

3. The free trial does not require reading documentation to be usable.

Most purchased owners rarely read product documentation. You can expect that even fewer trial users will refer to your documentation. Your product must have turnkey installation and configuration as well as an intuitive user experience.

4. The free trial will be representative of the ownership experience.

There is nothing more frustrating than finding that the key piece of functionality you want to look at is disabled. Worse yet is finding this out after you have registered, obtained, installed, and configured the trial. Those who try your product want to investigate the ownership experience uncensored.

Like any other conversion mechanism, free trials have their role. However, if your trial doesn't pass all of the above criteria, your chances at creating converted trials is questionable.

The good news is that contrary to popular opinion, trials aren't necessary for most product purchases. Marketers have a whole bag full of other mechanisms to convince wary buyers to take the plunge. We'll explore some of those mechanisms in my next post.