Background
Tara, which provides a product management tool for engineering, was looking for ways to drive its registered users to become paid customers and increase the top line for the business. In the past, it was not entirely clear when users are on a Premium subscription, what benefits they get on Premium and why they should upgrade from to a Premium. Plan. As part of this project, our team’s goal was to surface bits of information that tell our users which plan they’re on and, as a result, what limits are imposed on their workspace and why they should upgrade. The project was part of a broader growth initiative to increase our annual run rate.
My Role
I focused on working with Sales and Marketing teams to design user experience on Free vs. Premium plans on our platform during a 2-week free trial period. I also helped develop pricing plans and revamped the pricing page based on newly imposed limits. As part of this project, I also identified opportunities to trigger a new user to purchase a Premium subscription.
Tools
Figma
Timeline
8 weeks
The Problem
How can we get more registered users to convert into paid users on Tara?
How can we convince the user of Tara’s value in 2 weeks trial to make them paid subscribers at the end of the trial period?
Solution
Create a two-week trial experience for users. Help users understand the value of Tara in their workflow for the two weeks and then impose limits at the end of the trial, giving them clarity on the benefits of the upgrade and creating a sense of urgency for them to upgrade their plan.
We identified two user scenarios:
Scenario 1: New users (start with a 14-day Premium trial)
These users enter Tara as a premium customers and get all the features for the first two weeks of the trial.
Scenario 2: Existing Users (include users who ended trial and current Tara free)
These users finish the premium trial, become existing users, and discover the newly imposed limits for the free plan.
Pricing Page
Before designing the premium trial experience, it was essential to identify which feature should be considered free vs. paid. This was a collaborative effort of the Sales, Growth, Marketing, and Design teams, followed by redesigning the existing pricing page, making it compatible with the platform, highlighting the most popular plan, and changing CTA’s for the Freemium plan. An additional floating header was added in the new design to always stay at the top with the pricing plan so that users can quickly access the CTA while scrolling down the extended full feature breakdown.
Freemium Trial - User Journey
To design the best experience for the users, it was essential first to understand the overall journey of users for the first two weeks when they signed up for Tara. The user journey focused on the day-to-day activity during the 14 days, including daily check-in, emailers, and reminders, followed by a churn survey.
New User Trial Experience
The new user experience shows the end-to-end journey as a brand new Tara user. Overall, we added a marketing banner with the paywall on top of the work drawer that would get updated in real-time, notifying the user of the number of days left on their trial. The journey also included emailers and updates in app cues to convert users.
Users received three reminders during the two-week trial (both e-mail & in-app) to upgrade. If they upgraded during the two-week trial, this flow stopped. On the 15th day, users received an in-app and e-mail notification highlighting that they had been moved to the Free plan.
Existing User Experience
All users who converted or were downgraded to the free plan became "existing users" now. As part of the project, we focused on the experience for these existing users. For the downgraded free plan, we wanted to ensure the paywalls are placed at locations where people would try to access a premium feature, such as adding more than 20 tasks per sprint. A bar was added to the sprint that progresses as the user reaches the 20 task limit. Paywalls were also added when users tried to add tasks in the third sprint. We also used the free banner in critical places to create a sense of urgency among the users to upgrade to a premium plan.
