AiSDR
Real leads in 24 minutes, then a $13.50 button that became $46.50. I traced where the trial earns trust and where the checkout spends it.
Wins the trial, loses the checkout.
Trial to paid
More of the people who start your trial end up paying for it.
For SaaS teams with a self-serve trial that signs people up and does not convert them. I find the value gap and redesign the path from first login to paid.
Email me
Tell me what’s broken and where you’re stuck.
What you get
Start with a teardown of your trial
I go through your trial as a buyer, with a stopwatch and a screenshot of every step, the same way I tear down AiSDR or LinkedIn Premium on the blog. Yours stays private.
Close the value gap
Most trials lose people between signup and the first result. I shorten the time to value so the first win lands before the first hard decision.
A checkout that does not surprise
Pre-ticked extras, yearly defaults, and totals that appear late all cost trust. I redesign pricing and checkout so the number people see is the number they pay.
Know where you stand first
For free trials, 8 to 12% free-to-paid is good and 15 to 25% is great, per Lenny's Newsletter's survey of self-serve products. Freemium runs lower: 3 to 5% is good. The teardown starts by placing your number on that scale.
Measured on paying customers, not a ratio
Trial-to-paid conversion is the number we watch, with activation and time to value beside it. A rate is easy to flatter by adding friction upstream, so we count the people who pay, not only the percentage.
Built on real behavior
Labor illusion, Hick's law, value before the ask. Every change is tied to a documented behavior, not a hunch.
Examples of this work
BabyLoveGrowth
Seven setup steps, then a card form, then the first article. A 3-day trial for a product whose results take 90 days.
The clock starts in the wrong place.
Supliful
I was the first UX hire. I redesigned brand setup so a new creator could launch in one session, and stayed through launch.
$1.1M monthly GMV.
How it works
- 01
Tear down the trial
I run your trial as a real user, step by step, and map where people hesitate, wait, or leave.
- 02
Find the value gap
We compare where the first result lands with where you ask for commitment: the card, the plan, the upgrade. Confused after login is an activation problem. Stuck at checkout is a conversion problem. They need different fixes.
- 03
Redesign the path
Onboarding, the first win, pricing, and checkout, prototyped and tested with real trial users.
- 04
Ship and measure
Your team ships, we watch trial-to-paid conversion, and we iterate until the number moves.
The approach
Close the value gap, then add bumpers.
People who feel the value during a trial are about 10 times more likely to pay. Every trial I work on follows the framework from my product-led lesson: find where people fall out, then add a straight line or a bumper.
- The value gap
- Map the distance between sign-up and the first result. Every step in between is a chance to leave, so we measure time to value first.
- Straight line
- The shortest path from sign-up to first value. Three questions for every step: what can we remove, what can wait, and what is mission-critical? Teams usually cut 20 to 75% of their steps.
- Product bumpers
- 40 to 60% of sign-ups never come back. Tours, checklists, empty states, and tooltips make the next step obvious inside the product.
- Conversational bumpers
- Emails and nudges triggered by behavior, not by day count. The upgrade ask comes after the success signal, not before it.
- Activation, defined
- First value needs a measurable definition before we touch a screen. Snyk counts a team as activated when it fixes one vulnerability within 30 days, because those teams retain and buy. We find your equivalent in the data, then design toward it.
Fit
This is for
A self-serve trial with traffic
SaaS and product-led companies. People start your trial every day, you can see the numbers, and too few of them pay.
This is not for
No trial yet
Not a fit if sales runs every deal and there is no self-serve path, or if the trial is still an idea. Start with discovery instead.
FAQ
Yes. The job is the same: get people to the first result, then ask for money at the right moment. Free plans just move that moment later. If you are still choosing between the two, a reverse trial, full product first and a downgrade to free after, converted at twice the rate of classic freemium in Lenny's Newsletter's survey.
Lenny's Newsletter surveyed free-to-paid products: for free trials, 8 to 12% is good and 15 to 25% is great. For self-serve freemium, 3 to 5% is good and 6 to 8% is great. Selling to large companies or developers runs lower. We use the scale to decide whether the problem is the trial or the market.
More than most teams budget for. SparkToro doubled trial-to-paid with an onboarding checklist and behavior-triggered emails. Yuriy Timen, who ran growth at Grammarly, Canva, and Airtable, puts the typical lift at 20 to 30% for later-stage products and two to four times for early ones. Your range depends on how far the first result sits from sign-up.
A trial account, your funnel numbers, and someone who can ship. Session recordings and support tickets help, but I can start without them.
The teardown takes a week. The redesign depends on how much of the path we touch. I tell you the range after the teardown.
That is the default. I design and test, your team ships, and we read the numbers together.
Email me your trial and the conversion number you want to move. I reply with a plan for the first week.