Use Cases
![[Customer Story] Why TestDome Considers FastSpring a Real Partner](https://fastspring.com/wp-content/themes/fastspring-bamboo/images/promotional/2023/FastSpring-TestDome-blog-thumbnail.jpg)
Dave Gowans loves that testing allows opinions and preconceptions about conversion to be set aside in favor of numbers and measurability.
And what is one of the key conversion factors he uses those numbers to measure?
Love.
As wild as that sounds, it makes perfect sense. Dave, Founder and Director of Conversion at conversion optimization agency Browser to Buyer, explains that there are two fundamentals underlying the research his agency does for clients: barriers and motivators.
Barriers are anything that stop a buyer from converting, such as website usability, solution fit, or pricing. Those are pretty typical CRO factors you’ve probably thought of before, in terms of a negative to be overcome or removed.
But motivators are the flip side of that coin: What is a positive that would make your buyers more likely to convert?
In Dave’s words, “What is it about your product or service that the users say in their own words they love?”
Once you know what buyers’ motivators are — what they love — it becomes a lot easier to overcome their barriers.
Dave has gleaned some valuable CRO insights since he founded Browser to Buyer in 2016, which he shared with FastSpring CMO and Growth Stage podcast host Dave Vogelpohl in our latest episode. Stream the entire conversation or read the highlights below.
Full Interview: Audio Only
Full Interview: Video
3 CRO Insights From Dave Gowans
Why Full Funnel CRO Is Especially Important for SaaS and Subscriptions
“The easiest and most straightforward bit of CRO is what you can do on the website,” Dave says.
But he explains that what happens on the website is such a small and early part of the entire customer relationship. “For many companies, that’s a very long way from when you actually get any money from them.”
That’s why Dave recommends testing all the way through to the client or customer taking a subscription.
This is especially important for SaaS and software companies that offer free trials as part of their subscription model, since knowing more about the point at which those free trial users subscribe — or don’t — can help you focus in on those barriers and motivators.
2 Key Full Funnel CRO Research and Testing Techniques
When asked what his most consistent CRO technique is, Dave actually had two answers.
One is the research technique of plainly asking new subscribers on the thank-you page if there was anything that almost stopped them from subscribing today.
He explained that “It’s amazing, because you don’t harm the conversion rate — because it’s happening after whatever the conversion is you’re measuring to — and you can just leave it running forever. And with so many of our clients, you’ve got this list every day, with more and more feedback coming in.”
The other is the testing technique of surveying your customers to find out how they talk about your product.
“I think SaaS businesses and subscription businesses are particularly bad at having vague, waffley headlines on their homepages,” he states. Ifprospects and customers don’t understand what your product is or what your service does, they’re not going to buy it.
“Some of the biggest results we’ve had is just by taking that right back to basics and saying, ‘This is what this product does,’ ‘This is what this service does,’ and ideally, using the words that your customers would use.”
Why It’s Worth Taking the Harder Full Funnel CRO Steps (Spoiler: Bigger Results!)
Dave recounted the story of, long before the pandemic, helping an online meeting provider with optimization throughout their sales funnel. After interviews revealed that users of the service loved a particular feature that wasn’t spoken of much on the website, they tested adding a mention of that feature to the free trial sign-up form.
But sign-ups went down.
And if they had taken that data point at face value, they would have taken that feature mention back off the website.
“But when we actually looked at the subscription numbers, people were getting a lot more value out of their trial; they realized they had this feature, and the overall subscriptions were up!”
That’s where measuring love comes in: While the overall number of free subscriber conversions decreased, the number of paying subscribers increased.
Dave explained further why businesses using freemium models need to go to the effort of utilizing full funnel CRO. “When you’re working in the world of freemium and how you optimize there, the great thing with CRO is that all the principles are the same — it just gets harder to measure, and in some cases, harder to actually physically make the changes. But it’s where people tend to get some of the bigger results when you start optimizing beyond just visit to trial, or visit to initial subscription, or whatever that is that happens on the website.”
Full Transcript From the Interview
David Vogelpohl
Hello everyone, and welcome to Growth Stage a podcast by FastSpring, focused on how SaaS and digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products, and increase the value of their business. I’m David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community as part of my role at FastSpring. And I love to bring the best of the community to you here as co-host of the Growth Stage Podcast. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about why you need full funnel conversion rate optimization, FULL FUNNEL all caps, right now. And joining us for that conversation, I’d like to welcome to Growth Stage, Mr. Dave Gowans. Dave, welcome.
Dave Gowans
Thank you for having me.
David Vogelpohl
Excellent. So glad to have you here. Did I butcher your name? Was that pretty good?
Dave Gowans
Better than most, you got it bang on.
David Vogelpohl
Excellent. Excellent. Well us Vogelpohls don’t know much about people mispronouncing our names. Thank you for bearing with me. But for those who are curious what Dave’s going to be talking about today are his thoughts on what full funnel CRO or “cro” means. What are the main areas to focus on, how to prioritize those areas, and how to effectively manage your KPIs so you make the right decisions at the right time. These are topics I really love, and I’m really looking forward to digging in. But Dave, before we dig in, I’m going to ask you the same question I asked every guest here on Growth Stage. What was the first thing you bought online?
Dave Gowans
This was the hardest thing. I’ve been thinking about this. It was a long time ago, back in the 90s, I think, early online, but I think the interesting thing was, it wasn’t something traditional. So I was a teenager then. So it wasn’t with my credit card. But I think weirdly, the first thing I actually bought online was a holiday. I was… my dad had spent a very long time planning out, you know, traditionally brochures, that sort of thing, he planned out a big trip over to the east coast of the US. And just before he booked it, I went onto this new site called Expedia and found the whole thing better and cheaper. I then spent a very long time trying to convince him that it was safe to put in the credit card details and buy the whole family holiday online. But with the simple premise that it’s Microsoft, so you’ve got to trust it. And yeah, that was probably my first experience of trying to convince people to buy online as well. So yeah, weirdly, I think it wasn’t something simple like a book. But it makes for a good story, if nothing else.
David Vogelpohl
Well, that’s a great example of such a transition there. As people started booking travel online. My very first vacation was planned with a travel agent, and of course later moved to online. But that’s such a… I could see where that would leave an imprint. And I also could see where it would be hard to remember. Thanks for sharing that sounds really cool. Hopefully you enjoyed the trip.
Dave Gowans
Oh, yeah.
David Vogelpohl
Excellent. So can you tell me a little bit more about what Browser to Buyer does and what your role there is?
Dave Gowans
Yeah, absolutely. So we are a data driven CRO agency that I founded the company and I run the company founded it back in 2016. Having done a lot of conversion optimization, for many big brands, in the years running up to that. But as a as a business, what we try to do is really use data and research to understand fundamentally what it is that stops someone from converting and as I’m sure we’ll get on to throughout the podcasts, converting could be one of many things, whether that’s starting a trial, or inquiring or buying, subscribing, renewing all those sorts of things. But really, fundamentally, what we do is really simple. We, you know, we look at what the data tells us about why people don’t buy or convert. And then we run tests, we run split tests, A/B tests, to try out different methods of of improving that. And overcoming those problems, which is great, because the thing I love about testing is we can put numbers behind it and all opinions and everything put to one side. But I suppose wider than that. What we really try to do is we sort of have these two fundamentals that underlie that research what we do, which is what we call barriers and motivators. So a barrier is anything that would stop you from buying, subscribing starting a trial. And the idea is we get that from the user. You know, we really use data to find that out because, you know, it could be something like the price it could be a concern, you know, is this solution right for me? Could be a usability thing on the site whatever that is, you know, everyone’s got a million opinions on that. So we try and use the data to understand that. But we also want to look at the flip side, you know, it’s not just about what’s stopping someone from converting, it’s what would make them more likely to so whether that might be again, you know, you’ve got great customer services or great Trustpilot score or something. Or what is it about your product or service that the users say in their own words they love. And what we do is by, you know, by overcoming those barriers by promoting those motivators, that’s how we get very significant increases in the conversion rate, because, you know, we’re doing what the users want. And again, it’s one of the things it’s complex to do. But one of the things I love is really all I’m doing is finding out from the users what they want, and, and then doing the right things for them. But…
David Vogelpohl
Sounds like, I was gonna say it sounds like you all have a very kind of, full approach to CRO. And so I think I’m really interested to hear your deeper thoughts on like, full funnel and what that means. It’s always such an interesting part of marketing. And I think that word “full funnel” is such a loaded word. But what is your role at Browser to Buyer? You founded it I think, is what you said?
Dave Gowans
I’m the founder, I’m the CEO. It means that I do a lot of looking at websites, consultancy, we have a great team of consultants, designers, developers, analysts who do a lot of the work but day to day I spend time running the team and I also spend time really getting into detail on some of our clients websites. You know, I still, I still do the real optimization myself, which is always great fun.
David Vogelpohl
Excellent. I operated an agency’s… CRO was part of our focus, but I do remember those days and getting deep and all the fun we had with clients. I’m sure that’s quite an adventure. So the most controversial question I’m going to ask you today is, is it CRO or cro?
Dave Gowans
I like CRO, cro sounds too much like a bird to me. But…
David Vogelpohl
I noticed that cro has gained a lot of popularity, as a maybe an old school Digital Marketer, I came out the SEO world. I gravitated to CRO but it’s kind of a funny question. But let’s talk about more about what cro means. And in particular, or CRO means, but in particular, what full funnel CRO mean to you like what is what is it full funnel?
Dave Gowans
I think that’s where it gets very challenging, particularly in the SaaS and the subscription world. One of the biggest challenges I think that it faces when you come to what is the funnel is that in truth, you know, it is the entire customer relationship, in the reality of what usually it means with CRO and what it usually means with web is it’s whatever we can do on the website, which is which is the challenge, you know. So I tend to find that usually when you look at any sort of subscription business or any business where you know, it’s not just a very simple selling a product. The easiest and most straightforward bit of CRO to do is what you can do on the website. So let’s say for example, we’re optimizing from visitors coming on to them starting a trial. But the frustration is, of course, that that’s such an early part. And such a small part of the of the overall experience, the customer has, of course, that’s quite often for many companies that’s a very long way from when you actually get any money from them. So to me, at the very least full funnel should mean testing all the way through to whenever that plan, or that customer takes a subscription. So in the traditional Free Trial world, you know, we’ve got to take that experience in the free trial and optimize for it. And it was a great example, actually, quite a number of years ago, I was working with one of the online meeting providers long before COVID when everone used them. The interesting thing there was one of the things we found out through through sort of interviews and research was that the big thing that people valued about the product was the ability to record meetings. And it wasn’t something they said a lot about on the site. But we wanted to get it on there. We thought people liked it. So we put it on the signup form for the free trial. And I can’t remember the exact numbers, but it dropped the number of free trials that were starting. And if we took it on face value, what we’d optimized on the web, we would stop doing that. But when we actually looked at the subscription numbers, people were getting a lot more value out of their trial, they realized they had this feature, and the overall subscriptions were up. So you know, that was that was what really started me off on my process of we can’t just be looking at visit to trial as a metric. But when it comes to that full funnel optimization, you know, you’re optimizing people at different touch points within that experience, but to me that visit to subscription is the primary funnel I’d look at. But then there are all sorts of other areas where CRO does come in around things like cancellations, or renewals, or upsells, or you know, all those sorts of things. And yeah, we have in the past worked with a lot of companies that do things like freemium. So you know, when you’re working in the world of freemium, how do you optimize there, and the great thing with CRO is, all the principles are the same, it just gets harder to measure. And, in some cases, harder to actually physically make the changes. But it’s where people tend to get some of the bigger results when you start optimizing beyond just visit to trial, or visit to initial subscription, or whatever that is, sort of that happens on the website.
David Vogelpohl
So there’s kind of phases if you will, as I understand it. So the first would be, I’m going to measure visits to, I don’t know, trial or visits to subscription or sign up. And I’m going to measure that. But I’m not going to know if it ultimately resulted in revenue. And so as people develop their full funnel strategy, kind of what you’re saying is as you go further down that initial funnel, once you’ve got that in shape, you’re gonna then push on to look at other areas like upgrades, cancellations and renewals. Is that a fair way to summarize that?
Dave Gowans
Generally, yes, because we go for… When we’re looking at the work we do. I mean, of course, it’s backed by the data. But what we tend to look at is on a very simplistic, and there are very complex ways of looking at this, but the very simplistic because we like things that are intuitive and simpler, it’s simple to understand is impact against ease of anything we do, and you know, the impact of a change, there might be something you know, on renewals or something like that, that is, makes a very, very big impact. But from an ease point of view, starting at the beginning of the funnel is nearly always the easiest way to do it, you know, whether that’s working as a external agency and building the confidence, but also, you know, whether you’re building it within your own business or within your sort of marketing function it’s going be a lot easier to start at the beginning. And then you get quicker wins, and you get the benefits earlier.
David Vogelpohl
Yeah, that matter of control is so interesting, because earlier, you said there’s the truth. And then I forgot what you framed the other one as, let’s see what my notes here… the truth and the reality. And I think that was how you framed it. But my point is that there’s certain systems you can control. And so as you’re thinking about optimizing the business, in order to run CRO on cancellations, upgrades and renewals, you often have to engage with product and engineering groups is that kind of where you’re getting at is that the front end is usually controlled by marketing, and it’s harder to make changes on the back end?
Dave Gowans
That tends to be the experience. Yeah, and I think, you know, it depends where you are, on the cycle and where you are, I guess, as a business, you know, a lot of businesses are building new products now, building in A/B testing and feature toggles and feature switches and things like that, from scratch, and that’s, you know, that’s great, because that does make that easier, but a lot of what we do as well is looking at how can we do, for example, what we term as a painted door test or something? And how do we evaluate a concept, if we can’t test it in those sorts of cases? So you know, for example, with a VPN we worked with, you know, we wanted to do a lot of work with them, because they had a massive, massive free user base, you know, what could we do to monetize that base more? So we used a lot of the learnings that we got from the website, you know, the surveys, we’d run on the website, the analytics, we’d run on the website, and then the same concepts, they actually had part of the product where they could push, just marketing messages in, you know, it was, it was little pop ups. And yeah, that’s not, that wouldn’t be how we would aim to do that from a starting point. But what we realized was, you know, that was a very effective way to just push in certain messages and start to test that what sort of offers work well, you know, and in that case, you can actually you can send them off to a you know, a website to complete the transaction or something like that or for more information. You don’t have to build it into the product and the same sort of thing you know, again, with a…
David Vogelpohl
Yeah I know a lot of teams will use Pendo for that right? They’ll leverage, like a Pendo pop up to get that upgrade or type CRO type messaging into a product is that’s intention, right is like who controls the system? What is their time availability? And for marketing groups who are ones often thinking about specific ways to grow versus strategic ways like say, a product group, you know, that can be challenging to be able to make those moves. Let’s get a little bit more specific though. Maybe we start on the front end. Let’s start with a website. How do you think about CRO there? Like, what are your… and I get that there’s like all kinds of techniques you use and things like that. But like, what is the fundamental principle you’re solving for when you approach CRO on the front end.
Dave Gowans
So on the front end is really about trying to understand, I suppose three things, is sort of where the user comes from, what they’re trying to achieve, and then the route they take to get there. And then, once we’ve understood that, we can really understand how to influence some of the different times. So you know, there’s going to be… I mean, again, for lots of subscription products, one of the big challenges you have on the website is 90% of your traffic, are existing customers, they’re logging in, they’re never going to buy from you. So immediately that skews everything you do, because 90% of traffic is never going to buy, because they already have. So you know, then you’re starting to look at, you know, what are the landing pages? What are the routes, people are coming in? What you know, are they’re coming onto the homepage? And then it’s about understanding. How do you get them from there, to whatever it is you’re doing, you want them to do, and that then starts to vary. You’ve got the different customer journeys. So for example, you know, you’ve got, perhaps affiliates that are sending in traffic that drops straight onto your pricing page or straight onto your order page, you just need to convert those users. You’ve got people who are coming in on some sort of general search term, onto the homepage or something, you know, in that case, they know very little, and you’re, I think one of the challenges is thinking about qualifying those users. And I guess it comes back to full funnel and value of trials. But at the early stage, you know, it’s all very well to start pushing people towards a trial or subscription. But what we’re finding more and more, and what we found recently, with a technology business we were working with was, it was some ridiculously small number, like it was less than 3% of users ever saw any price. You know, it’s all very well, I’m sending them to a free trial. But if you’ve never seen pricing, you have no idea if this product is $1,000 a month or $5 a month. And weirdly, when it comes to subscriptions, sometimes what we’re doing is putting things in the user’s way, because we want to force them through what I want to tell you this information and this information before you get there. But yeah, it is very much about using that data and research and understanding those barriers, and then finding where those dropout points are. And then trying to get the right messages in front of the right people at the right time. And, you know, that sounds like a sort of very big complex problem, as you start to work through it. It turns into a structured thing. And you know, you can say on this particular landing page, we know users want to do this, we know the concerns of users who want to do this, or that, you know, I want to use this product to achieve this goal. What’s the messaging we need to do there? So, you know, I think that one of the traps that people tend to fall into, especially with with the website optimization is that quite often, people want to make big changes really big, you know, redesign the landing page, try out a new funnel were quite often it’s something like a new headline, or just adding a new element into the page, putting in a pricing table linked to the price that can make the really big differences and…
David Vogelpohl
It sounds like from the like high level pillars, though. I really like how you touched on that you first think about where visitors come from like that context is so important. I can’t review a web page if the person doesn’t tell me who the audience is. What did they read right before they read this web page? And I think I’m glad you pointed that out. I also liked how you kind of focused in on understanding what that visitor, specific visitor, is trying to achieve. And the route to get them there. The example you gave, the pricing page affiliate drop rings home to me, I remember a course provider affiliate who is advising their students to use the product that I was representing. And in the video, she said, go to their pricing page, don’t read anything, scroll down and click on this one button. And so we made her a special page for that. But, you know, to your point, like not every visitor is the same and I think that’s a great way to think about it. So you have identified where they’re coming from you identified what they’re trying to achieve. And you’ve given them a route to get there. Now as a payment platform here at FastSpring I’m just curious. Have you ever done CRO on payments or maybe as it relates to free trials is that an area it sounded like that you consider you know, full funnel?
Dave Gowans
Yeah, no, absolutely and it… I think payments and trials and… it’s an interesting area because for some people, payments are really straightforward. And if it’s done well, payments are really straightforward. There are so many good approaches now. And you know, people are getting much, much better than they did back in the days when I was booking holidays on Expedia and things like that where, you know, it was the Wild West and things weren’t encrypted and all those sort of things. You know, I think there’s a lot less concern people have about the physical process of doing the payments, but there is so much opportunity to do it badly. Or to, you know, what you have to remember at the point that people are making that subscription. Yeah, there’s so many things that are going through their head at that point. Some of them will relate to the practicalities of doing the subscription and making the payments. And you know, if something fails, or they don’t know what information to put in, or, you know…
David Vogelpohl
It could be more like when do I charge? Do I ask for the payment information on the same screen that I asked for, like the user information? Again, I guess the mechanics of payments, it’s like, if it’s good, it’s good, do it right? How do you think about that dance, though, between when I’m asking for the money versus when I’m asking for other kinds of information?
Dave Gowans
Yeah. And that is one of… it’s a fascinating thing to test, you know, it’s very, it’s great fun when someone actually has the ability to move that around on their site and we can do it because it’s so interesting, when I suppose from the absolute core level, there is the that real friction between the credit card trial and the free trial, you know, the credit, no credit card trial, and I’ve done this with many clients. And I know that sometimes you really need to get a credit card upfront, do the free trial afterwards, that has a lot of challenges. And then equally, it’s when you know, getting those payment details later in the process, you know, can also be challenging, because you end up with loads of low value trials. But I think the interesting thing is, what we tend to find is the point that you take the payment is that point where it sort of hits home, that’s the piece of information, that’s when you make that commitment. Now, it really depends on what your product or service is, as to when the best time to ask for that payment is. But what I would tend to say is, it’s a friction between making it as easy as possible for the user, but also asking them for that payment at the point where it means a lot to them. So I guess what I mean by that is, you know, if you’re doing something like let’s say, for example, you’re Asana or a Monday.com, if you ask for payment information up front, that’s going to be quite challenging, because people are still wondering, I don’t know if this is right for them, if you put them through your 14 day free trial, and then they’ve put so much time and effort into the product, and then you take the payment, that’s probably more likely to go through at that point. Whereas, you know, there are some things where I’ve got an immediate need for this. That’s a sense of urgency. You know, let’s say, I’ve got some videos I want to publish online, you know, I need to get that going well, 14 day free trial is great. But as I’m so motivated the moment maybe that’s the time to take payment right at the beginning of the trial. So it’s a difficult one it… and I think different subscriptions and different products, users are more or less bothered about that, that payments and things like that. You know, we we’ve done a lot with, you know, what pricing packages and things but you know, challenges around things like risk free trials and money back guarantees. And you know, we found in many cases where you can’t necessarily… where it’s not the right thing to do that no credit card free trial. Maybe you can do a credit card, but call it a risk free guarantee or something like that. But it sounds like it’s, you know, it’s a free trial and things like that. So it is one of the most challenging things. And one of the really hard things to test, I guess, as well, which is…
David Vogelpohl
Yeah, and I want to kind of get back to that. It’s like a theme that’s emerged, as we’ve talked is like this, this idea that, you know, I have access and can or it is reasonable or able to edit certain systems in order to try to improve the funnel. I don’t know if maybe you had more experience in this in your like in house brand days. I don’t know if you go this deep with your clients, but how should brands think about like, well, when it… maybe that answer is not good enough? Maybe our upgrade funnel should change over time. Maybe we should A/B test our add ons page in our portal. How should brands think about like, is that worth it or not?
Dave Gowans
I think it definitely is worth it. It’s a challenging step to take. And that’s that’s where I think it’s very difficult with CRO and when it comes to the full funnel, because as I think you said earlier it comes… it tends to come from marketing function on the website, how can we generate more trials? How can we generate more subscriptions, and that’s usually the driver. But the interesting thing is, you know, to almost everyone you talk to whether it’s in house, or you know, as a, as an external agency, there’s an enormous debt backlog. Everybody has a debt backlog, nobody can get what they want prioritized. And one of the things I tend to say, when it’s a website is, you know, well, it’s great, we’ve tested it, we know the value of that. And I think if you can get into your debt backlog starting to build out, you know, even if it’s simple feature switches, or, you know, a lot of the big A/B testing platforms now are offering SDKs, that you can pull in as part of the application that allow you to trigger and measure changes in the application. So at least then, when you’re asking developers to build something, if we can build it… if you can build it in a way that is easily A/B tested, or easily edited… And, you know, again, it depends, did you build you know, is it… have you got a really modular, great structure or not to your system? You know, I think that’s so powerful, because I’m not sure I’ve ever spoken to someone in an organization who doesn’t want to be driven by data. So there is a lot of value in putting that effort in, to be able to test all those things. But it is difficult, because if you want, everybody wants to test everything, and it’s not as easy as just moving things around on a website and stuff like that, but you know, I mean, if I was advising someone on, where do you enable those things, I think like you were saying, there’s the possibility of building those sort of hooks or using SDKs and plugins that say, here’s a part of the site, or here’s a part of the app that is testable. Or you can send people out to complete purchases or upgrades elsewhere. But also, you know, things like upgrades, screens, pricing screens, anywhere where someone’s making a decision. And that’s what we did when we worked in app with the VPN was it was the, the paywalls, the upgrade screen. So those were the ones we were saying, you know, you need to put the effort in to build out multiple variations of that. And then you know, and test it, because that’s where the real value is. So you can cut down the overhead, I guess, and the complexity of making everything testable. If you think about certain parts of the product as well, this is like a website, this is something we’re going to want to test. But you know, it’s the same as well, you know, when you’re putting together plans and pricing, you know, again, having multiple… the ability to offer lots of different plans and building that capability in early within within the application. Because testing plans and pricing is that’s that’s huge.
David Vogelpohl
Yeah, especially if you have a really popular brand, where people are familiar with it and talk to each other like that kind of thing. But it’s been really interesting over the years you know watching CRO emerge, and then later watching product led growth, or PLG, emerge. I think there’s all these different philosophies at play there. And I feel like in the CRO world, it’s very clear cut, we’re going to say something different, we’re going to measure it or give deliver a different experience. And the winner is the winner. And we’re going to walk in assuming we don’t really know the answer. In the product world, that’s actually not the approach, it’s I’m going to research I’m going to understand I’m going to invent something and then people will like it. And I think the PLG philosophy also embraces the idea that and the user is going to do that all on their own. And so I found that where the CRO world and the PLG world. I don’t think they fully overlapped yet, but I think there’s tremendous opportunity for that. But I think the thing that gets product orgs motivated, is when you remind them that if people upgrade in the app, that will increase your net retention, revenue retention, which can exponentially increase the value of their business. But I do think this is a journey everyone’s on. And I’m glad to hear about some of the tooling you have been able to take advantage of. I know Pendo is kind of a shortcut for some folks or in app pop ups. It’s really interesting to think about that from the full funnel perspective. You mentioned a minute ago talking a little bit about subscriptions, renewals, I think maybe even mentioned cancellations. Have you been able to attack that in any great depth with your clients or in the past? Like how do you think of CRO on the back end?
Dave Gowans
Yeah, that is challenging because, depending again, on the product or the service, you don’t necessarily get a good touch point with the user. We haven’t been able to do a lot around renewals specifically. You know, again, that’s more of a sort of product analytics part of is this person likely to renew. But equally you do have routes to the customer you know, is that when you start reminding them of things by email, or in product, pop ups of things that are important to you, and you’re making sure that they’re reminded of what they might lose. And I think that’s when it comes down to the renewal or more the cancellation side of things, you know, cancellations are fascinating. And I think, you know, what most subscription businesses do pretty well is that they will ask, why. Why aren’t you renewing? And they will do a pretty good job, quite often, of capturing those users back but I think, again, it’s all those same principles apply. And I think they perhaps get forgotten.
David Vogelpohl
Would you say that those are CRO principles in reverse, though, because you’re trying to convince a user to not take an action would this be unconversion rate optimisation?
Dave Gowans
I like the term unconversion rate. Yeah, but I think I think it very much is, but all the ways that you think about that user, and what they’re doing, you know, I mean, if I was to flip it around again, and say, you know, when a user is trying to subscribe 99% of the time, the first thing they’ll say is, you know, it’s too expensive. I’m worried about the price. And that’s often the same reason they say they’re canceling is it’s too expensive. Why is it too expensive? You know is it actually that you physically can’t afford this? In which case, you know, do we want to give you a great, cheaper offer to keep you and extend that lifetime value?
David Vogelpohl
You ask the question, but then you don’t offer an alternative. They’re like, it’s too expensive. You’re like, thanks for letting us know.
Dave Gowans
It was great knowing you. Yeah.
David Vogelpohl
Now, yeah, you should give him like a downgrade option, or put your subscription on pause or something like that.
Dave Gowans
Exactly. Yeah. And I’ve had some very good, I mean, there was one audio service I, I really didn’t need it anymore. And I nearly subscribed for three years, just because, you know, it was such a good deal. But equally, it could be that user thinks it’s too expensive, because they’re not using it correctly, or they’re not, you know, they’ve missed out on a feature. So it could be that if you’ve got great product analytics behind it, and you know, from your product analytics, that users of this feature are your most valuable, you know, if the person isn’t using that, maybe we introduced them to it, maybe we mentioned it, you know, maybe it’s these are all the things you’ll miss when you’re downgrading.
David Vogelpohl
Yeah, you’re adding functionality, now we’re going to detect that they haven’t used it, and then surface, they should try it out. I love this.
Dave Gowans
We did a it was a very simple one because it wasn’t in product. But we did one on deletion of Chrome extension. And it was that sort of thing is like,
David Vogelpohl
This was the VPN one I guess?
Dave Gowans
This was the VPN yeah. But you know, we asked them, we asked a question, I think, you know, things like, you know, why are you leaving. It was things like I can’t access the sites that I want to or, you know, streaming doesn’t work for me. And it was a great opportunity, because it’s like, streaming doesn’t work for you? Well, that’s because you didn’t buy the premium price. You need to buy the premium, but it’s the same sort of thing. You know, okay, if your connections not working well did we pass you on to support? Or can we offer you some sort of discount or, you know, there’s so many areas around that, you know, can be done there. We do the surveys, and we try and address it, but capturing the user at that point, you will lose this, do you want an extra week? All those sorts of things can work really well. But you have to know what, again, it comes back to a bit like that first example with the with the recordings. You know, if you know that meeting recordings are important, and you’re going to the downgraded plan, you’re going to lose meeting recordings, and you used that 56 times in the last year. Are you really sure about this? You know, it gives you that opportunity, but it’s quite complex to do.
David Vogelpohl
I can also see where like as like a true startup, like very few customers, it’s not worth the trouble, right? Because you’re not saving enough. But, if you’re big it becomes increasingly more important. And then of course, the bigger you get, the more you’ve maximized your existing channels, so it’s harder to grow. So you need that growth from your baseline customers to get that, you know, over 100% Net Revenue retention. Okay, I could nerd out on that forever. To round us out here. What would you say is the most consistent CRO tactic you use? And it can be at any part of the funnel or it could be like a philosophy that goes all the way through but what’s the most consistent CRO tactic you use that works?
Dave Gowans
As a tactic, weirdly, there’s so two things. I think one is a research technique, which has given me the most valuable information that has made the biggest difference and my single favorite thing to do is to when the user has subscribed or started that trial or whatever, on that thank you page, put a box on there and say a question like, was there anything that almost stopped you from subscribing today? Or did anything nearly stop you from signing up today? And it’s amazing because you don’t harm the conversion, rate. Because it’s happening after whatever the conversion is you’re measuring to, and you can just leave it running forever. And with so many of our clients, you know, you’ve got this like list every day, more and more feedback coming in. And okay, these are the people who did convert, but they’re saying the things that had concerned them. So from a sort of understanding the customer point of view, that’s the biggest thing for me, from a actual effective test point of view, one of the biggest things that I think nearly always works is to do some sort of survey to understand sort of how people talk about your product, what sort of terminology they use, and then reflect it back to them on the site. I mean, I think SaaS businesses, subscription businesses are particularly bad at having vague waffly headlines on their homepage and things like that. And, you know, some of the biggest results we’ve had is just by taking that right back to basics and saying: This is what this product does. This is what this service does. And ideally using the words that your customers would term. So again, in the VPN space, they might use a particular term for, you know, do they want to protect themselves? Or do they want to access data in you know, that’s blocked to them avoid blocks?
David Vogelpohl
Maybe they want to go on a holiday instead of a vacation,
Dave Gowans
Holiday, whatever that term is they’re using, just reflecting back to them exactly. They’ve worked really, really well. And again, it’s one of those simple ones. It’s a headline test, you know, it’s not we’re not having to rebuild the entire product to do A/B testing, but it affects you right down the funnel. So I think those that research and those that sort of technique are two of the biggest ones that work very well.
David Vogelpohl
Well, I love how both of your examples were you seeking to understand. I feel like that’s so critical to CRO and as I always say, lead with your ears. So that’s a great tip to end on. Well, Dave, thank you so much this was very interesting. Thank you for joining us today.
Dave Gowans
It’s been an absolute pleasure.
David Vogelpohl
Excellent, excellent. Well, if you’d like to learn more about what Dave is up to visit BrowserToBuyer.com Thanks, everyone for joining us on the Growth Stage Podcast. If you’d like to learn more about how FastSpring can help you sell digital products globally, automatically stay tax compliant, and keep your focus on your products, visit FastSpring.com. Thanks, everyone!
Click here to try out the FastSpring platform yourself, or request a demo.
