New 30 Day Trials

[doneritehosting]

LMAO.... I know yav, Just trying to give everyone a chuckle among the serious explanations. Its a pity, but the world is what it is these days on a more serious note.

[Guest]

Thank you for your replies and thanks to yav0r to make it clear.

Taking into account all this info I have some suggestions which I believe they may be useful (yav0r could you address them to the people in your team who are responsible for the development, please?). Maybe other resellers have more ideas or better solution to my ideas, so lets add them here to help to the developers

Before I start to write my ideas I would like to say I fully understand how does the things work and why (at least I believe I understand it ). These ideas are particularly about the usability so I will write not like a reseller, but from the point of view of a potential client.

Some explanation why the clients should pay for the domain

I got some trial signups so I can see now exactly how does it work from the point of view of the client (btw. for some reason why I created a test account "justtesting" the system did not ask me to pay for the domain, but as I can see in the accounts of my trial clients it works exactly as explained by yav0r). But back to the point. I offer a free domain with web hosting plan. When an user signs up for a free trial, the first thing he is asked to do is to pay for the domain. I understand the reasons why it is done this way, but from the point of view of the client it can be seen as a marketing trick - he may think "they promised FREE domain and FREE trial and now I should pay for the domain". So I suggest to explain it to the clients a little.

Also, if I was a client, my first question would be: If I pay for the domain (which was promised to be free), after the trial period will be the price of the domain deducted from the price of the web hosting plan? So it would be great to answer this question e. g. in the welcome email or in the message which appears in the control panel.

Possibility for the resellers to decide if the want to offer free 30 day trial or not

It would be great to have this option in the resellers control panel. I can imagine that depending on the marketing of the particular reseller the free trial may be or may be not a good option.

Btw. would it be possible to add the latest version of the order form script (the one before introducing the free trial) for API users to the resellers control panel? I mean the latest version which forced the clients to make the payment immediately during the signup. It would be an easy way how to allow us to test both options and decide which one works better for every of us.

Removing the temporary URL from the welcome email

When I created my account for testing the free trial feature, this was in my welcome email:
To access your site until the DNS update completes use this URL: http://justtesting.us.tempcloudsite.com

As these temporary subdomains don't work, I would remove this part from the welcome email to avoid confusing the clients.

[BoingBoingBoing]

webhostingtoplist's idea on the domain name is great. Much better than what I suggested. Hope that gets implemented so people don't feel tricked. I really like the 30 day trial since that's what got me to sign up for Netflix in the first place.

[BoingBoingBoing]

I think adding a notice saying "You won't be able to proceed with the trial until you pay for the domain name" on the sign up page (if they attempt to register) would be great too.

Thanks for the hard work as always!

[vrepub]

Seems like the best option as of right now (as far as the free domain promo is concerned) is to not offer free domains at all.
From a prospective customer's point of view, I would never want to register a domain with a hosting company before I was sure I wanted to host with them.

[maxa]

I suggest there should be a payment link in the Welcome email.

Also, the email confirmation link should bring the client to an immediate "Thanks, your email is confirmed". Now it only brings you to the login page.

[index.html]

How is everyone finding account signups since the introduction of the free trials?

I have had 17 over 8 weeks after running some ads online - but no paid conversions to date. [although not all trial periods have ended yet]

Nearly all seem to have been created with fictitious names and addresses and gmail accounts.

Anyone getting a better conversion rate - or are we just attracting a new form of spam?



UPDATE:

Received a total of 24 free trial signups over 12 weeks of advertising the free trial accounts online.

22 Actives - 2 Blocked

Not one paid after the 30 day free trial - all now expired accounts