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A bug saved the company

(weblog.rogueamoeba.com)
379 points ingve | 1 comments | 24 Aug 25 09:55 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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dlcarrier ◴[26 Aug 25 06:59 UTC] No.45023173[source]▶
So, letting people try it out it for two weeks prevented them from buying it? That doesn't reflect well on customer satisfaction.
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1. Ozzie_osman ◴[26 Aug 25 13:43 UTC] No.45026454[source]▶
It's more complicated than that. People have the highest intent for a product early on (ie, at the moment they sign up). That is when they are most likely to pay, and by paying, they make a commitment and invest the time to get value back out of the product.

A free trial gives them a chance to waffle, and usually by the end of the trial they have haven't put in the effort to decide they want to buy the product, so they don't. Paying earlier also creates a commitment bias.

I've seen this over and over again in products. You want to give people enough usage that they can have confidence the product is worth paying for, but not enough time that they waffle.