Pricing Page Optimagic – How to optimise your pricing page for growth
Elena Verna came to StartCon to give a talk about pricing page optimization, bringing her energy and insights to the topic as well as her experience from SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey is a company which offers a freemium service for those looking to survey users for all kinds of reasons, founded back in 1999. So it’s no surprise that Elena had a lot of insights to share.
You can watch Elena’s full keynote presentation and others with StartCon’s Digital Pass
Elena started with the big questions:
What does growth mean for you?
Elena runs Growth at SurveyMonkey. Her first point is that you have to decide what growth means for your company. For SurveyMonkey, it started off as product marketing, and now Elena focuses on billing and testing, along with the big buzzwords like SEM and SEO.
At the very top, Elena points out that everyone is here to make money. But whatever this is, Elena says “it is almost the final outcome”. Instead, Elena talks about identifying the levers you can use to move that growth.
Levers
SurveyMonkey is a subscription business, and that means they have three levers: new paid subscriptions, ARPU (average revenue per user), and retention. Elena’s talk about pricing page optimization focuses on the first lever: new paid subscriptions, which is partly driven by the exact pricing page new users encounter.
So now you know what these levers are, how can you move them? Elena summed it up with a simple graphic:
These are the KPIs, the key performance indicators. Are they important? Well, Elena says, “I wake up every morning and I look at these four KPIs every day. […] These four KPIs, we live and breathe by.”
Digging right down
From looking at growth to looking at the levers that drive it, Elena takes us down to the bottom level. “That is actually what you are going to pull,” she says. This is what you can directly affect in order to see a difference at the top line. She warns that bookings and revenues cannot be your KPIs – “If you actually see a movement in that, it’s too late.” You should be focusing on your conversion funnel.
The first thing is: who is seeing it? Your strategy should be tailored to the people viewing the pricing plan.
To dig into this idea, Elena looks at another big question. Do all pricing points convert equally? If not, why not? She gave an example of a page on SurveyMonkey.
When she asked the audience what they thought would garner most users, the majority answered “plans and pricing” or the “upgrade” button. But at SurveyMonkey, “plans and pricing” actually has the lowest conversion: “there’s really no intent to upgrade there, they just wanted to shop around and see what else is available.” However, she points out its importance as a discovery point.
The more people click through to that pricing page to look at it, the more likely they are to become a customer. So it’s important to have those conversion funnels in place, even if they only attract people to look at the pricing page. That’s an important step in conversion.
Elena digs into some of the things that make SurveyMonkey tick – the type of customers, how they reach the site, and what they’re looking for.
“Now you know who, it’s time to optimize”
What does AB testing mean? Elena starts with a hypothesis, a theory about the way people are using your site and what drives their engagement. Once you have that in place, you need to test it. A certain percentage of your users will see the original page, while another set of users will see a new version which you have designed to hopefully appeal to different people.
Elena’s most important point is this: she expects to see 50% failures in these AB tests. If not, you’re playing it too safe! “Call [the failures] learnings and celebrate them,” she explains.
Winning strategies
Elena finished by explaining some of the things that worked – or didn’t – at SurveyMonkey. One of her examples showcases the importance of positioning. For example, your most popular package should not be the most expensive – you should create an expensive premium option which only very engaged users will want. That makes the more desirable option look cheaper. It’s all about perception.
Even SurveyMonkey doesn’t get it right all the time. Elena also covers some things which didn’t work – including one she thought was a “gimme”.
But this is the point of AB testing. If even SurveyMonkey get it wrong sometimes – and view it as a learning opportunity – how much more can you get out of it?
Key takeaways:
· Figure out what growth means for your company. It won’t be the same as for SurveyMonkey or Uber or any other company.
· Understand the levers you can pull to stimulate growth. Again, it’s going to be unique to your company.
· AB testing is vital. You need to gather data on what works and what doesn’t – and you need to accept that when you fail, it’s a chance to learn.
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Actionable Growth Tactics for 2017
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Speakers include:
- Andrew Chen, Rider-Side Growth, UBER
- Jason Crusan, Director of Advanced Exploration Systems, NASA
- Elena Verna, SVP Growth, SurveyMonkey
- Nate Moch, VP Product Teams & Growth, Zillow
- Patrick Malatack, VP Product Management, Twilio
- Chandini Ammineni, Distribution Partner, 500 Startups
- Sean Ellis, Founder of Growth Hackers
- Christopher Lowe, Global Tech Media Specialist, Bloomberg
