Get MASSIVE Results with These 9 Simple Tiny A/B Testing Hacks!

So, I've got I've This is my third year in a row speaking at this amazing event by James and Emily and the rest of the team. So, kudos to you guys for putting this together, but I'm going to talk about the little tiny little 5-minute changes you can make that you'll see some massive results. All right. So, this is very interactive. All right, that's how I like to do it. Honestly, Emily forced me to have games. So, we're going to play game. And I'm going to start off with something easy for you guys. If we don't have enough partici- participation, James said drinks are off.

All right, so let's try it. We got A, Harry Styles. Everybody knows Harry Styles. And we got B, James D'Amore. Now, who do you think is cooler? Who thinks it's A? Who thinks it's B? Come on, everybody. Yes, okay, thank you. It is B, James. I was going to put two XRY, but you know what, I'm going to give you more. I'm going to give you more. But, when it comes with Idris Elba, well, James, you lose there. I'm sorry, bro.

All right, let's get into it. So, I was born in Burma, Myanmar, and for those who are familiar with that country, don't worry, I got you. It's right here, underneath China, east of India, a little bit above Thailand. Came here to the states in California when I was 6 years old. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I grew up in the Bay Area. Got to raise millions of dollars, sell for billions of dollars. That was my philosophy. Until I was like, I love listening to podcasts as well, and I started hearing more lifestyle entrepreneurs. Be an entrepreneur, hang out with your kids, spend some time with your wife. I like sign me up for that. I like that. So, I started a podcast back in 2013, right here. This is my very first studio.

Trying to take the side business I had built in 2011 to see if I can become that entrepreneur that I dreamt to be. Live the American dream, my idea. So, did that, interviewed a lot of people that really admire in the space. Co-founder Shazam, creator of Crossy Road, all the guys, Sylvain from Growth Gems, second guest ever, yo. That's what I'm talking about. All right, so we've done a lot of things, we worked a lot of big clients, and we've got a great YouTube channel.

So, that's what I'll say. And I what I like Here's Sylvain, look at that. Look at these young chaps. So, I like to build relationships, and I think that's why we all come, build relationships, don't burn bridges, and that's how I've built the entire business, built on people's knowledge sharing with the community, and then the community coming to me and being like, "Steve, can you help me with the app launch?" So, I was like, "Okay, great." So, we have an agency, 20 people strong, but you don't care about that. So, let's get into these tests. All right, I'm going to go quick on some of these because frankly you should know some of these already.

All right. on onboarding, I still see some apps not doing this. You definitely want to do it. I'm not going to make you play this game, but you will get more sales if you put your paywall during the onboarding experience. We looked at a few apps yesterday, and they still didn't have it. So, definitely do that. And I'm going to give you some examples. Again, I'm going to skip over these cuz you should know this already. All right.

Because the onboarding happens anywhere from 60 to 80% of all the people who buy buy during your onboarding experience. And the second most is your home page of your app. So, master segway as I am, let's talk about your home page. All right, really want to pay attention to the call to actions on your home page. Now, I'm going to ask, hopefully you got your arms loosened up. Who do you think what won, the star or the crown? Who thinks it's the star? eh?

All right, I played this too many times. What about B? All right, thank you. You guys are all right. 57% increase in tip through rates. Now, obviously, you make more money as more people see your paywall as they're given the opportunity to give you money. You will make money more money. So, you want to have your homepage lead to your paywall. Now, discounts, I believe in discounts and I think there are some clever ways to do it. Again, back to my stat.

Homepage onboarding. So, I'm going to focus on the onboarding and why discounts are so important. Obviously, discounts work. We all love them. 77% Hannah was right on that webinar. 77% of your daily active users will be lost within the first 3 days. All right, that's why I want to be aggressive. We had a client 5 million monthly active users, 1 million organic downloads. They did not have their paywall on their onboarding.

When they added it, guess what happened? More sales and more retention. The people who pay pay attention. That's my viewpoint, okay? Till somebody else proves me wrong. 6 days before an app user ultimately leaves your app. We They don't care about us. You don't care about me. You care about you. All right, oops, I gave that away. All right. Here Here it is. Here's an AB test we ran. So, instead of just showing a 50% Oh my god, 50% discount, we did pay what you want.

So, pay 50% is still on the far left, but this works better. When you let users sort of control the discount. So, if you're going to do discounting, do it this way. And thank you later. Okay, sorry. I'll go back to Resa. Did you get it? All right. So, here's the interesting part and I wanted to show one of our clients is doing this. I know it's not a whole lot of sales for their discount right here, but it is working. So you can see that not everybody just selects the lowest price either.

Interesting, right? Right, sir? Interesting. All right, here's some other ways to do discount. Headway one of my favorite examples. Long onboarding, you get to the paywall on the onboarding, you say no on their homepage, they're like have a discount. Again, here's more of a timed and content gating. So I picked a book that I really wanted to read and I said I don't want to read it that bad because it's What is it? $60 $90 a year. I don't want to read it that bad. So I hit X and like wait, wait, Steve, come back. Here's 70% off.

I talked to Yev from Headway. He said it works, right? You're really just trying to get people who already said no to hopefully say yes. All right, now let's talk about the paywalls. The main page, really. All right, now we'll play some games. I got used to this clicker. A? Who thinks it's A? The difference is the photo versus an illustration. Who thinks it's A? That one. Thank you, Marcus. Good to see you. All right, what do you think? Who thinks it's B? Just a little illustration.

Olivia, what are you a graphic designer? No, it's A. People win. In fact, sometimes video will do better on your paywall. This is a I still go live on YouTube on the podcast every Friday. So if you guys aren't going to be I'll be there tomorrow. Tune in. All right, so we saw one of the guests I had, 3.5% on this paywall, added the photo 4.7, added the video went up to 6.8. Don't believe me, here's the other chart to prove it.

All right, now let's talk about the number of plans that you should have on your paywall. Now that you kind of figured out, all right, photo works, let's talk about the number of plans. Adapti put this report together. Great report, three plans work better than two, two plans work better than one. Great report, but is it true in practice? Let's figure it out. Everybody loves this paywall. If I see this paywall one more then I'll break it down though. Anybody from Blinkist? All right, here we go.

Everybody knows it, right? Blinkist, we solved this massive pain problem. People wanting to cancel, forgetting to cancel, asking for refunds. Let's just put it up there. We're going to send you a reminder before it happens. So, I said, "All right, are two plans seriously better than one?" Here's all you do. If you all plans, you get this pop up. Let's put it to the test. One of my clients, same freaking paywall, right?

Let's change view all plans to or $3.99 a month. That was his pricing. Since you guys don't get the fancy red thing, let's go to this side. All right, who do you think won? A, view all plans? Good. Now you've been paying attention. B? Everybody should have their hands up. It is B, cuz two plans are better than one. Same functionality, different text, led to a 31% improvement in conversion rates. Now since you guys are so thirsty for this paywall, let me give you another example, all right?

I love this by RestMe. They were a past podcast guest. They got a 20 This is all public, by the way. I'm not sharing any inside secrets. They've got a 21% trial activation rate. So, I think this is the next best version, doing it in three. And when I was going through the flow by myself, I was like, "Man, this feels good, too." Cuz you're not bombarding the user all at once, like the previous photos. All right. Now, let's put this theory again. This is one of our bigger clients. They have A or B. Only difference, B does not have the monthly. Why doesn't have it the monthly? Because nobody was buying the stinking monthly. Which one do you think won? Who thinks it's A? Please raise your hands.

That's it. Who do you think it's B? Brave souls, I love it. It is a 1. Guys, two plans are better than one, don't you remember? 1.5 sales with A. And they were like, let's remove it. They were like, hey, nobody buys the monthly, let's just remove it. Let's make it look cleaner, right? Killed their sales. That was a chart. All right, here's how I like to do it and I'll go kind of fast on this. Cheap plan, monthly, lowest LTV. I like to keep it that way.

Highest LTV, put the trial on that. Typically, especially for AI apps, weekly does pretty well. And then yearly does well pretty well for other apps as well. And then I have a decoy, you know, make all make my yearly look so attractive for the decoy. All right. I'm going to break this down, too. I didn't put letters cuz maybe I should have. But you guys get it, left and right, right? Okay. So, here's the main difference. This is one of our paywalls for one of our apps.

We've got A that just lists out the price, and we've got B that does not list out the yearly price. And I'll explain what I did, why I put this together. So, who do you think's A? You guys know which one's A, right? Without me putting A. All right, that was a test. Who do you think's A? Who thinks A won? Hands like, no way, no way. Who thinks B won? All right. It is A, 38% increase in conversions. Here's why I think. Instead of trying to make my yearly price look cheaper and be like, guys, it's only like $5 a month, please buy. I'm like, why don't we just take all the other freaking prices and make them into a yearly calculation. And so, when my client AB tested this, he put this or and then arrows. He saw a 38% increase. Now, another client tested this again, but compared all the monthlies.

Saw similar results. Yearly was slightly better if my memory serves me. So, the net ed of it all, do the math for your users. Let them know where the best offer is. I thought I was going to applause for one. All right, thank you. All right, there it is. There it is. All right, let's talk about hard or soft paywalls. For those who aren't familiar, hard paywall just means you got to buy or get the hell out of here. And the only difference between A and B is the X.

Yeah, see I see I see some smiles on this paywall. All right, who do you think Oh, All right, we saw two times more sales with a hard paywall versus a soft paywall. Now, I wouldn't suggest you do this. Long-term it might not be the right strategy, but just so you can have some proof, we this is the the data. It works for like niche apps. All right, niche apps, I think it works really really really well. If you got like a meditation app, a fitness fitness app definitely on that. But, the more niche you are, the better the conversion rate is. I just talked to a developer yesterday, they followed my advice, and then they like 10x their conversion rates by moving by moving the paywall to the onboarding experience, and then putting a hard paywall onto their niche app. All right.

As you can see, and the reason why I'm like, "Look, Calm technically doesn't like no free content." I mean, you can find it if you search around, but everything is locked up. So, All right. Now, if you don't want to be that aggressive, you're like, "Steve, that's too aggressive." I like putting X's on my phone or paywalls. All right, here's one thing you can do, all right? Here's one that I think it's Ling I forget. All right, Lingo, whatever, we'll figure it out. So, you hit view all plans, you get this paywall, and then you get this maybe later, then you can X out of this, too.

And now, I put this one in cuz it's Sal Vain's favorite. He's like, "Steve, I hope you put that slide in." I was like, "No problem, bro. I got you." So, this is their hard paywall zero. I love this app. I use it all the time. I use it every day. They got this interesting paywall. And if you you can't X out, so you just leave the app, right? But they do ask for push notifications early on the onboarding flow, and literally 5 minutes later, I don't know why I'm still up at 8:52, but I was, and so they said, "Hey, you can start using Zero for free. No subscription required. Come on in." And that's when the X magically appears when you tap on that push notification. And you can start using fasting for free.

All right, content gating. I'm almost done, I know. You guys are thirsty, want to get to the drinks or the awards. But content gating does work. The least the the things that you can lock up more, the better. One of my friends, I pulled this from ABtest.design, great resource, by the way. But I didn't want to share my clients, and they already had it, so I was like, same case study, different client, great. Let me use that. This one, they Busuu saw a 34% increase, but one of my friends out in the UK, he finally increased his conversions. He was stuck at a certain revenue rate for the longest time, helped him, and that was because we locked up more content, right? If you're going to give it away all for free, they're going to take everything for free.

All right. Now, here's an interesting one. So, the only difference here, let me just explain it. I won't make you guys play. Okay. So, here's what I've seen also work really well, too. Like, obviously, you're locking up more content, but when you when people activate a trial and start using your app, let them know that was still premium content. I hit the I'm going to try it one more time. So, I unlocked Calm, right?

Instead of removing locks, keep the locks. Do something to let them know this is actually premium content. Should help your retention rates. All right. That's it. Look at that. 15 minutes, huh? I'm sorry. Thank you. Check out the YouTube channel. You can just sign your Hold on the applause. Oh, fine. Give me the applause. I'll take it. Thanks, guys.