In-app card form vs sending users to the pricing page: page won
Commentary byLiftArchiveOur analysis, not theirsSending trial users to the full purchasing page when they hit a limit beat showing them a quick in-app credit card form.
Patrick McKenzie ran this test on Bingo Card Creator and published it on the Kalzumeus blog in 2012. The win was weak, at about 90% significance, and no numbers were shared.
- The purchasing page beat the in-app card form on purchases. This counts as a loss for the variant.
- The win was weak, at about 90% significance.
- No conversion rates or sample sizes were shared.
The change
An in-app card form replaces the trip to the purchasing page.
Simplified mockup drawn by LiftArchive from the shared screenshots.
Control
Trial users who hit a limit and chose to upgrade were sent to the purchasing page.
Variant
Those users saw a quick in-app credit card form instead of going to the purchasing page.
Why it likely lost
Our reading of the result, not the practitioner's claim.
- The purchasing page explains what users get, which the bare form likely skipped.
- The in-app form was a fast Bootstrap build, so its design may have hurt trust.
- The purchasing page offered all payment methods, which a card-only form may not have matched.
Caveats: The in-app form was built quickly with Bootstrap, so a polished version might do better. The win was only about 90% significant, no numbers were shared, and the data is from 2012.
Who ran it
Patrick McKenzie ran this test and published the results (Kalzumeus (patio11) blog). The numbers are theirs; the summary and commentary on this page are ours.
Read the original case study on Patrick McKenzie →
How to run this test on your site
- Hypothesis
- If we show trial users a payment form inside the app when they hit their limit, then more will upgrade because they don't have to leave what they are doing.
- Primary metric
- Upgrade purchases among users who hit the trial limit
- Guardrails
- Payment failure rate
- Refund rate
- Plan mix or average order value
- Who should test it
- SaaS products with usage-limited trials that prompt users to upgrade in the app. If your purchasing page does real selling work, a bare form may lose that, so design the in-app version with care.
Questions
Should SaaS upgrades happen inside the app?
Not always. In this test, sending users to the full purchasing page did slightly better than a quick in-app form.
Why might a pricing page beat an in-app checkout?
A pricing page can explain what users get and offer more ways to pay.
A bare form skips that and may feel less trustworthy if it is rough.
When should I prompt trial users to upgrade?
A natural moment is when they hit a usage limit.
That is when the value of paying is clearest.