Research recipe
Free Trial to Paid Conversion
The problem, in the customer's voice
What this recipe does
People sign up for the trial but never convert to a paid plan, and the team can't tell whether the product failed to prove its value or the upgrade moment failed to land. Analytics maps what trial users actually do, separating those who convert from those who drift, and session recordings show the early sessions where the difference takes shape. Win-loss analysis of the CRM adds the pattern across accounts that upgraded and accounts that lapsed. An end-of-trial survey quantifies the leading reasons for not converting, and interviews with expired trials explain the gap between what people expected and what they experienced. Together these separate a value problem from a pricing or timing problem, which point to very different fixes.
The method sequence
Explore
Map what trial users actually do, and watch the early sessions where converts and drifters diverge.
Focus
Quantify why trials lapse, and hear the expectation gap in users' own words.