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Prompt Qonto users to upgrade their pricing plan
Late 2021 early 2022, I joined Qonto’s design team as freelance product designer. I had the opportunity to collaborate with the Pricing feature team on a free trial project to enable Basic users to experience the Smart plan.
Qonto is the leading European business finance solution
Qonto Basic plan is the cheapest pricing plan and the most popular one (58% on Qonto users)
Only 1.2% of Basic Monthly Active Users upgrade to higher tiered plan each month
The Smart Plan is very sticky (only 1.3% of users downgrade)
Key conversion drivers (most used smart plan features) have hight feature retention
We want all our Basic Plan customers to get the opportunity to experience the advanced features unlocked on a Smart Plan and take a 1-month tour so they can chose if they want to adopt them and stay on a Smart Plan after their trial.
Hypothesis 1 : Awareness - Customers are not aware of the expansion path
”Qonto has bookkeeping?”
Hypothesis 2 : Value - Customers are aware of the expansion path but don’t see the value
“How is this bookkeeping going to help me ?”
Hypothesis 3 : Conversion - Customers see the value, but there is too much friction to convert
“I don’t understand how to upgrade to use bookkeeping”
Step 1
User stumbles upon a feature that is not available for his/her current pricing plan
Step 3
We then show the user the pricing tables to compare all plans
Step 4
When selecting the Smart plan, the final step is a simple checkout page
Looking at the traffic data for each step, we see that :
30% of users are interested to learn more about the locked feature. Based on the number of montly active qonto users, we can conclude that it’s a significant number of users therefore it’s not an awareness problem
On those 30%, only 6% continue the flow to compare the different pricing, and spend on average over 1min on the page
People who persu and arrive and the checkout spend on average 14 seconds to checkout
Directionally this analysis points to our biggest leverage being in convincing users of the value of the Smart plan (conversion Step 2 →Step 3)
Interviewing 6 Qonto users - Basic plan users that spent time looking at the pricing table page over the past two weeks
A - Why do they choose Basic plan in the first place ?
Entrepreneurs and freelancers are overwhelmed with information when starting their own company. Opening a bank account is just another thing they have to get done and they often don't have time to study Qonto's different offers so they go for the cheapest option.
As their business is growing, they consider changing their plan.
Almost everytime they consider upgrading their plan, it’s mainly to use 1 feature only (2 now with invoicing), and usually it’s Multi accounts or Accountant access.
B - We got confirmation that users don’t see the value
Or that they lack information to fully get it
P
Paul M. - May 2022
“I was looking [at the Smart plan] to see if my invoices will be uploaded to Dougs but honestly I didn’t have the time to see”
P
Pascal R. - May 2022
“I don’t know if there is a feature that my accountant would like : being able to extract all of the receipts in a file, ”
C - They are confident they will upgrade at some point
They just lack incentive when they compare the different plans
C
Christine N. May 2022
“If there was an offer that were offering the first months or a discount for the first year, maybe I would have upgraded right away”
P
Pascal R. May 2022
“When we have to pay directly we hesitate, when we don’t have to pay we think about it and we want to try it out to see if it matches”
K
Kevin T. May 2022
“Now, looking at the accounting features [on Qonto] I fear that’s it’s the same service as legalstart, which is just a table that I could create in an Excel”
D - Two distinct personnas
will find a way to educate themselves on the feature before upgrading. They'll know exactly what the value is for them and how much they are willing to pay.
are most of us. They are aware about the Smart Plan feature of interest but they don't put in the necessary effort to understand the value of the feature for them. Our upgrade flow often does not provide them with enough information to complete the upgrade.
Frictionless
I can test out the feature I am interested in the smart plan with almost no friction.
“If I can try it, I can say that’s exactly what I need and I am ready to pay”
P
Pascal R. May 2022
Educational
I have all the support I need to get started using the Smart Plan feature.
“What would be good is to have some sort of pre-onboarding when the lead is qualified and is looking to buy a higher plan like me. If I could be pre-onboarded, spend 30-45 with [a Qonto member] to browse on your screen to see the new Qonto experience [with the higher plan], I would help me a lot to stop think. The ability to visualize.”
K
Kevin T. May 2022
Reassuring
I feel confident I can easily pull out of this deal if does not work for me.
As a company that has access to our clients' funds, we have the responsibility to reassure the client they can always pull out of the free trial before they start.
How long is the trial?
When will I get charged?
How much will it cost after it expires?
How do I cancel?
[Talking about other products free trial] “30 days goes fast, they already have my CB and if I forget and don’t pay attention, they will keep taking me money without me noticing”
P
Pascal R. - May 2022
+
The 80 points will make the user trust us enough to start the free trial.
The 20 points will justify that trust by focusing the post trial experience around.
Teaching the user how to downgrade
Informing the user before charging them
Starting to sketch the user flow for the feature to align stakeholders on the different touchpoints of the experience.
Exploring differents layouts and visuals to best present the free trial and meet user's preferences. This was also the time and space for the UX writer to explore the best copy.
After exploring a catalog of solution, mostly iteration on copy and UI, we build the final screens for every flow
