Two months ago, we announced the “Powerpoint-killer” Bunkr had launched their all-web presentation software. Their key element lied in their desire to eliminate the ‘white page’ syndrome – namely, when you first start a presentation, what are the first steps to creating an engaging presentation. In order to do so ,they offer a bookmarklet “collect it” where you can snatch up nice images, videos, and websites that you find all over the web, as well as integrated with Google Images and YouTube for a fast search within the app.
My only real complaint was that the software was paid from day one (with a 45-day free trial). Don’t get me wrong, I believe in paying for services you use; however, as a new service, they were sacrificing feedback and data about their users for money, something that seed-funded internet startups shouldn’t be worrying about so soon.
“It’s true that the ’45-day trial’ model won’t work for us; however, it did allow us to discover that 75% of users who created 2 or more presentations became paying users, allowing us to create a freemium model allowing users to create 2 presentations for free before paying.”
I told them to come back to me once the 45-day trial was up and tell me what their conversion rate was – based off of Dropbox & Evernote figures, I predicted that 5% would be considered a success. Bunkr’s Edouard Petit came to me this weekend and told me that, of the 5000 users who have finished their trial period, 205 converted to paid users, a 4.1% conversion rate.
Looking beyond the conversion rate to user behavior
While the number looks good – it could likely reach 5% by calling idle users back to action, optimizing the funnel, etc. – ultimately, Bunkr had to decide if this was the route they wanted to go. Petit tells me the company looked at their users in a different light and noticed that 75% of users that created more than 2 presentations converted to paying (meaning that only about 300 of the 5000 users created 3 or more presentations), thus Bunkr decided that, instead of a 45-day trial, the startup will switch over to a Freemium model, offering two free presentations to users.
This new model means that users do not feel a pressure to use it or delete their account, and that the stickiness of the product can take effect overtime. Once you have 2, 5, 10 presentations on the platform, are you really going to switch away?