Free trial offers... why ask for info right away?

A

AD1985

Banned
Jun 6, 2007
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I notice almost every single free trial offer has the signup box right at the top... before the reader even knows what the product is about. I've read a lot about copywriting and this should be a big no-no since the prospect is instantly alerted to sales intent, and wouldn't sign up anyways because he doesn't know what the product offers yet (aside from a few bullets and a headline)

If anyone has dealt with this before, do these signup boxes at the top outperform everything else? Or is this just a bad trend?
 


More often than not, the reader does know what the product is about.

What sense does it make to put the sign up form anywhere else?

Most of teh sheeples don't realise they are in for a re-billing nightmare (lol) so there is no "hard sale".
 
It depends on how it's done. A lot of them also have videos that pop up a person in the lower right talking about how great the product is off the bat. On top of that, they often position it as "see if you qualify for a free trial" which is probably pretty effective as well.

The other thing to consider is if you've built a landing page, that's your opportunity to presell them on whatever it is you're promoting. Once they click through, it's time to close.
 
people don't read your copy. They read your ad and your headline. Maybe they skim the copy - if you're in a heavy-info market, maybe they read more & those are the hyper-responsive types. Those will be your best customers which is why you write all that other stuff. Most will just jump on your intro offer based on what I said earlier. Put some spy scripts on your own LP & you'll see what I'm talking about.
 
Free leads is why. A person already clicked on an ad, read through a landing page, and then clicked on a link to get a free trial. If you ask them for their name,address,city,state,zip,phone and email they are very likely to give it to you. But put a payment form on the page and that rate drops down significantly to just people who will buy instead of all people who are interested.
 
Well since most of the traffic for free trials comes from a presell page, most of the people are clicking through to sign up and are already sold. So it makes sense for the form to be right in front of them.
 
I'm actually doing a blog post about this (probably today) - I have some info to share.
 
This is why split testing different landers are crucial. Short form, long form, 2nd page, 3 page landers.

This is done so conversion rate increases. Most likely people will continue after filling out their information on 1st page. Why not continue after filling out: name, address, phone #, and email address? They gone this far so next step is just cc #.

Lot of advertisers show S&H price on the 2nd page instead showing right off the bat.

Definitely split test. Some traffic will convert better for short form than long form.
 
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