Would it be possible to always offer the last 14 days of stats, but only allow a login/access to that data eg 3 or 7 times ?
I wonder if that might fit the average pattern of a casual stats user a bit better (only actually checking the data when asked by the manager) to keep them hooked for a much longer 'wall clock' time and get them to eventually convert (I've been depending on this for half a year now)
That's a good idea and, in theory, I could implement a lot of different models.
In practice, because it's self-hosted, "cracking" might be an issue. Customers might edit the files that affect the retention, for example. Maybe most customers won't do it, but I don't know. This also feels a bit like I would have to implement some "DRM", which I really don't want.
Now that you mentioned it, maybe a better trial would be a freemium model, where I can serve a different version for free that only has some features. The problem with this, is that the customer won't get all the benefits of using the product, so they might not like it enough to upgrade to the full version.
It's an analytics platform, so I could offer just basic stats for free and for premium all the other features (segments, heatmaps, recordings, A/B tests, AI integration, etc.). This could work as a good marketing technique for the top of the funnel, but then customers would still probably want to trial the pro features, so I am stuck with the same problem as before.
Hmm, but what would make you upgrade from the free tier to premium? Because you still can't try the premium features. Wouldn't I still need to provide a trial for the premium features, for you to decide whether they are worth upgrading?
Usually if you think hard, you can find something that a casual user could progress to wanting more of. Or you can do what a lot of companies do and start everyone on a free trial of premium, and then fall back to free. Or the evil route, and make them opt out of premium to downgrade, or it bills them by default. (May they get chargebacked to hell and dropped by their payment processor)
I try to avoid all routes that are not win-win or feel "evil".
After reading more of those comments, I am still unsure what's the way to go. Maybe simply keep the trial but make it 30 days instead of 14 days.
The problem with premium features, is that I would then need a free version of the product. But I don't want to provide a free version without support, as it's a self-hosted product.
Yeah, that's fair. Many projects just let the free community edition support itself by hosting a forum for them to swap notes. And if a trial is about the level of complexity that you feel you can support, that's also ok.
A lot of companies are firmly on the evil track, looking for any dark pattern that makes the numbers go up, sadly. Good on you for not being there.
I wonder if that might fit the average pattern of a casual stats user a bit better (only actually checking the data when asked by the manager) to keep them hooked for a much longer 'wall clock' time and get them to eventually convert (I've been depending on this for half a year now)