Find the price that converts free users

Run a pricing table price experiment for free users.

Overview

Some free users outgrow the free plan but hesitate at the price of Plus, your first paid plan. Before you change the price for everyone, you can test a lower price with a small group of these users and measure the impact.

In this tutorial, you run a pricing experiment with pricing tables in Chargebee Growth. You create an audience of free users who show upgrade intent, build a test pricing table that uses Price Override to lower the Plus price, and run an Acquisition play that compares your current pricing table with the test table.

What you learn: whether price is what's holding back free-to-paid conversion.

Before you start

1. Connect Growth and Billing. Make sure Chargebee Growth is enabled and connected to your Chargebee Billing site.
2. Enable Price Override. Enable Price Override in both Chargebee Billing and Chargebee Growth so you can lower the Plus price on the test pricing table.
3. Integrate Growth with your application. Have your app development team follow the dynamic pricing table integration guide so Growth can present the right pricing table to users in your app.
4. Set up the control pricing table. Create and launch a pricing table in Chargebee Growth with your standard Plus price. This is your control.

Implementation steps

Follow these steps to set up and run a pricing experiment for free users.

1. Create and map a custom field for "plan usage percent" in Growth

1. In Growth, navigate to Settings > Setup.
2. Under Field mappings, select Map fields.
3. Scroll down to Field Mapping and select the button View & map passed data. A modal appears.
4. On the modal, under Custom Chargebee Retention fields, select the +add a new field button and enter the following details:
   1. Field Label: "Plan used percent".
   2. Data Type: "Integer".
   3. JS Name: "custom.plan_used_percent".
5. Select the Save changes button. The modal closes.
6. Scroll down and fill in the form above the Add custom field button:
   1. Name: "Plan used percent".
   2. Type: "Integer".
   3. Source Field dropdown: Under API & Chargebee.js, select Plan used percent.
7. Select the Add custom field button.
8. Select the Save changes button.

2. Create an audience of free users with upgrade intent

Target free users who are likely to convert—for example, those hitting their free-plan limits. Create an audience:

1. In Growth, navigate to People > Audiences.
2. Create a new audience with the following AND conditions defined:
   • Condition 1:
     • Property: "Plan ID".
     • Operator: "starts with".
     • Value: "free".
   • Condition 2:
     • Property: "Plan used percent".
     • Operator: "Greater than or equal to".
     • Value: "80".
3. Select the Done button to save the audience.

This selects customers subscribed to plan prices that belong to the Free plan and have used at least 80% of their plan limit.

3. Create the test pricing table

1. Create the test pricing table that matches the control table.
2. Customize the test pricing table to lower the Plus price:
   1. Open the test pricing table and select the New User tab.
   2. Select the Plus plan, then go to the Edit Pricing tab.
   3. Enter the lower test price in the Price field. To highlight the discount, you can also enter the original price in the Strikethrough field.
3. Select Preview to confirm the test table shows the lower price.

3. Create an Acquisition play to run the experiment

Use a play to split your audience between the control and test pricing tables.

1. In Growth, go to Plays > Acquisition.
2. Select Create New Play, select the Pricing Table play type, and then select Proceed.
3. Under Choose your Audience, select the audience you created in step 2.
4. Select Targeting & Experimentation.
5. Under Control, select your current pricing table and set the percentage of traffic to send to it—for example, 50%.
6. Under Actions, select Show pricing table and select the test pricing table you created in the previous step.
7. Select Review & Publish, set the play Priority, and then select Publish Play.

Result

Eligible free users are now split between the control and test pricing tables. After the play runs for the length of your experiment, open the play report to compare free-to-paid conversion across the two groups and see whether the lower price performs better.

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to:

• Create an audience of free users who show upgrade intent.
• Build a control pricing table and a test pricing table that uses Price Override to lower the Plus price.
• Run an Acquisition play that splits traffic between the two tables.
• Use the play report to compare free-to-paid conversion across price points.