Built With Science · B2C · science-based fitness coaching app
Show only the yearly plan first, with a day-by-day trial timeline and reminder promise
Annual picks rose from ~60% to 75-80%, with no price change
What they did
What happened
- Stage
- scaling
In their words
Scaling Meta Ads from zero to $100K a month — Ethan Ethier, Built With Science
David BarnardNice. Well, as we wrap up, I did want to ask the three questions I ask every guest now. Over the past year, what was your biggest win, the biggest experiment or change that you implemented?
Ethan EthierSo as I mentioned earlier, I think the biggest change was an experiment we ran on our pricing page where it heavily changed the shift from people choosing monthly to annual, and all we did was change the layout so that it presented the annual upfront and reduced risk of actually starting the free trial. So we didn't change the price, we didn't change the positioning. It was simply a UI shift, which had a massive impact for us.
David BarnardSo for those listening on the podcast, just walk us through verbally some of the things that you think had the biggest impact on that change.
Ethan EthierYeah, so prior to the experiment, we had a pricing page where monthly was shown on one side and annual was showed on the other. And then after the experiment, we rolled up the variant, which essentially just showed only the annual. And on top of the annual, we had kind of a Blinkist style layout where we showed day one, you'll get your personalized plan. Day seven, this is how your plan will adjust and adopt with you.
Ethan EthierAnd then day 12, right before the free trial ended, we made it clear that we're going to send you a reminder and that you can end your trial whenever you like. So we made the risk of actually starting the trial a lot more clear, but also gave them the annual as that upfront choice. And then there is an option to look at the monthly plan as well, but for the most part, reducing the actual perceived risk and choices that they had to make had a big impact.
David BarnardYeah. So was the monthly just kind of a view all plans and then it showed you the monthly?
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More from this episode
- Spend a year fixing trial-to-paid and retention before buying any adsFounder says it lifted the floor for every channel; paid traffic later converted at 25%
- Hype the app launch to your YouTube viewers, course members and email listA launch spike, then a steady trickle; not a growth engine on its own
- Mention the app softly mid-video, and tell user transformation storiesStory videos bring more trials than broad educational ones; old videos give steady monthly trials
- Hire clippers to post long-video clips on Reels and TikTok, then reuse winning hooksSome clips go viral; their hooks now shape new long videos
- Scale Meta ads without the famous founder: B-roll, testimonials and AI image adsScaled from zero to ~$100K/month (host figure); 25% trial-to-paid
- Spend the first month of ads just learning your paid trial-to-paid rateTook about a month to get a baseline to set the allowed cost per customer
- Judge ads by how many trials pay, not by how cheap the trials areClickbait ads brought cheap trials but a huge drop in trial-to-paid
- Build a dashboard that confirms which trials came from Meta, and send Meta your best users
- Send ad clicks to a long personal quiz on your website, not the App StoreQuiz beat direct-to-store; now gets ~90% of traffic; same quiz in the iOS app did worse
- Sell the app as a trainer in your pocket, not a tracker, at $189 a yearKept $189/year since launch; 35-40% organic and ~25% Meta trial-to-paid
- Offer 15% off each if users add a workout buddy to their plan15% of trial starts add a buddy; higher order value and better retention
- Build free calorie and macro calculators that rank in AI search and lead to the quizWorking well, founder says; tools convert slightly better than blog posts
- List every reason a page fails before brainstorming fixes, and write each test down~70% of tests fail first time; written notes turn failures into later winners
- Release new features quietly, and announce only once usage proves themFounder says it gives cleaner reads than email-hyped launches; no numbers
- Build an AI coach trained on the creator's videos that reads each user's own dataOne of customers' favorite features, founder says; no numbers
- Team up with researchers and run studies with your own app usersFounder says it adds credibility; no numbers
- Add more explanation to the pricing page to make the value clearerHurt conversion; extra text overwhelmed buyers who were ready to start
- Offer 20% off to pay now, with a toggle back to the 14-day free trialQuite negative, even with a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Make both the free trial and the pay-now discount sound goodVery strong lift after a few weeks, vs the version that shamed the trial
- Film a months-long science experiment video with real people in a rented studioOne of the year's top videos; decent but not major app conversion
Tags: web, annual-first, trial-timeline, trial-reminder, plan-mix, blinkist-style