BoldVoice · B2C · accent coaching app
Remove the X button to make your paywall hard
Conversion looked great, but refunds spiked and it drained revenue
Failedpaywall
What they did
Removed the X (close) button from the paywall, making it fully hard. Initially 'crushing it' and about to roll out to everyone, until the team looked at refunds.
What happened
Refunds spiked massively; the apparent win became a drain on revenue.
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · What 80M users taught Flo about A/B testing — Mike Charniatsou“they removed the the X button from the paywall to make it a fully hard paywall. And it was crushing it. Like they were so excited, they were going to roll it out to everyone. And then they started looking at refunds, and refunds spiked massively.”
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More from BoldVoice
All 20 BoldVoice tactics- Charge $10 a month with a 7-day free trial from launch dayFounder says it filtered out non-buyers and freed time for the product; no numbers
- Judge paywall tests on revenue after refunds, waiting 3+ weeks past trial startCaught two trial-start 'wins' that lost money once refunds came in
- Remove the close button so users must start a trial to continueTrial starts rose, but refunds rose by more; net loss
- Let people who close the paywall use day one free, then ask for a trialFounder calls it a good middle ground; no numbers
- Show the ~$150 annual plan first so ad spend pays back when trials endCash lands 7 days after install, so each channel's ROI is known at once; no numbers
- Auto-invite users to 15-minute calls booked with whoever on the team is freeEvery employee, engineers included, does 2+ user calls a week
More from this episode
- Flo: Give your best-performing ad angle its own onboarding path that continues the ad's storyBecame a great revenue driver; no numbers given
- Flo: Hold a weekly sync where marketing and product share every change they makeSource of experiment ideas like the ad-angle onboarding path; no numbers
- Flo: Re-check test wins 3, 6 and 12 months after rolloutFinds that not all reported conversion wins became business wins; no numbers
- Flo: Keep the core app free and offer paid extras when users' needs change40% of subscriptions start more than 6 months after install
- Flo: Judge free-trial tests on an early event that predicts who will payLets the team make early calls; no numbers given
- Flo: Add an onboarding question that tells users which stage they're in, never 'sorry, we couldn't tell'Lost ~10% twice; the evidence-based rewrite won 23%, confirmed by a blackout test
- Flo: Remove a step that just won to check the win was realRemoving the 23%-winning step lost, confirming the uplift
- Flo: Copy another app's winning paywall pixel for pixelDidn't work, despite a 10% uplift reported by the other teams
- Flo: Promise a reminder before the free trial ends on your paywallDidn't work at either of two apps
- Flo: Add a free-trial on/off switch to your paywallWorked for other teams, apparently not here; barely described
- Flo: Introduce your most popular feature during onboardingHurt conversion; biggest fail of the year
- Loóna: Sell through a web onboarding funnel instead of only the app storesPart of growth to almost $6M ARR; infrastructure proved costly