We dove deep into the user experiences of 15 top AI tools, documenting over 100 monetization touchpoints, upgrade pathways, and conversion tactics. What we found were five distinct patterns that drive revenue for these leaders.

These strategies aren’t just for AI. They’re blueprints that any SaaS tool can adapt to accelerate its own growth. Here’s what we learned.

The data behind the patterns

Our analysis covered tools spanning text generation (ChatGPT, Claude), search (Perplexity), design (Ideogram, Leonardo.AI), video creation (Runway), and productivity (Grammarly, QuillBot). Each tool was examined across four critical areas:

• Monetization elements: Upgrade CTAs, limit notifications, premium feature gates, and more
• Monetization pathways: The specific user journeys from free to paid
• Pricing and payment screens: Where users actually convert when they decide to upgrade
• Missed opportunities: Places where tools could be driving more conversions

What emerged were five clear patterns that high-converting tools use consistently.

Pattern #1: The progressive squeeze

The strategy: Start with subtle hints, then gradually increase conversion prompts as users become more invested.

Who’s doing it: Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity have mastered this approach.

How it works: These tools begin with gentle upgrade suggestions embedded in the interface. A small CTA in the sidebar, a mention of plan limits in account settings. As users engage more, the messaging becomes increasingly direct.

Claude exemplifies this perfectly. New users see a subtle “Free plan” indicator and a small upgrade CTA. After several conversations, users get friendly notifications about approaching limits. Only when limits are actually hit does Claude present the strong upgrade push with clear urgency messaging.

ChatGPT follows a similar pattern but with more touchpoints. Multiple upgrade opportunities appear once logged in, but the real conversion push happens when users try to upload files or access advanced features.

Why it converts: Users invest time and mental energy before hitting any hard walls. By the time they reach limits, they’re already committed to the tool and see clear value in upgrading rather than switching to alternatives.

The missed opportunity: Many tools go straight to hard limits without the progressive buildup, losing users who might have converted with a gentler approach.

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How Top AI Tools Turn Free Users Into Paying Customers

Pattern #2: The feature tease

The strategy: Show users exactly what they’re missing by displaying premium features prominently, then gating access.

Who’s doing it: Ideogram, Grammarly, and Leonardo.AI excel at this approach.

How it works: These tools don’t hide their premium features. Instead, they showcase them prominently with visual cues like lock icons, blurred previews, or “Pro” badges. Users can see the feature, understand its value, and often interact with locked elements that trigger upgrade modals.

Ideogram shows locked features upfront on the dashboard, displays private galleries as gated sections, and lets users click through to see upgrade benefits. When users generate images, editing options appear with clear visual indicators of which features require upgrading.

Grammarly shows blurred premium suggestions alongside free ones, lets users see statistics with tone analysis grayed out, and provides partial feature previews that create curiosity about the full experience.

Why it converts: Curiosity combined with FOMO creates powerful motivation. When users can see exactly what they’re missing and how it would solve their problems, the upgrade decision becomes much easier.

Implementation tip: The key is showing enough value to create desire while maintaining a clear visual hierarchy between free and premium features.

Pattern #3: The moment of need

The strategy: Present upgrade options precisely when users are most invested and would benefit most from premium features.

Who’s doing it: Runway, QuillBot, and Character.AI time their conversion prompts perfectly.

How it works: Instead of generic upgrade CTAs, these tools interrupt workflows at strategic moments when users are actively trying to accomplish something and would most benefit from premium features.

Runway waits until users want to export in 4K resolution or remove watermarks, both of which are moments when they’re already committed to using the generated content.

QuillBot triggers upgrade prompts when users hit word limits mid-task, not during idle browsing.

Why it converts: Perfect timing equals the highest conversion rates. When users are already invested in a task and premium features would immediately solve their problem, the upgrade becomes a logical next step rather than an interruption.

The psychology: This taps into the completion bias. Once users start a task, they’re motivated to finish it, making them more likely to pay to remove obstacles.

Pattern #4: The transparent countdown

The strategy: Create urgency and build trust by clearly showing usage limits, remaining credits, and reset timers.

Who’s doing it: Perplexity, Grammarly, and Copy.AI have perfected transparent limit communication.

How it works: Instead of surprising users with sudden limits, these tools constantly communicate remaining usage through progress bars, countdown timers, and clear messaging about when limits reset.

Perplexity shows “2 queries remaining today” with each search, giving users clear visibility into their usage without anxiety.

Grammarly displays credit counts and refill timers for AI features, so users can plan their usage accordingly.

Copy.AI uses a prominent word count progress bar that updates in real-time, showing exactly how much of their monthly limit has been used.

Why it converts: Transparency builds trust while creating healthy urgency. Users appreciate knowing where they stand and can make informed decisions about when to upgrade rather than feeling tricked by hidden limits.

The trust factor: When users trust that limits are fair and clearly communicated, they’re more likely to see upgrading as a reasonable business transaction rather than being forced into paying.

Pattern #5: The omnipresent nudge

The strategy: Place multiple upgrade touchpoints throughout the interface without being intrusive.

Who’s doing it: ChatGPT, QuillBot, and Ideogram have mastered multi-touchpoint conversion.

How it works: These tools strategically place upgrade opportunities at different points in the user journey, including header CTAs, sidebar reminders, settings page options, and feature-specific prompts. The key is making each touchpoint feel contextual rather than repetitive.

ChatGPT places upgrade CTAs in the dropdown menu, file upload tooltips, model selection interfaces, and account settings. Each serves a different user intent and provides value beyond just asking for payment.

QuillBot integrates upgrade opportunities into the workflow, for example, in premium mode selectors, feature benefit explanations, and contextual prompts that feel helpful rather than pushy.

Why it converts: Repetition without annoyance increases recall and provides multiple chances to convert users at different readiness levels. Some users need to see upgrade options multiple times before they’re ready to act.

The balance: The key is ensuring each touchpoint provides value or information, rather than simply asking for money repeatedly.

The standout performers

While all 15 tools showed growth-focused design, three stood out for their sophisticated monetization strategies:

Claude excels at the Progressive Squeeze, building user investment before presenting upgrade opportunities. Their limit messaging feels helpful rather than restrictive, and the upgrade pathway is seamless.

Ideogram masters the Feature Tease, showcasing premium capabilities so effectively that users understand the upgrade value before reaching any limits. Their visual hierarchy makes premium features aspirational rather than frustrating.

Perplexity nails the Transparent Countdown, creating urgency without anxiety through clear limit communication and value-focused messaging.

Common missed opportunities

Our analysis revealed several patterns where even successful tools leave money on the table:

• Timing failures: Many tools show upgrade prompts during onboarding when users haven’t yet experienced value, rather than waiting for engagement.
• Value communication gaps: Some tools gate features without clearly explaining the benefits, leading to confusion rather than desire.
• Conversion pathway friction: Several tools send users to generic pricing pages rather than contextual upgrade flows that maintain momentum.
• Limit surprises: Tools that suddenly cut off functionality without warning create frustration rather than conversion motivation.

Applying these patterns to your SaaS growth strategies

These AI growth strategies aren’t limited to AI tools. The underlying principles work for any SaaS looking to improve free-to-paid conversion:

Start with your user journey mapping

Identify key moments where users experience value and where they encounter limitations. These are your conversion opportunity points.

Audit your current upgrade messaging

Are you using the Progressive Squeeze, or do you jump straight to hard limits? Are you showing users what they’re missing with Feature Teasing?

Review your limit of communication

Do users understand their usage limits, and when they reset? Transparent Countdown reduces churn and builds trust.

Optimize your touchpoint strategy

Map where upgrade CTAs appear in your interface and ensure each serves a specific user need rather than just asking for payment.

Test your conversion timing

Are you presenting upgrade options when users are most invested (Moment of Need) or just when it’s convenient for your UI?

What does this mean for your growth strategy?

AI tools are teaching us that successful monetization isn’t always about restricting features; it can be about showcasing value, building trust, and timing conversion opportunities perfectly. The tools growing fastest aren’t necessarily those with the best AI models, but those with the smartest user experience design.

These patterns work because they align business needs with user psychology. Instead of seeing limits as barriers, users experience them as natural progression points toward greater value.

The AI boom provides a unique laboratory for studying growth tactics at scale. These tools process millions of users and can iterate rapidly, revealing what actually drives conversions versus what we think should work.

As AI capabilities become more commoditized, user experience (including monetization design) becomes the key differentiator. The tools implementing these patterns now are building sustainable competitive advantages that will persist even as the underlying technology evolves.

Taking action on these insights

The most successful SaaS companies will adapt these AI growth strategies to their own products before their competitors catch on. Start by analyzing your current monetization approach against these five patterns:

1. Map your user journey to identify Progressive Squeeze opportunities
2. Audit your feature visibility to implement Feature Teasing where appropriate
3. Review your limit of communication to adopt Transparent Countdown principles
4. Time your conversion prompts to leverage the Moment of Need psychology
5. Optimize your touchpoint strategy using Omnipresent Nudge best practices

The data from these 15 AI tools provides a roadmap, but implementation requires careful testing and optimization for your specific user base and value proposition.

Ready to apply these AI growth strategies to accelerate your SaaS growth? The Good specializes in analyzing user experiences and implementing conversion optimization strategies that turn insights into revenue. Our team has helped dozens of SaaS companies optimize their monetization flows using data-driven approaches just like this analysis.

Get your personalized monetization strategy audit. We’ll analyze your current user experience against these proven patterns and create a prioritized optimization roadmap tailored to your product and audience. Schedule a consultation with our team to discover how these AI growth strategies can accelerate your revenue growth.

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How Top AI Tools Turn Free Users Into Paying Customers

The post 5 SaaS Growth Strategies That Work (Based On Analysis Of 15 Top AI Tools) appeared first on The Good.

According to McKinsey research, nearly 40% of consumers switch retailers to get better deals.

The challenge is no different from the classic showrooming problem that has plagued retailers for over a decade. Your customers discover your products, compare, and then disappear to buy from wholesalers, retailers, or resellers offering lower prices.

Because they can’t compete on price and leadership won’t budge on enforcing a MAP policy, many teams will simply throw their hands up and concede that 40% of price-sensitive shoppers will buy elsewhere.

Before you do that, I want to share an alternative POV. After working with hundreds of ecommerce brands to increase conversions, there are some tried and true strategies that will deliver in spite of MAP restrictions.

It starts with reframing the situation. Customer acquisition isn’t the problem. Customer preference is.

Instead of trying to win the price war, it’s time to focus on better customer experiences and compete in areas that can’t be replicated by the competition.

Solution 1: Make the experience worth the premium

The insight: 72% of consumers expect personalized experiences. Resellers can’t always deliver them.

While you can buy Glossier products at retailers like Ulta and Target, Glossier’s direct channels offer something those retailers can’t: a personalized skincare quiz that analyzes your skin type and concerns to curate 3-5 products specifically for your needs.

Their website shows personalized product recommendations based on your quiz results and browsing behavior, creating a tailored experience that feels custom-made.

This is the idea of selling the experience of being your customer and making it a seamless, one-of-a-kind experience to shop with you.

What this looks like in practice:

• Real-time AI personalization throughout the shopping experience
• Immersive product discovery via recommendations
• Clear articulation of your brand values and differentiators relevant to each unique user
• Brand storytelling that makes the purchase decision emotional instead of transactional

Solution 2: Create exclusivity that other sellers can’t touch

The insight: Exclusive SKUs and premium products can command 20-30% higher profit margins. While your resellers can sell your products, they can’t sell your brand or your relationship with customers.

Nike didn’t always beat resellers by matching prices. They created SNKRS app exclusives and limited colorways that resellers literally cannot obtain, contributing significantly to digital revenue and spiking DTC sales during the pandemic.

The strategy works because exclusivity creates urgency, and urgency often trumps price sensitivity.

What exclusive access looks like:

• Brand-only colorways and limited editions
• Early access windows 24-48 hours before reseller inventory
• Extended size runs available only through your channels
• Bundle combinations that resellers can’t replicate

Solution 3: Build loyalty programs that compete with discounting

The insight: Experience-based loyalty programs can make the shopping experience delightful without lowering prices.

84% of customers say they’re more likely to engage with a brand that offers a loyalty program, which is a game-changer for ecommerce companies without MAP policies.

For example, members of Sephora’s Beauty Insider program generate 80% of its total sales. While the program doesn’t guarantee products at the lowest price, it does offer exclusive access, personalized services, and community benefits that competitors cannot provide.

Loyalty programs that work:

• Tier-based structures with exclusive access benefits
• Community elements that create network effects
• Experiential rewards that resellers can’t match
• Personalized services that add genuine value

Solution 4: Optimize every conversion touchpoint

The insight: When you can’t compete on price, every visitor becomes precious. Optimizing the digital experience can offset price disadvantages.

Munchkin faced this exact challenge competing with retailers like Target and Walmart, where their products were sold. Working with The Good, they discovered that 70% of their traffic was mobile, but frustrated users were bouncing due to annoying pop-ups and poor navigation.

As David Embree from Munchkin put it, “If you’re paying to invite someone to your store, you don’t want them to walk in and immediately turn around to go somewhere else.”

By removing invasive popups, optimizing mobile navigation, and improving product findability, Munchkin decreased its bounce rate significantly and saw a lift in site-wide KPIs within six months.

What a powerful optimization strategy looks like:

• Comprehensive audit of user behavior and analytics data to identify conversion barriers
• Prioritized solutions that turn barriers into opportunities
• A/B testing and other experimentation methods to validate site improvements
• Device-specific optimization to customize the experience
• Navigation improvements to help users find specific products instead of browsing aimlessly
• Streamlined purchase paths that eliminate every source of friction
• Sophisticated abandoned cart recovery that addresses objections and provides additional value

Solution 5: Leverage tech to offer innovative shopping experiences

The insight: While resellers focus on price optimization, you can invest in technological advances that create immediate competitive advantages.

Warby Parker’s AR try-on experience through their site and mobile app allows customers to virtually test frames from home. The company’s annual report mentions that try-on features contribute to customer satisfaction, which is known to increase conversion rates.

Advanced technology requires significant investment that discount-focused resellers can’t justify for all the product types in their store. But it creates customer experiences that justify premium pricing and drive conversion improvements.

What technology differentiation looks like:

• AR try-on experiences
• Real-time personalization that updates offers based on customer activity
• Predictive analytics that anticipate customer needs/interests
• Social commerce

Solution 6: Lean on your brand story and values to connect with customers

The insight: Your resellers are selling your product, but they can’t sell your story.

Olipop transformed the crowded soda market by crafting a compelling narrative around gut health and nostalgia.

While Amazon can stock their prebiotic sodas, they can’t replicate the brand’s authentic story about making childhood favorites functional for adult wellness.

This storytelling creates emotional connections that justify premium pricing. Customers pay $2.50 for an Olipop versus $1 for a Coke because they’re buying into a healthier lifestyle narrative. They also have a subscription program that makes it easy for customers to restock every month.

Weaving the brand story into everything, from blog articles to stats on quality, helps customers build a direct relationship with your brand.

Content strategies that differentiate:

• Educational content that positions you as the industry expert
• User-generated content that creates social proof and community engagement
• Brand storytelling using elements like quality tiles to connect with customer values

Solution 7: Try product bundling to create value

The insight: Retailers may have lower prices on individual products, but you can create bundles to provide unreplicable value.

Harry’s grooming bundles products to make it easier for customers to find what they need for a smooth shave. Terms like “complete suite” and “essentials” create the perception of necessity while offering genuine convenience.

Smart product bundling makes price comparison impossible because customers can’t find identical packages elsewhere. The strategy works because bundles provide genuine convenience and a perception of value.

What strategic bundling looks like:

• Product combinations with complementary items, services, or accessories
• Value-added services like installation, setup assistance, or training included
• Exclusive package deals available only through your channel

Solution 8: Create unbeatable service experiences

The insight: Exceptional customer service can become a primary differentiator when price competition is off the table.

REI’s legendary approach exemplifies this strategy through its unmatched 100% satisfaction guarantee and return policy. Members can return any REI product at any time for any reason, with no questions asked, even if they’ve used it for years.

The policy extends beyond just returns to include their expert gear consultation services, where knowledgeable staff help customers choose the right equipment for their specific outdoor adventures, and their extensive educational programs, including classes on everything from rock climbing to bike maintenance.

Superior service creates defensible advantages because it requires investment in people and processes that discount-focused resellers can’t justify. The key is making the service itself a reason to choose you.

What service excellence looks like:

• Pre-sale consultation and personalized product selection guidance
• Extended warranties and satisfaction guarantees that competitors can’t match
• Omnichannel service consistency across online, phone, chat, and in-store
• Post-purchase support that turns customers into advocates

Understanding customer psychology and your unique users

Research shows that price is rarely the only factor in purchase decisions, even for price-sensitive customers. So, understanding the foundations of customer psychology and what matters is crucial when competing beyond price.

Some of the foundational elements of customer psychology are true no matter what you offer:

• Trust and Credibility: Customers often pay premium prices for retailers they trust. Build credibility through professional website design, clear policies, security certifications, and transparent business practices.
• Convenience and Time Savings: Many customers value convenience more than small price differences. Streamlined shopping experiences, fast shipping, and easy returns can justify MAP pricing.
• Risk Reduction: Customers often choose established retailers to reduce purchase risk. Comprehensive return policies, warranties, and a reputation for reliability can overcome price objections.

But there are other user behaviors that will be unique to your customers. Doing the research to understand what they want and need is the best way to deliver experiences that can compete when your company doesn’t have minimum advertised price policies in place.

Compete on value, not on price

MAP policy restrictions don’t have to be conversion killers. They can be conversion redirectors that allow you to compete differently.

While the wholesalers, retailers, and resellers race to the bottom on price, you can build sustainable differentiation through superior customer experience, expert service, and strategic value creation.

The ecommerce teams that thrive under MAP constraints understand a fundamental truth: customers don’t always buy from the cheapest option. They buy from the option that provides the most value. Your job is to ensure that option is always yours.

Ready to transform your MAP constraints into competitive advantages? The strategies outlined here require systematic implementation and continuous optimization. At The Good, we specialize in helping ecommerce brands optimize their conversion strategies when traditional price competition isn’t an option.

Let’s talk and see if there could be a good fit.

The post Why “We Can’t Compete Without MAP” Is the Wrong Problem to Solve appeared first on The Good.

Yet lots of companies treat their existing users as endpoints instead of starting points. They focus on acquiring new customers rather than leveraging the growth potential already sitting in their user base.

There are plenty of strategies to maximize your existing user base, including leveraging the power of growth loops and positive network effects as covered in other articles, but today I want to touch on how strategic feature creation that drives collaboration is an underrated revenue opportunity.

Why account expansion through collaboration can beat traditional sales tactics

The traditional approach to account expansion relies on sales teams identifying upgrade opportunities and convincing decision-makers at a company of the value. However, a new group of buyers is not accounted for in this model.

“Citizen SaaS buyers” now influence 40% of all company SaaS spending. These aren’t IT decision-makers; they’re everyday users who either A) find tools so valuable that they eventually buy them for their teams or B) see how much more effective it would be if more team members used them, so they advocate for upgrades.

These users typically start as single-seat or individual account holders, and instead of a traditional path to account expansion, their user journey finds upgrade paths via team or collaborative features. This style of collaboration-focused expansion makes upgrading feel like an extension of getting work done. It focuses on what naturally happens when users find real value.

How does it work in action?

This model of account expansion creates self-reinforcing cycles where user actions naturally drive more user actions. Unlike traditional sales funnels that end with a purchase, growth loops turn a user interaction into a potential expansion opportunity.

Here’s how a collaboration-driven growth loop works:

• User finds value → Individual user discovers your product solves a real problem
• User enhances value through collaboration → To maximize the solution, they need to involve teammates
• Collaboration creates shared investment → Team builds workflows, templates, and shared resources
• Shared investment increases dependency → Team becomes reliant on collaborative workflows
• Dependency drives expansion → Team needs more features, seats, or capabilities
• Expansion enables bigger problems → Larger teams tackle more complex challenges
• Bigger problems require more collaboration → Loop repeats at a larger scale

This isn’t just theory. We’ve seen this pattern drive expansion in everything from design tools to project management platforms. The key is designing features that naturally create more collaboration opportunities. Eventually, revenue grows through authentic value creation rather than time-intensive upselling.

Understanding the types of collaboration and team features

Before diving into strategy, it’s helpful to understand the different types of collaboration features that SaaS companies use to turn individual users into team advocates. These features work best when they feel like natural extensions of your core product value rather than bolted-on additions.

Sharing and access features

These are the foundations of most collaboration strategies. Users can share specific content, projects, or workspaces with colleagues. Examples include shared documents, project folders, dashboard links, or design files. The key is making sharing feel essential to getting work done rather than optional.

Notion has clear shared workspaces, allowing groups of individual users or “teams” to share documents, templates, and files.

Invitations

Direct invitation systems let users add colleagues to their accounts or workspaces. This includes features like “Add team member,” workspace invitations, or role-based access controls. The most effective invitation systems make it obvious why adding someone will improve the work for everyone involved.

Google Meet offers pre-meeting invite capabilities and makes it simple to add new attendees to a meeting with multiple invitation calls-to-action, and even provides suggestions of individuals you can add.

Real-time collaboration

Features that let multiple people work on the same thing simultaneously. This includes co-editing documents, collaborative whiteboards, shared design files, or synchronized data entry. Real-time collaboration often creates the strongest expansion pull because it makes individual work feel incomplete.

Figma is a masterclass in real-time collaboration, with shared files, “jam sessions” or timed working sessions, and even name tags on cursors to see where collaborators are in the file.

Communication and feedback tools

Built-in ways for team members to communicate about shared work. This includes comment threads, @mentions, approval workflows, or status updates. These features keep conversations contextual to the work, making your product the natural hub for project communication.

Airtable offers commenting, tagging, and assignment features throughout the tool, allowing teams to notify each other and host conversations in relevant project spaces.

Permission and role management

Systems that let users control who can see or edit what. This includes viewer/editor roles, department-level access, guest permissions, or approval hierarchies. Good permission systems make it safe and easy to include external stakeholders in workflows.

TLDV clearly outlines the sharing permissions on videos with levels of access, including “my team,” “my organization,” and individual users. There are also general access links if you want to share beyond account holders.

Workflow and process sharing

Features that let users create templates, processes, or automated workflows that others can use. This includes shared templates, workflow automation, or standardized processes. When teams build shared workflows, they create a collective investment in your platform.

Canva has brand kits, controls, and templates that can be shared amongst your team to help standardize and speed up your design workflows.

Social and activity features

Elements that show what team members are working on and create visibility into collaborative work. This includes activity feeds, presence indicators, or team dashboards. These features help teams stay coordinated while showcasing the value of collaborative work.

Slack offers great visibility into who is online with the green or transparent status dot next to users in the sidebar, giving easy indicators of who is available for active collaboration.

7 tactics for building collaboration features that drive account expansion and keep users around

The good news is you don’t have to pick just one type of collaboration feature. You can combine multiple types to create comprehensive collaborative experiences that make teamwork feel natural and essential. Here are some essential tactics to help you do just that.

1. Make sharing more valuable than working alone

The biggest barrier to collaboration isn’t technical, it’s behavioral. Users default to working alone unless collaboration is obviously easier and more valuable than individual work.

Design your product so that collaborative features provide immediate, obvious benefits that individual work can’t match. Don’t just make collaboration possible; make it essential for getting the best results.

For example, Figma revolutionized design by making real-time collaboration the default experience. Instead of designers working in isolation and then sharing static files, Figma made the design process inherently collaborative. Stakeholders could see work in progress, provide feedback in context, and feel involved in the creative process. This didn’t just improve design quality; it naturally expanded usage to include project managers, developers, and executives who previously only saw final designs.

2. Build features that create shared investment

When users invest time in building collaborative structures, they create switching costs that extend beyond individual preferences. The more a team builds together, the harder it becomes to leave your platform.

Provide tools that enable users to create shared resources, templates, and workflows that become more valuable as more people contribute to them. Make it easy to start collaborative structures and painful to abandon them.

A good example is Notion’s template system, which creates significant shared investment. When a team builds a comprehensive project management template with custom properties, linked databases, and automated workflows, they’re not just organizing their current work; they’re creating a system that becomes more valuable as more team members contribute to it. Removing team members from the workspace breaks the system, creating a natural resistance to downsizing.

3. Make collaboration visible and desirable

When users see colleagues accessing information, participating in decisions, or benefiting from workflows they can’t access, they naturally want to be included. Visibility drives demand for inclusion.

Make collaboration visible and valuable. Show users what they’re missing when they’re not part of collaborative workflows. Create transparency around who’s involved in what work, and make it easy to request access or suggest inclusion.

One example is Slack’s channel system, which creates visibility that drives expansion. When important decisions happen in channels users can’t access, they naturally request to be added. When they see colleagues sharing resources, celebrating wins, or coordinating work in channels they can observe but not participate in, they want to create their own channels for their work. This visibility drives organic expansion as users advocate for broader team adoption.

4. Include stakeholders who don’t use your product daily

Most SaaS tools start with individual users and try to expand outward. A better approach is to identify who needs to be involved for your primary users to be successful, and then build features that naturally include those stakeholders.

Map out who needs to be involved for your users to achieve their goals. Design features that make it easy to include those stakeholders in workflows, even if they’re not primary users of your product.

Miro understood that successful brainstorming sessions require diverse perspectives. Instead of building a tool just for facilitators, they created features that make it easy to include participants who might never use Miro independently. Guest access, simple sharing links, and intuitive contribution tools mean that workshop participants don’t need to be Miro experts to add value. This naturally expands usage to include executives, clients, and cross-functional team members who become advocates for broader adoption.

5. Recognize when users need help and suggest collaboration

The most effective collaboration features activate automatically when users hit natural collaboration points in their workflow. Instead of requiring users to remember to invite colleagues, smart systems recognize when teamwork would be valuable and make it easy to initiate.

Identify the moments in your user workflows where collaboration would be most valuable. Build features that recognize these moments and proactively suggest or facilitate collaboration.

Canva’s team features activate when users create designs that would benefit from collaboration. When a user creates a brand template, the platform suggests inviting brand managers. When they start a campaign design, it recommends involving marketing team members. When they build a presentation, they offer to share it with stakeholders for feedback. These suggestions feel helpful rather than pushy because they activate at moments when collaboration genuinely improves outcomes.

6. Support different work styles and schedules

Not all collaboration happens in real time. Some of the most powerful collaborative features work across time zones, schedules, and work styles. Asynchronous collaboration features often drive more expansion because they’re less dependent on coordinating schedules.

Build collaboration features that work when team members aren’t online simultaneously. Focus on features that let people contribute when it’s convenient for them while maintaining context for others.

Loom’s video messaging creates asynchronous collaboration opportunities that naturally expand usage. When someone creates a video explanation of a complex process, they often need to share it with multiple stakeholders who weren’t part of the original conversation. The video becomes a shared resource that multiple team members reference, comment on, and build upon. This creates natural expansion as teams recognize the value of asynchronous video communication for knowledge sharing.

7. Use access control as an expansion tool

Most SaaS companies think about permissions as security features. The smartest ones also use permissions as expansion features. Well-designed permission systems create natural opportunities for users to expand access as their needs grow.

Design permission systems that make it easy to grant appropriate access to new stakeholders without overwhelming them or compromising security. Use permission requests as expansion opportunities rather than barriers.

For example, Dropbox’s permission system creates natural expansion opportunities. When users want to share folders with specific access levels, they’re guided through options that often result in upgrading accounts to accommodate more users or storage. The permission system protects files and creates moments where users recognize the value of bringing more people into their workflows.

Ready to organically drive account expansion?

Collaboration-driven account expansion isn’t just about adding team features to your product. It’s about understanding how work really gets done and building features that make collaboration feel natural, valuable, and necessary.

The SaaS companies that master this approach turn every user into a potential growth engine. They create products so collaborative that teams can’t imagine working any other way. When collaboration becomes essential to how work gets done, account expansion becomes inevitable.

At The Good, we’ve helped SaaS companies identify and build collaboration features that drive meaningful account expansion. Our Digital Experience Optimization Program takes a systematic approach to understanding user behavior, designing collaborative experiences, and optimizing for sustainable growth.

Ready to transform your users into your most effective growth engine? Let’s explore how collaboration-driven expansion can accelerate your growth.

The post How to Drive Account Expansion with Collaborator & Team Features That Stick appeared first on The Good.

Most SaaS companies approach these upgrade opportunities with the same basic playbook: add an “Upgrade Now” button and hope for the best. But the companies exceeding their conversion goals understand something different: every upgrade scenario requires its own conversion-centered design strategy.

What is conversion-centered design?

Conversion-centered design is the practice of building digital experiences by making design decisions that serve a specific conversion goal. Unlike traditional user experience design, which prioritizes general usability and user satisfaction, conversion-centered design focuses on guiding users toward specific actions through strategic design choices.

In the case of SaaS upgrades, it’s about understanding the user behavior behind different types of SaaS upgrade decisions and crafting experiences that remove friction at precisely the right moments.

Beyond free-to-paid: the full spectrum of SaaS upgrades

Before we dive into design principles, let’s map the actual upgrade landscape most SaaS companies navigate:

Free trial to paid subscription

Free trial to paid subscription is the classic conversion challenge, where users evaluate whether your product delivers enough value to justify ongoing payment. Users typically weigh their decision based on factors such as feature completeness, onboarding success, and competitive alternatives.

Freemium to premium plans

In a transition from freemium to premium plans, users already love your basic offering, but need to justify paying for advanced features. This involves different psychology than trial conversions. You’re asking satisfied users to spend money, not preventing churn.

Plan tier upgrades

In tiered pricing plans, existing customers hit limits or need additional capabilities when considering an upgrade. These users are already paying, so the decision typically involves budget approval and feature value demonstration, rather than product evaluation.

Usage-based expansions

When customers exceed included allowances for API calls, storage, or monthly active users, they will often consider a usage-based upgrade. The decision here is often reactive rather than strategic, requiring different messaging and strategy.

Feature unlock purchases

In this scenario, individual premium features are available for one-time purchase rather than as part of a plan upgrade. Examples include advanced reporting, integrations, or compliance features sold separately.

Seat-based growth

In order to get tool access for the whole team, a user may need to purchase additional user licenses or a team account. This decision involves both the original user and new team members, creating complex decision dynamics.

Annual vs. monthly billing

Convincing users to commit to longer-term contracts for discounts is tricky. This upgrade isn’t about features, it’s about cash flow and commitment.

Each of these scenarios requires a different conversion approach because the user psychology, decision-making process, and friction points vary significantly. Let’s explore how conversion-centered design principles adapt to these diverse upgrade contexts.

The 7 principles of conversion-centered design for SaaS upgrades

Principle 1: Context-driven focus

Traditional conversion design emphasizes “creating focus” around the action you are leading users towards. In SaaS applications, that focus must be contextual. A user who has reached their storage limit requires a different focus than someone exploring premium features during onboarding.

How this works in practice:

For usage-based upgrades, focus should be immediate and solution-oriented: “You’re running low on API calls. Upgrade now to avoid service interruption.” Remove all other navigation options and make the upgrade path the primary action.

For feature exploration, focus should demonstrate value: “See how advanced analytics helped Acme Corp increase conversions by 34%.” Here, you can include secondary actions like “Learn More” or “See Example Report” because the user isn’t facing immediate urgency.

The key is recognizing where users are in their usage journey and matching your design focus to their mental state.

Here is a good example from Lovable. After creating a design, when you attempt to share it with your team, you are contextually prompted to “upgrade to collaborate.”

Principle 2: Progressive value architecture

Instead of dumping all premium features on users at once, structure your upgrade experience to build conviction progressively. This principle is especially important for complex SaaS products with multiple upgrade paths.

How this works in practice:

Design upgrade flows that reveal features progressively based on user engagement rather than showing everything upfront. Track which users click “Learn More” vs “Upgrade Now” to understand where additional information helps vs. hurts conversion. To implement, you can consider an upgrade architecture like:

Level 1: Immediate benefit

Lead with the single most compelling reason to upgrade based on the user’s current context. If they’re hitting usage limits, start with expanded capacity. If they’re in a specific workflow, highlight features that enhance that workflow.

Level 2: Supporting benefits

Once users engage with the primary benefit, introduce 2-3 supporting features that reinforce the upgrade decision. These should be directly related to their demonstrated usage patterns.

Level 3: Full feature set

Only after users show continued interest should you present comprehensive feature comparisons. Most users never need to see this level; they convert based on the immediate benefit alone.

Principle 3: Consistency across touchpoints

SaaS upgrades happen across multiple touchpoints, like in-app prompts, email campaigns, billing pages, and feature gates. Consistency across messaging, timing, and value presentation will support upgrade conversions.

How this works in practice:

• In-app feature gates: When users encounter locked features, the messaging should match what they’ll see on upgrade pages. If your feature gate says, “Unlock advanced reporting,” your upgrade page shouldn’t suddenly talk about “premium analytics.”
• Email upgrade campaigns: Match the urgency and tone of in-app experiences. If your app uses gentle nudges, don’t send aggressive “Last Chance!” emails. The psychological approach should feel consistent.
• Billing-triggered upgrades: When users approach usage limits, the upgrade flow should feel like a natural extension of their current experience, not a disruptive sales pitch.

Grammarly excels at this with its “writing update” emails, which share your usage statistics and include personalized upgrade benefits. They also maintain the same helpful, educational tone as their in-app suggestions. Users receive consistent value messaging whether they encounter upgrade opportunities in the app or via email.

Principle 4: Outcome-focused benefits

SaaS users don’t buy features, they buy outcomes. But different upgrade scenarios require different outcome framings. A user exploring premium features during onboarding has different priorities than someone hitting usage limits.

How this works in practice:

Use outcome language that matches your user segmentation research. Different user segments care about different outcomes, even for the same features. Your “productivity tools for SMBs” messaging should differ from “enterprise compliance solutions,” even if you’re selling similar capabilities.

Depending on the upgrade scenario, here are some examples:

• Trial-to-paid: Focus on productivity and competitive advantage outcomes. “Close deals 40% faster with advanced pipeline analytics”
• Freemium-to-premium: Focus on elevated capabilities and professional outcomes. “Transform from good to exceptional with premium design tools.”
• Plan upgrades: Focus on growth and scale outcomes. “Handle 10x more leads without adding headcount”
• Usage expansions: Focus on continuity and momentum outcomes. “Keep your growth trajectory without interruption.”
• Feature unlocks: Focus on specific workflow improvements, “Cut monthly reporting time from 8 hours to 30 minutes.”

Perplexity does this effectively by emphasizing the advanced capabilities you’re missing out on if you run out of your five free pro queries per day.

Principle 5: Friction-aware CTA design

Not every upgrade decision carries the same level of friction. Annual commitments create more friction than monthly upgrades. New feature adoption creates more friction than usage expansion. Your CTA design should account for these friction differences.

How this works in practice:

• Low-friction upgrades (usage expansion, monthly plan changes): Use direct, immediate CTAs. “Upgrade Now,” “Add More Storage,” “Increase Limit”. These can be prominent, high-contrast, and positioned aggressively because user resistance is low.
• Medium-friction upgrades (plan tier changes, feature unlocks): Use value-reinforcing CTAs: “Start Free Trial of Pro Features,” “See Premium Features,” “Try Advanced Tools”. Provide trial options or demos to reduce commitment anxiety.
• High-friction upgrades (annual contracts, major plan changes): Use progression-based CTAs: “See Pricing Options,” “Calculate Savings,” “Talk to Sales”. Focus on information-gathering rather than immediate commitment.
• Advanced CTA strategy: Implement dynamic CTAs that change based on user behavior. First-time feature gate encounters might show “Learn More,” while repeated encounters show “Start Free Trial,” and high-engagement users see “Upgrade Now.”

Principle 6: Social proof and trust building

The social proof that convinces someone to try your free trial won’t necessarily convince them to upgrade to enterprise features. Match your trust-building elements to the specific upgrade decision and user context.

How this works in practice:

• For security-conscious upgrades (compliance features, enterprise plans): Emphasize security certifications, enterprise customer logos, and compliance badges, “Trusted by Fortune 500 companies with the highest security standards”.
• For performance-driven upgrades (advanced features, professional tools): Highlight usage statistics and performance improvements, “Pro users complete projects 3x faster on average”.
• For team-based upgrades (collaboration features, multi-seat plans): Show team success stories and collaboration outcomes, “Marketing teams using our collaboration tools report 50% better campaign coordination”.
• For usage-based upgrades (expanded limits, additional capacity): Display growth-stage social proof, “Over 10,000 scaling companies choose our unlimited plan”.
• Trust-building implementation: Position trust elements where conversion anxiety is highest. For high-commitment upgrades, prominently display customer logos and testimonials. For usage expansions, emphasize reliability and uptime statistics.

Suno, an AI music creation platform, includes new feature upgrade options on the same page as featured creators, so you can see how popular artists are using features.

Principle 7: Conversion path optimization

Remove every unnecessary step between the upgrade decision and upgrade completion. However, “unnecessary” depends on the type of upgrade and user psychology. Some upgrades benefit from additional information, while others suffer from any delay.

How this works in practice:

• Immediate need upgrades (usage limits, access blocks): Minimize to single-click upgrades where possible. Pre-populate billing information, default to current payment methods, and confirm changes without additional steps.
• Exploratory upgrades (feature discovery, plan comparison): Allow for investigation without requiring immediate commitment. Provide detailed feature comparisons, trial options, and clear pricing information before asking for upgrade decisions.
• Team decision upgrades (enterprise features, multi-seat plans): Build in consultation and approval workflows. Provide team trial options, detailed ROI calculators, and easy sharing tools for decision-making groups.
• Budget-conscious upgrades (annual plans, major tier changes): Include savings calculators, payment plan options, and clear cancellation policies to reduce financial anxiety.
• Advanced optimization: Implement progressive profiling where users provide information gradually rather than all at once. For complex upgrades, break the decision into smaller commitment steps rather than requiring full upgrade commitment immediately.

The future of SaaS monetization design

SaaS upgrade optimization requires more than applying basic conversion principles to billing pages. The most successful companies understand that different upgrade scenarios require different psychological approaches, design strategies, and optimization metrics.

The 7 conversion-centered design principles are a great way to start doing just that.

But it’s not a one-and-done process. Iterate your designs and conduct user testing to figure out which upgrade paths are working and which aren’t.

As SaaS markets mature, upgrade optimization becomes increasingly sophisticated. Successful companies will move beyond the basics and:

• Embrace usage-driven monetization: Move beyond simple tier-based pricing to value-based and usage-responsive pricing models that require more nuanced upgrade design approaches.
• Implement AI-driven personalization: Use behavioral data to personalize upgrade timing, messaging, and pricing presentation for individual users rather than broad segments.
• Develop ecosystem-based upgrades: Create upgrade opportunities that span multiple products or services within a broader platform ecosystem.
• Focus on revenue expansion: Prioritize existing customer upgrade experiences over new customer acquisition as markets become more competitive.

Ready to optimize your SaaS upgrade experiences across every monetization touchpoint? The Good’s Digital Experience Optimization Program specializes in helping product-led companies design sophisticated upgrade experiences. Check it out and learn how you can take your business from product-market fit to sustainable scale with conversion-centered design techniques customized for your business and users.

The post Conversion-Centered Design: 7 Principles That Drive SaaS Upgrades appeared first on The Good.

While it’s essential to focus on features, user experience, and growth metrics, something many SaaS founders often underestimate is the significance of cognitive biases in pricing architecture. Understanding a few key principles of human psychology can help you guide users toward higher-priced plans.

When done correctly, psychological pricing strategies create genuine win-win scenarios where customers feel confident in their decisions while businesses optimize for sustainable growth.

The basics of SaaS pricing

The software industry’s shift from one-time purchases to subscriptions fundamentally changed consumer behavior. Unlike the old model, where companies had little incentive to maintain previously sold software, the subscription model encourages continuous updates and feature additions, benefiting the consumer.

Customers now feel a sense of ownership over the experience, and there is an inherent ongoing value perception that companies must meet. Ideally, companies take the monthly subscription fee and put it back into the product, upgrading or adding features to their software.

For companies, switching to the subscription model significantly boosted valuations. It also opened up opportunities for tiered pricing that wasn’t relevant for the one-time purchase model. It allows businesses to cater to different customer segments and extract value based on usage or features.

Successfully structuring SaaS pricing involves more than just crunching numbers; it requires an understanding of consumer psychology. By aligning pricing strategies with how users perceive value, make decisions, and react to choices, SaaS companies can craft pricing that not only attracts but also retains customers.

An overview of SaaS pricing models

The SaaS industry employs various pricing models beyond simple monthly or annual subscriptions, often adapting to the value delivered and the specific use case.

Subscription-based (annual recurring revenue)

This is the most common model, where customers pay a recurring fee (e.g., monthly or annually) for access to the software. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is a key metric for SaaS companies, representing the total revenue expected from all active subscriptions over a year.

As mentioned above, the subscription model benefits consumers by providing ongoing updates and improvements, rather than a one-time purchase that quickly becomes outdated.

Companies that offer subscription-based pricing: Netflix, Hulu, Spotify (premium), Apple Music

Seat-based

This model charges based on the number of users or “seats” that have access to the software. Pricing scales linearly with team size, making it predictable for both the company and customer. This model works particularly well for collaboration tools and enterprise software, where value increases with the number of users.

Seat-based pricing aligns cost with usage in a way that feels fair to customers—small teams pay less, larger organizations pay more. It also creates natural expansion revenue as companies grow their teams.

Companies that use seat-based pricing: Slack (per active user per month), Zoom (per license), Asana (per team member), Monday.com (per user), Microsoft 365 (per user license)

Freemium or feature-based

A freemium pricing model offers a basic version of the product for free, with limited features or usage, while charging for advanced features or increased functionality.

Companies that use a freemium pricing model: Canva (access to limited features by giving an email address), Spotify (free model with ads and limited functionality), Figma (three free designs before payment is required).

Skill-based

A pricing model that is driven by AI tools, skill-based pricing up-charges for advanced knowledge versions of the product rather than just features. Companies offer different tiers that represent varying levels of the tool’s competency, from basic automation to expert-level performance. Pricing reflects the sophistication and accuracy of the work delivered.

Companies implementing skill-based pricing: ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) vs. ChatGPT Pro ($200/month for higher capability)

Usage-Based / Tokenization

Another option emerging with AI tools, this model charges based on the value delivered, such as the number of hits, credits consumed, or output produced (e.g., minutes of video). This often supplements a base subscription.

Companies on a token-based model: Opus, a video clipping software, where you buy “tokens” to produce content.

Hybrid Models

Many companies combine these approaches into a hybrid model. For instance, a base monthly subscription might include a certain number of “tokens,” with additional tokens available for purchase.

How consumer psychology plays into SaaS pricing

Within these different pricing models, there are usually tiers of service offered.

Consumer psychology plays a crucial role in both how pricing models are perceived and how the tiers of your plan are chosen.

In Jon MacDonald’s book, Behind The Click, which explores the psychology behind user behavior, he says, “what feels true is often more real than what is actually true,” highlighting the power of emotional appeals over pure logic in decision-making.

People make quick decisions based on mental shortcuts. Pricing tiers should align with these shortcuts rather than creating friction. “The less effort it takes to process information, the easier we can make decisions and move on to the next task,” says Jon.

To better understand the connection between consumer psychology and SaaS pricing, consider these principles.

Key Psychological Principles in SaaS Pricing

• Anchoring Bias
  • Meaning: People overly rely on the first piece of information they encounter (the “anchor”) when making subsequent decisions.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: The initial price presented, or the first tier a user sees, can heavily influence their perception of value for all other tiers. Companies should carefully consider which tier to highlight first. Avoid leading with discounts if the goal is to establish premium value.
• Priming Effect
  • Meaning: Subtle cues (words, images) can influence subsequent thoughts and actions.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: The language, imagery, and overall design of a pricing page can introduce or “prime” customers to associate certain emotions or benefits with different tiers. For example, using visuals of a simplified workflow for a basic tier and a thriving, collaborative team for an enterprise tier.
• “Bye-Now” Effect
  • Meaning: Merely reading the word “bye” can subconsciously nudge people to think of “buy.”
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: Although subtle, this suggests that carefully chosen words in calls to action or surrounding copy on pricing pages can have a minor,subliminal influence on conversion.
• Ikea Effect
  • Meaning: People feel more attached to items they’ve created or had a hand in assembling.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: If a SaaS product offers customization, highlighting how users can tailor features or workflows can increase their sense of ownership and commitment, making them more likely to subscribe and retain.
• Decision Fatigue
  • Meaning: The more decisions made, the more mentally drained one becomes, leading to poorer decisions.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: Limit the number of choices presented on a pricing page. Use clear distinctions between tiers, recommend a “most popular” option, and provide comparison charts that simplify complex information.
• Less-Is-Better Effect
  • Meaning: People might prefer a lower-quality item when presented alone, but their preference can flip when compared to better options.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: When presenting tiered options, strategically place a slightly less impressive (but still functional) tier next to a desired middle-tier option. This makes the middle tier appear more valuable and appealing.
• Decoy Effect
  • Meaning: Introducing a clearly inferior “decoy” option makes a target option seem more attractive.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: A common strategy is to offer three tiers: a basic, a slightly more expensive but much more valuable middle tier (the target), and a very expensive, feature-rich tier (the decoy). This nudges users towards the middle.
• Bundling Bias
  • Meaning: People tend to overvalue bundled packages, even if they don’t use all the components.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: Offer feature bundles or user bundles within tiers. This makes customers feel like they are getting more value, even if they don’t utilize every single element.
• Loss Aversion
  • Meaning: The pain of a loss is more intense than the joy of an equivalent gain.
  • Impact on SaaS Pricing: Emphasize what customers gain by choosing a higher tier, or what they avoid losing (e.g., time, efficiency) by upgrading. Guarantees and clear refund policies reduce the perceived risk of a “bad” purchase.

SaaS pricing strategies that convert

Here are a few ways you can start turning your new psychological knowledge into revenue via your pricing strategies.

Offer pricing tiers

The way you present your pricing tiers significantly influences user perception and choice. This is where choice architecture comes into play.

People tend to avoid extremes and gravitate towards the middle option. Offering three tiers —a low-priced, feature-limited option, a mid-priced, balanced option, and a high-priced, feature-rich option —often leads users to choose the middle tier. This is because it feels like a safe and reasonable compromise.

Prioritize the customer needs

Ultimately, the most effective SaaS pricing strategy is one that is tailored to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience.

Talk to your users, understand their pain points, and learn how they perceive the value of your product. Then, experiment with different pricing tiers and messaging to see what resonates best with your target audience.

The goal is to make the right decision for them as much of a no-brainer as possible. This means understanding what problems customers are trying to solve and how each tier addresses those problems.

Segment customers

Successful pricing tiers align with customer identity and use case psychology, not just feature differences. Adobe does this well by segmenting products and pricing based on three audiences: personal/at-home, student, and professional. These are the buckets of software you can choose from, and grouping them and the prices based on how you self-identify will support users in autonomously picking the right option.

Conduct a verb-scoring exercise

If you need competitive inspiration for how other SaaS companies are feature-gating their products, try a verb-scoring exercise. Though it is pricing strategy adjacent, understanding customer expectations based on competitors can help you decide what sort of pricing model or feature-gating strategy you’d like to adopt. When done correctly, verb-scoring can help you find ways to monetize, mitigate “free trial abuse,” and acquire new users.

Frame pricing

Don’t just give a total annual or monthly cost. Emphasize the savings for upgraded plans, slice the costs differently by showing how much it costs per day or per use, or compare plan outputs. By framing the pricing differently, you can help customers see why these plans matter.

Simplify choices

More isn’t always better, and that is especially true for pricing strategy. Reduce the number of decisions customers need to make. Curated collections, clear comparison charts, and simplified product descriptions within tiers can combat decision fatigue.

Leverage social proof

Show that others are successfully using your product and how they are benefiting from it. This includes customer testimonials, reviews, “bestseller” indicators, and even real-time purchase notifications.

Don’t ignore the details

Even subtle changes to your pricing can have a significant impact on user perception. Ending prices in .99 instead of .00 can make them seem significantly cheaper, even though the difference is minimal.

In some cases, removing the currency symbol (e.g., just “30” instead of “$30”) can make the price seem less salient and more appealing.

Finally, visually highlighting the plan that offers the best value can draw attention to it and increase its adoption rate. A badge or a different color can do wonders here.

Review your pricing strategy for more conversions

Successful SaaS pricing is a blend of art and science. By strategically applying the psychological principles and strategies outlined, SaaS companies can design pricing tiers that not only make economic sense but also resonate deeply with the human element of decision-making. Doing so logically leads to higher conversions and sustained customer loyalty.

Start by auditing your current pricing through a psychological lens. Are you creating clear choices without overwhelming options? Does your tier structure align with customer identity and use cases? Are you leveraging social proof and strategic framing?

When you have some ideas for improvement, test them with your users to see what should be implemented. And if you’re looking for other monetization strategies, get in touch.

The post The Psychology Behind Successful SaaS Pricing appeared first on The Good.

Drawing from those years of experience improving SaaS platforms, we’ve identified and addressed form fatigue across various products. In this article, we’ll show you how to uncover and fix it effectively.

Keep reading to learn:

• Research methods for uncovering form fatigue
• User behavior patterns that indicate your users suffer from form fatigue
• Actionable strategies to improve form fatigue and increase conversions

What is form fatigue?

Form fatigue occurs when a user gets frustrated and/or exhausted by the complexity or length of a digital form. The poor design of the form directly contributes to this sense of fatigue and causes them to abandon.

Psychologically, users are conditioned to prefer experiences that require minimal cognitive effort. We want experiences that accomplish our goals simply and quickly. When a user experience does not meet those instincts, conversion rates drop.

Form fatigue is typically caused by things like:

• Content fatigue: When excessive textual/visual content on a page overwhelms users, hindering their ability to find relevant content for successful task completion.
• Heavy cognitive load: When undue mental effort is required to accomplish a task, causing analysis paralysis or frustration, leading to abandonment.
• High interaction cost: When a task or interaction requires significant time and/or effort to accomplish, possibly creating frustration and resulting in abandonment.

How to identify form fatigue

When working on a product day in and day out, you might be too close to the forms to know if fatigue is happening. That is where research can help.

Getting an external, real user perspective can expose things like content fatigue, heavy cognitive load, or high interaction cost in your forms.

So, the best way to identify form fatigue is through user research. While there are plenty of methods, the best for this particular scenario include:

• Session recordings
• Heatmaps
• Scroll maps
• Click maps
• User tests

With your raw data in hand, look out for some specific patterns that might indicate form fatigue:

• Scanning: A user scrolls over content (text or images) at a higher scroll rate on mobile, while on desktop they might hover over some words or phrases, or completely skip over content altogether.
• Halted Scrolling: The user pauses on the site to possibly engage with content/reorient themselves or this pause may indicate that the user perceives a false bottom.
• U-turns: When a user back navigates to the previous page they were just on, using either breadcrumbs or the back button.

These research patterns can point to moments when users are experiencing form fatigue and the digital experience can be optimized.

7 ways to prevent form fatigue

If you suspect form fatigue or uncover evidence of it in your research, don’t fret. There is plenty you can do to fix it. For companies building new forms, these tips can also be used to prevent form fatigue in the first place.

1. Execute the 10 principles of good form design

The first, and arguably the most important, way to limit form fatigue is to understand and act on the principles of good form design. Website forms are one of your most important onsite elements. They are the crux of a user’s path to conversion.

Bad form design can cause users to drop off during critical conversion opportunities, leaving them frustrated or confused, while great form design creates a seamless user experience that can increase conversion rates and leave users feeling excited about a product or company.

These are the ten established form design principles to help you create better experiences:

1. Priming: Prepare users by setting clear expectations about the form’s purpose, length, and benefits before they begin.
2. Error Prevention: Design forms to minimize user mistakes by using constraints, clear labels, and smart defaults.
3. Error Recovery: Make it easy for users to identify, understand, and fix errors with real-time validation and clear messaging.
4. Feedback: Provide immediate, actionable responses to user inputs to build confidence and guide progression.
5. Proximity: Group related fields together logically to make forms easier to navigate and process mentally.
6. Convention: Follow familiar design patterns to ensure users can complete the form intuitively without unnecessary friction.
7. Momentum: Encourage users to keep going by visually or textually reinforcing their progress through the form.
8. Proof: Build trust and reduce hesitation with evidence like security assurances, testimonials, or recognizable logos.
9. Demonstrated Value: Highlight the benefits of completing the form so users feel their effort is worthwhile.
10. Perceived Effort Level: Design forms to appear simple and manageable by minimizing visible fields and breaking longer forms into steps.

To learn more, we explore these principles and include 32 good form design examples in this companion article.

2. Ask for minimal information upfront

In research and testing for clients, we have found that asking for less information upfront may help to prevent form fatigue and in turn, increase initial registrations. The highest converting forms ask for only the necessary information in order to register, saving additional information for post-registration. That could be as little as just the email or include name and other essential information.

Once the user is registered, they can be guided through additional steps to help personalize the account to their needs, for example, more personal information, settings, shipping preferences, choosing a plan, adding orders, etc.

3. Reduce form length perception

For forms that can’t reduce the information required, research shows users’ perception of form length can be as important as the actual length.

You can reduce perceived effort with strategies like:

• Chunking forms into steps: Break longer forms into smaller, manageable sections and use clear step titles (e.g., “Step 1: Account Details”).
• Collapsible sections: Use collapsible form fields to make the interface less overwhelming while still providing access to all necessary fields.
• Auto-advance fields: Automatically move users to the next field when input is complete (e.g., credit card information split into boxes).

4. Make clear suggestions

Simplify decision-making by limiting options and highlighting recommended choices. You can use autofill and predictive text to reduce manual input and create an intuitive, logical flow that guides users naturally through the form.

5. Optimize for mobile or desktop

At this point, we shouldn’t even have to say it, but you’d be surprised how often teams forget to tailor the experience for the correct device. Form fatigue is exasperated when the design doesn’t function on the user interface being navigated. The design should adapt for mobile or desktop users, regardless of whether you are an app-first or desktop-first product.

One essential way to do this is by adjusting keyboard inputs. For example, when a field is asking for a zip code or phone number, default to the numeric keyboard on mobile to make it as simple as possible to fill out the form.

6. Use gamification to entertain

Gamifying the form-filling experience can motivate users to complete it. So, when you have an extensive form that needs filling and can’t be simplified, add elements like milestones, progress rewards, and personal messages to keep users entertained and motivated. Celebrate small wins when users complete sections and consider unlocking discounts, offers, or badges as users complete each step. It’s hard to be fatigued when you’re having fun.

7. Leverage post-signup emails

Preventing form fatigue can also happen by supplementing information in other ways. Use post-signup emails to collect information that isn’t imperative to registration. For example, a user’s birthday could come in handy for rewards later on, but it is better to collect it post-signup to prevent form fatigue.

Additionally, the email body can link the user to connect new apps to their account, access more discounts, watch tutorials, download resources, or contact their team.

Many SaaS companies also send emails from a real person to encourage users to respond if they have questions or need help. These personal follow-ups can also help recapture users who abandon the form initially.

To prevent form fatigue in UX design, focus on strategies that simplify and streamline the user’s form-filling experience. Remember, the goal is to make form completion feel easy and painless for the user.

Ready to eliminate form fatigue and boost conversions?

Form fatigue can quietly undermine your UX efforts, leading to missed conversions and frustrated users. However, with thoughtful research, clear design principles, and actionable strategies, you can create forms that not only engage users but also encourage them to complete the journey.

At The Good, we specialize in helping businesses like yours eliminate friction and create digital experiences that drive results. See this form improvement example from our work with Helium 10.

If you’re ready to optimize your forms and increase conversions, reach out to our team today. Let’s work together to turn your users into loyal customers.

The post A Guide For Preventing Form Fatigue To Increase Conversions & Improve UX appeared first on The Good.

So, once you acquire a new customer, it’s crucial you deliver the value and user experience to keep them around. This is the whole point of the product-led growth (PLG) movement and is usually a major optimization focus. Make the product so good that they can’t imagine life without it.

But, even though we believe wholeheartedly in PLG, it’s naively idealistic to assume you’ll never send a customer to the brink of cancellation on your product experience alone. So, another lever you can pull to reduce churn is adding or optimizing a cancellation flow.

Rather than approaching a customer who is looking to cancel as a lost cause, take it as an opportunity to listen to their needs and finally address them with the right experience or offer.

There are plenty of SaaS companies out there that are already getting it right. In our work with clients, we’ve researched and reviewed hundreds of cancellation flows and analyzed them to determine what works to reduce churn. We’ve also conducted rapid tests to validate our ideas.

In this article, we’re opening the box on these learnings to show you what the best SaaS cancellation flows have in common and what really saves users within the online cancellation journey. Make the most of that sunk CAC, and let’s optimize your flow.

What is a cancellation flow?

A SaaS cancellation flow is the process that guides users through the steps to cancel their subscription or account for a software tool. It typically takes place while the user is logged into their account and includes multiple steps that gather data/feedback about their experience and offer alternatives or incentives with the goal of retention.

The cancellation journey can happen either on-site or in-app, depending on the tool. Either way, it typically follows a flow of:

• The user navigates to their profile/dashboard and clicks ‘cancel’
• They are prompted to choose a reason and sometimes a sub-reason for cancellation
• The tool offers some sort of product switch/downgrade offer
• The user either accepts the offer or proceeds to cancel
• Post-cancellation, the tool typically sends a follow-up confirming cancellation

For product teams, the cancellation journey can offer rich insights into what your customers value and what is missing from your product experience. The ‘reason for canceling’ along with the user profile data can paint a clear picture of where you might need to focus optimization efforts.

When to implement or optimize a cancellation flow

Beyond being good practice to review your digital journey regularly, there are some additional events that should prompt you to focus on the cancellation flow:

• High churn rates: If significant numbers of customers are turning over, it is probably time to address your cancellation flow. Review or add a step that collects feedback on why they are leaving.
• Customer feedback gaps: If you are collecting customer feedback but aren’t getting answers about why they’re leaving, a cancellation flow can help gather insights into customer dissatisfaction.
• Regulatory compliance: As your business scales, you need to ensure continued compliance with regulations like GDPR. Leveraging a clear cancellation process where users can opt-out is not only good practice but also a requirement in most places.
• New product launches or changes: If a company is launching new features or making significant changes to its service, a cancellation flow can gather early feedback on customer reactions and find ways to ease the transition.

What the best cancellation flows have in common (with examples)

From dashboard interactions to post-cancellation follow-ups, effective cancellation flows share common strategies for reducing churn.

Let’s break this down phase by phase, with real-world examples to inspire your optimization efforts.

Phase 1: Before initiating cancellation

The dashboard is the first line of defense against churn. Here’s what works:

• Reinforce the benefits of being a subscriber with compelling content.
  • Highlight subscription benefits like exclusive features.
  • Showcase features the user isn’t engaging with.
• Offer easy ways to solve common issues before users cancel
  • Let users validate their subscription status without clicking cancel
  • Show solutions to common technical issues
• Tailor the dashboard to the type of user
  • Require users with high cancellation intent to scroll through value-focused content before clicking cancel.
  • Give users with limited paid features the opportunity to upgrade from the dashboard.
  • For mid-funnel users, share options to downgrade their plan or, at minimum, show less expensive plan options.
• Provide alternatives to cancellation.
  • Offer compelling ways to manage their subscriptions that are not cancellation: pause, skip, snooze, report an issue, remind me later, etc.

Example: Canva value-focused dashboard

Canva is an online graphic design tool that lets users create visuals like social posts, posters, presentations, and more.

The Canva dashboard for premium users focuses on all the benefits and opportunities to use the tool. It includes new features, drops, and changes. It highlights where users aren’t making the most of their subscription ‘Star designs’ or ‘remove backgrounds’ as CTAs are benefits-focused. This keeps users engaged and always finding new value in the product.

Example: Opus’ clear subscription status and plan management options

Opus is an AI video repurposing tool that clips and captions long-form videos into short-form content.

Along with having quick reminders about how to use the tool on the main dashboard log-in (‘turn long videos into viral shorts’ and ‘add captions only’), once a user clicks on the ‘Subscription’ button, there is a clear overview of current plan status and management options. Users are presented with options to change their plan, add more packs, and review all of the features of their current subscription, all before the cancel button.

Phase 2: During the cancellation flow

Once users start the cancellation flow, the goal shifts to retaining them through clear communication and targeted offers. Key strategies include:

• Personalize offers based on the reason for canceling
  • For users who cite “too expensive” as a reason for canceling, an offer or discount is presented to appeal to their price sensitivity.
  • For users who cite “don’t use the tool,” an alternative to cancellation is presented (like pause, snooze, etc.)
• Emphasize the value users will lose if they cancel
  • Show the subscriber exclusive benefits to which they will lose access.
  • Remind free trial users of what they are giving up on by canceling their subscription before the trial ends.
• Differentiate the final cancellation step from the rest of the flow
  • Emphasize what the user is about to lose.
  • Ensure it’s visually distinct from the rest of the cancellation journey in messaging and design, instilling a sense of missing out and finality.

Example: Rocket Money engaging flow with multiple downgrade options

Rocket Money is a budgeting app that analyzes users’ bills and spending so they can find places to save.

In the cancellation flow, the tool offers multiple save tactics, including pick your own pricing, valuable features that haven’t been used (‘get your credit report’), and clear opportunities to reactivate post-cancellation.

Phase 3: After cancellation

Even after cancellation, there’s a chance to re-engage users. Effective post-cancellation strategies include:

• Sending emails highlighting new features or exclusive offers.
• Using the dashboard as a reactivation hub for canceled subscribers or free-tier users.

Example: Audible re-engagement offers after cancellation

Audible is an audiobook app from Amazon that allows users to purchase and listen to a library of books.

After canceling an account, a user is redirected to their dashboard, which clearly shows when they have their subscription, a special offer to reactivate the subscription, and recommended books that would interest the user.

Example: Evernote re-engagement offers after cancellation

Evernote is a task management and note-taking app that can be used as a virtual notebook.

Post-cancellation, Evernote sends an email letting the user know about new features: Evernote now syncs with Microsoft Outlook Calendar. The user is offered a week of Evernote Professional to try out the feature.

Example: Grammarly ‘Premium Update’ Weekly Emails

Grammarly is a cloud-based writing assistant that checks grammar, spelling, and more for users.

Grammarly Premium users receive a weekly ‘premium update’ email with statistics about their usage, writing, and productivity. The bottom of the email shows the features you are using and what you are missing. Post-cancellation, users continue to receive these emails until their original subscription period is up. This keeps the value in front of them and reminds them what they will miss out on when their subscription ends.

Reducing churn goes beyond an optimized cancellation flow

Optimizing your cancellation flow is only one part of the churn-reduction equation. The insights gathered—such as common reasons for canceling—can guide broader improvements in your customer experience.

Leverage surveys/customer service data to understand why people are canceling, their profiles, and when they drop off. Analyze the reasons for cancellations and retention rate data to find out why they are dropping off and optimize the experience long before they even get to the point of cancellation.

To reduce churn effectively, focus on:

• Transparency and ease of cancellation
• Feedback collection via short exit surveys
• Personalized retention offers
• Data-driven insights & continuous optimization

If you need support optimizing your cancellation flow or beyond, get in touch with our team at The Good. We operate as your fractional product team and can pinpoint opportunities you’d otherwise miss out on.

The post Reduce Churn: What The Best SaaS Cancellation Flows Have In Common appeared first on The Good.

While strong user acquisition metrics are traditionally the result of a blend of marketing spend, funnel optimization, and a little luck, building your user base one acquisition at a time can feel daunting—and it’s not the most sustainable way to increase user counts.

On the other end of the spectrum, traditional “sales-led” organizations don’t have to have large user counts to secure revenue. They build their roadmaps based on the needs of enterprises, let the sales team connect, and secure large contracts if all goes well. But sales motions require talent, time, and a host of mechanisms that many SaaS startups aren’t yet ready to tackle—despite the promises of high-value, multi-year contracts.

But stopping short of an enterprise motion, B2C software can struggle to find revenue. Without a way to expand existing accounts, the cost of acquisition (CAC) will remain high, finding new customers will be a pain, and your software product will never achieve the 10-15x multiples common for B2B software.

So, how do we increase revenues and lower CAC while stopping short of chasing the enterprise audience?

Enter: growth loops.

A growth loop is a compounding referral motion that leverages existing users to grow your user base through referrals. Referrals help keep marketing expenses low and increase the potential value of every new user.

In this article, we’ll explore how growth loops work and how to build them for long-term, exponential success.

The Fundamentals of Growth Loops

Growth loops (sometimes called referral loops) offer a fresh perspective on how SaaS products grow sustainably through network effects.

Growth loops work as self-sustaining systems, where the output from one cycle feeds back into the start, creating a compounding effect that drives long-term growth. It’s a repeating cycle of organic growth that creates long-term customer acquisition.

Let’s dig into what makes growth loops so effective.

What are Growth Loops?

Growth loops are self-reinforcing cycles where each action or user interaction within the product generates output that fuels the next growth cycle.

Don’t worry; it’s actually a lot less complicated than it sounds!

Think of a growth loop framework like a flywheel: Once it’s moving, it picks up speed and sustains momentum. For example, a user finds your product, interacts meaningfully, and creates content or engages in a way that attracts other users who repeat this cycle.

This is how products like Canva grow–each user has the potential to attract even more users.

Growth Loops vs. Funnels Key Differences

While marketing funnels have been a classic approach to visualizing growth, they only allow for linear growth.

Funnels break down growth into stages like acquisition, activation, and retention, but they miss reinvestment opportunities. You’re constantly pouring resources into the top, hoping that enough converts at the bottom.

In contrast, a viral growth loop leverages user actions to directly attract new users. This creates a cycle that spreads the product organically.

Let’s walk through how this works in practice with a classic example of one of the most successful growth loops: Dropbox.

1. User signs up: A user signs up for Dropbox to start storing and sharing their files.
2. Incentive to share: Dropbox offers the user an incentive – extra storage space – if they refer friends to join. This incentive not only appeals to initial users but also aligns with Dropbox’s product value (more space to store files).
3. User selects contacts: The user decides who to invite to Dropbox.
4. New user invite: Dropbox sends out referral invites via email or social media. (The platform makes this quick and easy).
5. New user signs up: The friend clicks on the invite link, creates their own Dropbox account, and gets additional storage as a sign-up reward. Now, they can share their own referral link.

Each new user has the same incentive to refer to others. Each participant drives a new cycle of user acquisition. This creates a compounding effect that leads to exponential growth.

Elena Verna, head of Growth at Dropbox, is a staunch advocate for growth loops, saying that “…failing to consider the dire need to connect [users] to a team and a company level value WILL sabotage your future growth.” To Verna, growth loops are critical for acquiring users at a scale more sustainable than selling B2C.

The beauty of a viral growth loop lies in its simplicity – it continuously fuels itself. This drastically reduces the need for costly acquisition channels like paid ads or direct marketing.

Improving Referral Rates with Growth Loops

Growth loops boost referral rates by making user acquisition part of the user journey. Each new user not only becomes a customer but also a potential referrer by making sharing a natural part of the user experience.

But this kind of experience requires three main components:

1. Incentives aligned with product value. Whatever users get in exchange for a referral must relate to the product’s primary value. Otherwise, they won’t be motivated to help.
2. Seamless sharing. Give users simple and clear buttons and links to facilitate sharing in ways that don’t interrupt their experience with the product. It must be effortless!
3. Social proof and visibility. Users need to see their friends and colleagues actively using the product. This visibility drives more referrals.

That being said, growth loops aren’t one-size-fits-all. Each growth loop serves different growth goals for your marketing strategy, and the most successful SaaS companies often identify and build around one or two loops depending on their needs. Here are some examples.

3 Examples of Growth Loops

1. Substack

Substack’s growth loop centers around content creation and subscriber engagement. It’s a highly scalable email marketing system where each subscriber is a method of attracting new subscribers.

Here’s how it works:

1. A writer creates and publishes a newsletter on Substack, either as free or paid content.
2. Active users read, engage with, share, and forward the newsletter to friends.
3. Shared content introduces new readers to the newsletter and to Substack itself. Interested readers subscribe to the newsletter. This grows the subscriber base and generates new opportunities for sharing.
4. As more subscribers engage and share, each user becomes a tool to attract new users.

2. DocuSign

DocuSign’s growth loop leverages the need for digital document signing. Every document sent for a signature serves as an introduction to the platform.

Here’s how it works:

1. A user uploads a document to DocuSign and sends it to recipients for signature.
2. Recipients receive an email with a link to the document. They review and sign without needing an account. This helps them experience the platform’s convenience.
3. Impressed, recipients often sign up for their own accounts to send and manage their own documents, especially if they frequently need to get things signed.
4. As new users send their own documents for signatures, they introduce even more users to the platform. Each document sent by a new user brings in additional recipients.

3. Canva

Here’s how it works:

1. After adding payment information, Canva asks ‘who is on your team?’
2. The user adds members to their team by entering their email address. The user is reminded they can have five users on their team for the price that they will already be paying, with the option to add extra members for $7.00 per person per month.
3. Asking for team members early in the signup increases the subscribers’ dependence on the tool and also introduces new users to Canva.

These three are just a sample of example growth loops in action, but you can see how these referral mechanisms naturally drive new users to the tool through the day-to-day actions of current users.

How to Implement Growth Loops

Building a strong growth loop that works consistently and scales with your company requires careful planning. Let’s take a high-level walk through the process.

1. Identify Your Value Proposition

Growth loops work best when they’re aligned with what makes your product compelling, so your first step is to clarify your offer.

Ask yourself: What core action do users find most valuable? What helps them realize the most value from your product?

2. Define Key User Actions and Outcomes

Next, outline the specific user actions that will drive your loop. These actions should lead to clear outcomes that benefit both the user and the growth loop. Map out each step in the loop to create a natural pathway to more engagement.

For instance, if your loop relies on collaboration, the primary action might be “inviting others to collaborate.” This action clearly benefits both the user and the potential user.

3. Build Incentives for Engagement and Sharing

Incorporate incentives that encourage users to take actions that reinforce the loop. These don’t have to be financial rewards. Sometimes, the product’s value is plenty, like in the case of Dropbox where users get more storage (the product’s primary value) for sharing. Closer alignment to the value will encourage more sharing.

4. Make Sharing Simple and Seamless

One of the most important factors in any growth loop is ease of use. If you want users to invite others or share content, it’s important to simplify the process as much as possible.

Integrate one-click invitations, social sharing options, or personalized links directly within the product. The goal is to reduce friction in the sharing process so it feels like a natural part of the customer journey.

5. Track, Measure, and Optimize

Growth loops seem simple, but they aren’t set-it-and-forget-it systems. They need to be monitored and optimized.

Start by defining your key metrics of the loop, such as referral rates or user activation. Monitor these metrics to identify bottlenecks and opportunities to improve. If a specific action isn’t driving the desired results, you may need to adjust the loop structure, incentives, or user experience.

Sustainable Growth Through Growth Loops

Growth loops aren’t just a trendy framework. They’re the key to creating a solid foundation of continuous growth. Unlike traditional funnel frameworks, growth loops turn each interaction into a chance to draw in new users. They can boost engagement and deepen retention in one continuous cycle.

Most importantly, they can fuel growth without constantly pouring money into acquisition.

Achieving the power of growth loops effectively, however, takes thoughtful planning and optimization. That’s where The Good’s Digital Experience Optimization Program comes in.

With our expertise in growth strategy and user behavior, we can help you identify, build, and fine-tune growth loops that are tailored to your product’s unique strengths and user base. Connect with us, and we’ll help you grow sustainably.

The post How to Improve Referral Rates with Growth Loops appeared first on The Good.

For McKenna Warren, Community Engagement Manager at GLDN, the answer is an emphatic “yes.”

GLDN, a jewelry company that views its products as a vehicle for social good, measures success in positive impact.

“I have studied the potential for the system of capitalism to be turned on its head and used for good,” says Warren. “The model of having a triple bottom line, people, planet, and profit, is the most effective system we have for social change at scale.”

The team at GLDN isn’t alone in their thinking. A growing group of businesses rigorously measure their social and environmental impact to the standard of B Corp certification (we at The Good are proud to be one of them!). What could once have been called a trend has transformed into a movement of professionals and customers alike who value the potential of making business a force for good.

Consumer Expectations are Shifting

The shift in focus to social and environmental good is paying off not just in karmic kudos but in measurable business outcomes. eCommerce brands with a social mission have experienced a disproportionate rate of growth compared to their neutral counterparts.

This is partially due to the shift in consumer expectations. One study estimates that 70% of consumers are concerned with how the brands they support address social and environmental issues.

GLDN’s own research agrees. Internal surveys show that their customers specifically appreciate GLDN’s intention with regard to environmental and social impact. “It continually rises to the surface that it is so important to customers. It’s the reason that a lot of people shop with GLDN over other brands,” says Warren.

For brands that do take an environmental or social approach, the key to connecting their mission to customer experience is in the end-to-end execution. “It’s one thing for a brand to sort of tack it on at the end and it’s another for it to be integrated from the beginning,” says Warren.

Whether it’s uncharacteristically using plastic wrap in your fulfillment process or using a tone-deaf campaign delivery, presenting your initiative and then violating your customers’ expectations in their shopping journey is a surefire way to break trust. It’s a pitfall that CEO and Founder of Monday Creative, Amanda Lee Smith, says can be avoided if brands 1) define their purpose and 2) make decisions based on it.

“I don’t think any brand should start talking to consumers until they know what their purpose and their pillars are,” says Smith.

For Smith, crafting a meaningful brand experience is about mapping every decision back to your values. Whether it’s content, an influencer relationship, or the box you deliver your goods in, defining how those decisions uphold your brand values is crucial. Moving forward without that clarity of vision, Smith says, is “a waste of money and energy.”

10 Ways to Embed your Mission Throughout your Brand Experience

For mission-driven brands, the key to earning and keeping trust is embedding brand values throughout the end-to-end customer experience. But how do top brands actually pull it off?

We interviewed practitioners at the epicenter of mission-driven ecommerce to learn how they embed brand values throughout the brand experience. Here are their 10 tips that help them stick the landing.

1. Participate in give-back programs

If you’re looking for a way to have a direct, measurable impact on causes you’re aligned with, consider standing up a Give Back program: directly committing a set percentage of annual profits to organizations that closely align with your values.

National certification programs offer a compelling level of transparency to give-back initiatives. Organizations like 1% for the Planet independently verify that participating companies give 1% of profits annually to environmental partner organizations.

However, you don’t have to be part of a certification program to participate in similar giving initiatives.

GLDN contributes a whopping 10% of profits annually to causes supporting liberation, education, and community building. “Partnering with nonprofits is proven to be one of the most effective ways to make change,” says Warren.

2. Be specific about your impact

Whether you’re investing in thoughtful manufacturing processes, circular production methods, or your employees’ quality of life, consumers appreciate specificity when it comes to sharing your impact. Take it from Maggie, Digital Strategist at The Good, who says “When talking about your impact, a little specificity goes a long way.”

In Maggie’s experience, it’s not enough to share the headline details, which usually don’t perform well in testing.

“When we’ve A/B tested phrases like ‘Ethical Production,’ we’ve noticed that they generally don’t perform as well as messages with more specificity. Qualitative surveys have shown us that users want brands to do the legwork—to share metrics that can validate the authenticity of their claims. How much landfill waste is diverted? What is the quality of life like for factory workers? We’ve learned that specificity in claims both honors the intelligence of your audience and shines a better light on the brand’s impact.”

Maggie advises that brands looking to share their impact start by finding the metrics they can quantify. Maybe that’s the amount of landfill waste diverted or the number of students you’ve impacted with your give-back programs. Whatever you land on, Maggie advises that “your audience will appreciate the specificity.”

3. Spotlight your purpose throughout your promotions calendar

If you’re looking for ways to center your values throughout your brand experience, consider taking a more purposeful approach to seasonal sales and promotions.

“We encourage our clients to not feel like they have to have a voice on everything.” Says Smith, who advises her clients to start by deciding which holidays to recognize. “There are brands that feel like they need to have a social post about every special day or movement. You can deeply care about a cause and also not be the voice of that cause.”

Opting out of holidays can be a powerful way to center your purpose. Outdoor retailer REI does just that when it comes to Black Friday. In 2015, at a time when no other large retailer had shut down on Black Friday, REI decided to pay their employees to take the day off and “OptOutside,” getting outdoors instead of participating in what REI CEO called “out of hand” Black Friday sales.

While the OptOutside approach aligns well with REI's mission, you don’t have to completely “opt out” to take a more purposeful approach. Jewelry with a purpose brand GLDN flips Black Friday on its head with a promotion they call Bright Friday.

In lieu of a sale on Black Friday, GLDN donates an additional $5 from each order to the First Nations Development Institute (FNDI), a non-profit working to improve economic conditions for Native Americans through grants, training, and other services.

“In a sea of sales and discounts and red text everywhere, it's always a breath of fresh air,” says Marissa Moore, GLDN’s Lead Brand Designer. “We get to focus on FNDI, celebrate them in the message, and really live out our values in the purest form possible—by taking this time that's so sales-oriented and profit-driven, and give back to something we all care about so passionately.”

Whether you’re opting out or reframing a holiday to match your purpose, Smith advises that brands get selective about which holidays, occasions, and current issues to incorporate into their message. “A promotions calendar is a really good way to double down on what you care about.”

4. Say something through the product itself

If you’re looking to work toward a mission, there is perhaps no better way to center that than in your product itself. Japanese camping brand Snow Peak is possibly the best example of that.

Snow Peak’s mission is to create “restorative outdoor experiences that alleviate the stresses of modern life.” But, their approach centers on a uniquely Japanese perspective.

Mike Anderson, Senior Brand Manager at Snow Peak, explains that the very idea that the outdoors is so separate from the self and is a place where comfort is not warranted is a Western framing.

“In the West, camping is like what you see in Calvin and Hobbes growing up. It's something that builds character. It's hardening to the spirit.” Anderson says this is in direct contrast to Snow Peak’s Japanese perspective. “Japanese didn’t even have a word for nature for hundreds of years until the Portuguese came. Before that, the relationship with nature was so close that they didn't really have a word for it.”

Aligned with that framing, Snow Peak’s products are intentionally designed to enhance, rather than detract from, the experience of being outdoors. It’s why you won’t see any high-visibility orange or green tents in a Snow Peak showroom, which Anderson says is all tied back to the mission. “We're trying to help people just find some calm and be inspired to spend time in nature.”

5. Sprinkle brand messaging throughout the website—not just on the Homepage or About Us pages

One thing is common among the brands we work with, and I’m guessing it’s true for you as well: very few visitors ever make it to the “About Us” page. What’s more, for many ecommerce brands, a large percentage of visitors may never even make it to the homepage.

If you’re doing any kind of Google or Bing shopping bidding, it’s common for site visitors from those cost-per-click channels to never actually visit the homepage and either convert or abandon after visiting only the product page.

In practical terms, this means that all the homepage real estate that your marketing team and C-suite fight over—the homepage hero banner and mission statements—likely aren’t seen by a large portion of your audience. While it might be disappointing to learn that your audience is missing out on all that curated content, we believe knowledge is power, and you can use this information for good.

GLDN has leveraged this pattern to improve conversion rates for product page visitors. The Good’s Digital Strategist Sumita Paulson explains, “When we performed our audit of the site, we found that GLDN had social impact messaging on some pages, but not really present on product pages, especially above the fold.”

Paulson explains that for a brand like GLDN, she wanted to leverage that unique approach to communicate quality and purpose. “Social impact is baked into the product from how they hand make it to where the revenue goes. There’s a lot of care put in, so we started by featuring their efforts throughout the product page, and it won spectacularly.”

“We were pretty shocked at how just making that message more visible resulted in higher engagement, higher conversion, and a 12% increase in adds to cart,” says GLDN’s Marissa Moore.

Paulsen explains that the solution is simple, but it wouldn’t necessarily work for all brands. “I think there’s this perception of experimenters always adding things to a page. Our approach is not that. In general, we take a ‘less is more’ approach to optimization. But in this case, GLDN’s mission is so baked into the brand experience that we felt it was missing at the product page level.”

Moore cautions that simply messaging your stances on social issues isn’t enough to overcome a poor product offering, but it can be the deciding factor for visitors choosing between yours and a competitive product. “It’s not their first thing driving a purchase decision, but ultimately, it’s that extra little bit that would push them over the edge with us versus one of our competitors,” says Moore.

6. Educate customers with a faucet, not a firehose

For brands with social impact at their core, it can be hard to clearly communicate social impact throughout the website without overdoing it. You have to make sure it is “woven throughout the ethos,” as Marissa Moore of GLDN puts it, but too much of a good thing can be counterproductive.

How do you find the right balance and communicate your purpose if you’re committed to causes like environmental impact, empowering women and girls, and Indigenous sovereignty, among others?

For companies like GLDN that affect change through a mix of approaches, they’ve learned that not every touchpoint is suitable for every message. “What we've begun to discover is that different platforms are the right place for different messages,” says Warren. Rather than sharing their entire approach in each communication, GLDN highlights their intentionality in a slow drip—throughout the customer journey. They share women’s empowerment messages on social media while reserving their nuanced approach to environmentalism for the shopping experience.

For brands with a similarly matrixed approach, it might be wise to consider when and where certain parts of your mission are best communicated. The slow drip approach assures your brand story unfolds elegantly over the course of the brand experience, rather than overwhelming users on first look.

7. Use collaborations to bring awareness of the causes you care about

If you’re looking for ways to raise money, increase awareness, and inspire excitement for sister causes that matter to you, consider a product collaboration.

Pendleton Woolen Mills has been doing just that with its National Parks Collection since 1916. The year the National Parks Service was born, so too was Pendleton’s first National Parks blanket. What started as a collection of blankets, each named after an iconic national park, has expanded into the National Parks Collection, which now includes apparel and accessories. But the collection is more than the product itself. The National Park Collection’s profits go back to the nonprofit’s namesake, which to-date totals more than $1.7 million.

Again, every collaboration is an opportunity to highlight the causes you care about, but it’s important to inform your customers about the specific ways you contribute.

“When we started working with Pendleton, we discovered that brand awareness was strong on the West Coast, but elsewhere in the country we had a long way to go to inform shoppers about their unique history and approach,” says The Good’s Strategist, Sumita Paulson. “We tested our way into a message that not only educated customers about the National Parks, but highlighted the dollars raised for the charity. We found that it not only improved consumers’ brand perception, but it also increased purchases by 9%.”

8. Say more with imagery

If you are producing original imagery for your brand, how does the approach highlight your brand values? Smith says being intentional about the art direction can be the key way to connect the dots for your audience. “That is where the mission should shine through.”

From Patagonia making feature-length films about dam removal to a small technical clothing brand showing their product in use, Smith contends that brands should ditch the studio images and let their campaign strategy say something more.

“That's your core opportunity to speak to who you are. If you're an apparel brand and you have a purpose, it shouldn't just be your clothes on the white background. How can you tie in your purpose?”

Smith highlights her project for the original Canadian camping brand Woods as an example. Her strategy was to nod to their heritage by leveraging a farm-style setting and graphic treatments borrowed from the brand archives. “We were really able to shine the light on their history. It was all about that original 1800s heritage.”

9. Invest in community-building experiences

If your community has a shared interest, how do you feed their fire? For Snow Peak, fostering a community is perhaps what they do best. Although they are beloved for their intentional product design, Senior Brand Manager Mike Anderson insists that when it comes to Snow Peak’s values, design is secondary to the community around it.

“We hold our audience above everything else. They are what makes the brand special, so we're constantly investing in experiences that help enable and foster that connectivity in our community.”

Snow Peak has been following through on this for years with experiences like Snow Peak Way (their annual camping festival), opening Takibi, a Japanese restaurant in the heart of NW Portland, and expanding their North American presence with their impressive showroom. But there is perhaps no more meaningful way to experience the Snow Peak way than with their most recent activation: the Long Beach Campfield.

The Campfield is a thoughtful campsite on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula that offers campers a way to relax and enjoy the restorative properties of nature and a chance to try Snow Peak gear through rentals and an on-premises retail experience. It’s an on-brand way for people to grow in community and experience firsthand how Snow Peak products can enhance the outdoors.

10. Get intentional with packaging & fulfillment

What do physical touchpoints like packaging, packing materials, and mailers say about your brand?

While it’s true that fulfillment leaves a lasting impression, Smith contends that it doesn't mean you need to go all-out with unnecessary add-ons. Precisely because the unboxing experience is so important, she believes it can be a pivotal moment to cement your brand values with your customers.

“How many times have you gotten a package from somewhere and thought, ‘How many boxes? Why is this tiny thing in a giant box with all of these packing chips and blow-up cellophane?’”

Smith evaluates a brand’s fulfillment and packaging in the course of any rebranding project. “It’s where we can have the biggest impact on our clients.”

Smith recommends brands looking to go green choose natural tape that biodegrades and find ways to eliminate some of these “extras” like postcards and stickers. By adopting recycled packing materials and a minimal waste approach, Smith insists that the added cost of going green is usually quite minimal. “Pricing out both the sustainable option and comparing with the less sustainable option, they are usually not as dramatically different as you might think.”

Aside from being the better choice for the planet, going minimal with pack-and-ship decisions can have a strategic upside as well. Take, for example, Noah Clothing. Noah doesn’t claim to be a completely sustainable company, saying, “True sustainability would mean turning back the clock on over a century of clothing consumption and production trends.” Yet their outspoken founder’s stance on the sustainability problem in fashion combined with their packaging that “sucks” have together earned the brand a favorable reputation within the industry.

Noah opts for some of the most un-fancy packaging in ecommerce: a simple recycled envelope and a postcard to remind the recipient that 30% of municipal waste comes from packing materials.

Grow Your Business, Grow Your Impact

Taking inspiration from peers with similar values is sure to set you on the right path, and then you can carve your own unique road to success.

Showcasing your social and environmental initiatives will build trust and loyalty with your shoppers… especially when they connect with your mission. And the best part? When you grow your business, you can grow your impact and achieve the shared goal of using “business as a force for good.”

If you’re interested in tailored recommendations on how to put these ideas into action for your ecommerce brand, get in touch with our team. Your social initiatives and your shoppers are unique to your business and deserve an individual approach.

The post 10 Ways To Center Social Impact Throughout The Ecommerce Customer Journey appeared first on The Good.

There is nothing more frustrating than feeling like a company is giving you the bait and switch. In user experience design, we call this poor priming and expectation-setting, and it is a violation of one of the six Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization.

Heuristics, by definition, are mental shortcuts used to solve problems quickly and effectively. They allow people to speed up analysis and make informed, efficient decisions. Knowing our brains are wired to take shortcuts and make quick decisions, you can imagine how heuristics play a crucial role in how customers navigate and perceive digital experiences.

Digital experiences that violate user heuristics are bad for users and bad for business. So, let’s take a look at how to address the priming and expectation-setting heuristic in a way that improves the user experience.

What is the priming and expectation-setting heuristic?

Priming and expectation setting is a heuristic that sets users up for success by clarifying how the interface will perform, indicating what actions users should take, and managing user expectations.

Digital experiences that adhere to this heuristic may apply a tactic like explicitly mentioning free shipping early in the journey to reduce cart abandonment rates or sharing estimated delivery dates to manage customer expectations.

Priming and expectation setting is one of the six Heuristics of Digital Experience Optimization developed by our team at The Good. The full list includes:

1. Priming & Expectation Setting
2. Trust & Authority
3. Ease
4. Benefits & Unique Selling Points
5. Directional Guidance
6. Incentives

These heuristics theme common optimization issues and opportunities. Analyzing your digital experience with heuristics in mind keeps the user at the center of analyses and guides your strategy toward building journeys that feel familiar, do what they say, and function intuitively.

Identify violations of this heuristic with user research patterns

Before you can start to address any heuristic to improve the digital experience, you have to understand if, where, and when users are getting stuck.

To understand if your digital experience is violating the priming and expectation-setting heuristic, a great place to start is user research. Set goals, pick the right method for your needs, and start talking to your users (or observing their behavior).

As you analyze the research, look for patterns including:

• Rage clicks: User clicks on an element multiple times without getting the desired or expected result. Usually, this signifies unclear system status, meaning your user doesn’t provide enough cues, semantics, or timely feedback to keep users informed.
• Low directness: Users can be seen scrolling through the site looking for specific content, struggling to find items of interest, and possibly hesitating on the site, suggesting uncertainty. This can be a sign of unmet expectations, meaning your system’s interactions, navigation, or language don’t match users’ mental models of real-world or site conventions.
• Price sensitivity: Users express concern about product or shipping prices, potentially leading them to abandon. This often indicates poor priming because of unclear or missing elements in the interface that typically guide user behavior and inform them of what to expect.

The good news is once you identify the patterns, you can address them with tactics to improve priming and expectation setting. Doing so is an ethical way to improve customer sentiment and increase conversions.

Real-life examples of using priming and expectation-setting to improve the user experience

Most companies have a chance to improve priming and expectation setting across their digital journey. Here are a few real-world examples that can inspire your efforts to adhere more closely to the heuristic. You might see some pretty compelling rewards for your improvements.

Offline download delivery priming

We worked with the largest digital repair manual database, eManualOnline, to find opportunities to improve their on-site experience. Following similar recommendations as outlined above to identify violations of optimization heuristics, we conducted user testing. It revealed that users were confused about how eManualOnline delivers their manuals, as some are digital downloads and others are physical editions.

Because of the mixed delivery method messages throughout the site, customers felt a lack of trust when confronted with the website.

We decided to test out highlighting delivery methods to clarify any confusion and increase transactions. We A/B tested 2 variants: a control and a variant that made delivery methods clearer at various touchpoints.

The variant with clear delivery method language showed a 14% lift over the control. Clarifying access methods for offline downloads resulted in stronger purchase intent. This is a clear example of priming and expectation setting at work.

Permission priming in user onboarding

When onboarding a user to a new digital experience (app or desktop service), priming and expectation setting can strongly impact churn metrics.

Here’s a good example from Scan & Translate. It reminds users that in order to use the scan features and gain value from the app, they need to grant camera permissions to the system.

Preparing, or priming, a user before you ask permission to access their OS makes it more likely that they’ll comply with your request. This is vitally important because your product might not be able to provide value to the user without access.

Expectation-setting without compromising brand language

Residential furnishings brand, Knoll, has a range of uniquely crafted and handmade products. The care and detail that goes into each piece means longer lead times on shipping and delivery.

When we took on a project to improve their digital experience, we tested out adjusting their copy to better reflect the craftsmanship of their work.

Changing the wording from “Lead time: 8 weeks” messaging to “Made for you. Ships in 8 weeks” led to our biggest test win of the year in terms of revenue.

It created synergy between the brand’s needs (priming purchasers that shipment won’t happen for a while) and the customer’s needs (understanding why shipment won’t happen for a while). It also had the benefit of turning a challenge (long lead times) into a compelling conversion booster (custom-made).

Priming in form design

Priming is one of the first principles of form design. It keeps users on the path to form completion by clearly setting expectations and ensuring they don’t drop off due to surprises.

Priming in form design takes many forms but often is provided through progress bars. Adding this element tells the user what they can expect from the process during or before completion of the form, setting the expectation so that users come prepared to fully fill out the form.

See this example from Etsy. The company features a progress bar with clear labels to prime users about what to expect during the mobile checkout process.

To set expectations with a form, you can also be clear about the end result or value users receive upon completing the form. This can generate excitement for the product, motivating form completion.

The “Try Demo” button from ServiceNow, shown below, primes users to know what they can expect after they fill out the form. Users will get to demo the product and can also expect everything in the bulleted list to the left.

Using heuristics to theme your roadmap of opportunities

To transform the priming and expectation-setting heuristic into an actionable improvement opportunity for your digital property, consider building a strategic roadmap.

Leverage user research to identify common patterns indicating violation of the six Heuristics for Digital Experience Optimization. Prioritize those opportunities based on their potential for impacting KPIs. Then, develop a plan to test improvements with a theme-based roadmap.

Taking the time to really understand where users are getting stuck in your digital experience will set you up to make more efficient and impactful decisions.

Our team can support you on your journey through a custom Digital Experience Optimization Program. You’ll have access to an entire team of researchers, strategists, designers, and developers that will help remove violations of the priming and expectation-setting heuristic (and more).

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