By AJ Hall

YNOT – For decades, marketers have known lowering perceived risk increases sales. Whether a company offers a money-back guarantee or a free trial, can’t-lose propositions help turn shoppers into buyers.

The goal of a pay site is to attract visitors and convert them into paying customers, even when visitors don’t arrive intending to become paying customers. A solid tour combined with a solid trial area is a very powerful sales strategy.

The concept isn’t new. Trial areas have been around since the infancy of pay sites. You’ll find a low-priced three- or five-day trial option on most sites’ signup forms.

Timed trials are the norm. The premise is simple: A visitor joins for a specific number of days, gets to see everything inside the site, watch and/or download as many videos as they like and then decide if a full membership to the site is worth the money they are asked to spend. The problem with this is that it’s too easy to say no to a full-price upgrade, so most trial users don’t convert.

The modern alternative is a limited trial that restricts the amount of content guest users are allowed to access. The offer remains risk-free, but the trial member is locked out of the really good content until he decides to pay. You might choose to allow access only to photos; when a trial member clicks a video link, he or she is shown a page letting them know they must upgrade their membership for access to videos. Or maybe trial members can view only the first one or two video clips in each update. Perhaps a trial member is limited to one movie download per day, 10 per week, etc. Many different configurations can be tested to maximize trial sales and full sale conversions.

Something to consider with free trial areas is that you have a unique opportunity because you have a captive audience. By keeping a trial member on your site, you’re giving yourself more opportunities to sell to that individual. With a timed trial, the user’s trial period simply ends and they no longer have access to your site. You’re relying on them to come back or join during the trial period. You’re giving yourself a very small chance of converting that member.

On the other hand, if someone has access to download one high-quality video per day or week, there’s a high probability that user will come back for more the following week.

Limited-feature trials present a win-win scenario: The member is happy because there are no surprises and they’re getting something for free (or cheap) with virtually no risk. At the same time, the website’s owner has the ability to bait and tease the trial member in order to convince them to purchase a membership or upgrade what they have.

We’ve been installing limited trial areas for Elevated X customers for the past four years, with great results. Limited trials are so effective that it’s really surprising more sites aren’t using them. Sites that don’t use these tools are missing out on sales.

Whether you run your sites using an adult content-management system that provides the ability to offer trial scenarios or you choose to build trial areas by hand, this is a powerful sales tool that every pay site owner can add to his or her bag of tricks.

AJ Hall is a 12-year adult industry veteran and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Elevated X Inc., a provider of popular adult CMS software for the online adult entertainment industry. Hall has spoken at industry trade shows and is a contributing writer for several trade publications. Elevated X powers more than 2,000 leading adult sites, has been nominated for industry awards six times and won the 2012 XBIZ Award for Software Company of the Year.