Paywall CTA and microcopy

TL;DR

• Never “Subscribe”. Use “Continue” or “Get started” — +30% for one client.
• Platform split: “Continue” wins on iOS, “Start free trial” wins on Android.
• Lifetime (one-time) purchase: “Unlock lifetime insights” beat “Get all features” and other variants.
• Put “No payment now” directly under the CTA when there’s a free trial: +30% for a client.
• Add the word “free” to a feature/offer: +11% conversion in one test.

Details

Verb choice. Nobody wants to “subscribe”; a client who used it switched to “Continue”/“Get started” and conversions rose 30%.¹ Continue also beat “Start free trial” on iOS, while “Start free trial” performed better on Android.²¹

Lifetime plans. For a one-time in-app purchase, four CTA variants were tested; “Unlock lifetime insights” had the most activations — “unlocking” feels rewarding, and “lifetime” reminds buyers they pay once, making the price feel smaller.³²

Reassurance microcopy. “No payment now” under the CTA (with a free trial) → +30% conversions for another client.¹

“Free”. Framing something as free (“buy a burger, get free fries”) lifted conversion 11% in one paywall test.¹

Keep the CTA above the fold and, on long paywalls, floating (Paywall content — sell the outcome and add context (long paywalls)).

Disagreements / caveats

• These are single-client results; wording effects vary by audience and locale — always A/B test.

See also

• How many plans to show and how to display prices

Footnotes

1. The Paywall Strategy That Increased Conversions by 56% @ 16:29 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. We’ve Tested 100s of Paywalls. Here’s What Actually Converts. @ 14:24 — Steve P. Young ↩ ↩²

3. We’ve Tested 100s of Paywalls. Here’s What Actually Converts. @ 13:27 — Steve P. Young ↩