A while ago I wrote on some of the ways of converting prospective customers into ex-prospective customers. Yesterday, I found this excellent post at Vitamin by Sam Nurmi on the same topic for pure online services: “Create an irresistible free trial for your app”.

His main points are:

• Signing up for a trial account should be easy and painless,
• Do not require trial users to enter their credit card information,
• Do not cripple the trial,
• Include a “highlight bonus.”

Sam does a really good job: if you’re an online kind of micro-ISV (a.k.a. a Web 2.0 company), read it.