Handling Recurring Charge with Trial Period activation

[Daniel Ristic]

Hi,

I'm using the Shopify billing API to handle trial periods for my app. I would like to start trial after the app is actually inserted in the shop's template and not after the payment is accepted as it is the case right now.

To do that I was thinking about delaying the time the charge is activated by the app after the payment is confirmed (as explained in api docs). But I'm not sure it would affect the actual start of the trial period, as it is already announced on the charge approval dialog that is shown to the user prior to the charge activation:

As it's not very clear from the documentation, can someone tell me if delaying the payment activation would have any effect on the trial period?

Thanks.

[Edward Ocampo-Gooding]

Trials start from the date of charge activation, so yes, it will do what you want :)

[Daniel Ristic]

Thanks Edward, that's great!

This will allow me to offer my customers true days of trial where they actually use my app!

But then the content of the payment dialog is inaccurate, since it makes the assumption that the payment is gonna be activated by the app right away to calculate the end of trial date.

Is there a way to alter this message (or add further explanations), or even insert my own dialog in the install flow between the data request dialog and the payment dialog?

Thanks!

[Edward Ocampo-Gooding]

No. 

Honestly, I recommend just starting the trial normally. Unless you have data showing a significant increase in conversions because you’re delaying charging the customer, just do this normally.

[Daniel Ristic]

We don't have this kind of data but what we do have is an increasing number of potential customers that install our app and then uninstall it a few minutes after. When asking them why they've churned so quickly, we almost always get a variation of the same answer:

"Your app seems great, but I don't have the time right now/I don't know how to insert it on my template. Since I want to try it out properly, I don't want to waste days of trial."

In other words, people seem to think that uninstalling the app somehow freezes their days of trial and they can reinstall it later.

Since this confusion can lead to frustration for them and fewer conversions for us, I thought it needed either clarifications when explaining them how the trial works or adjustments to make this work like they expect it to.