The Setup
WordPress plugin companies have a specific conversion challenge. Users download the free plugin from WordPress.org, use it for months, maybe build an entire event calendar or member community on top of it. Then they hit a feature wall. The premium upgrade path is where the real revenue lives, but most plugin companies treat their pricing page like an afterthought.
This sprint was about that critical 30 seconds: the moment between “I need this feature” and “add to cart.” It’s not a lot of time to convince someone to pull out their credit card. The plugin’s pricing page had decent traffic—thousands of visits monthly—but the conversion rate was stuck around 2%. That’s the kind of number that keeps growth flat no matter how much traffic you send.
The team knew the conversion was weak. They just didn’t know why.
The Build
I ran a focused two-week sprint. Not a six-month optimization program. Not a pile of small-batch tests that would take forever to reach statistical significance. Two weeks: audit and hypothesis in week one, test and implement in week two.
The audit looked at the entire checkout funnel. Pricing page → plan selection → cart → checkout → confirmation. I dug into the usual suspects: too many plan options (they had five tiers), confusing feature comparison tables that made it hard to pick, a checkout flow that forced account creation before payment even happened.
But the real insight came from session recordings. I watched people scroll up and down the pricing page repeatedly. Compare plans. Scroll again. Compare again. Look at the feature chart. Scroll back up. They weren’t saying no to the price. They were saying no to the decision. The page was cognitively overloaded.
The Mess
The team wanted to A/B test everything. Different headlines, button colors, copy variations, you name it. I pushed back hard.
With the traffic they had, running five tests simultaneously would take two or three months to reach statistical significance. Meanwhile, the conversion stays stuck. I made them choose. Two changes, maximum. That’s it.
The first: simplify the pricing table from five tiers to three. Keep the popular ones, kill the edge cases.
The second: remove account creation from the checkout flow. Let people pay first, create an account after. A lot less friction.
The team was nervous about cutting two tiers. “What about the users who want the starter plan?” I pulled the numbers. The starter plan had a 0.8% conversion rate. Eight per thousand. Those users weren’t paying. They were never going to pay. Cutting them freed up cognitive load for the people who actually were ready to buy.
The Result
Both changes went live mid-sprint. Three weeks later, the numbers came back.
Conversion rate jumped from 2.1% to 3.4%. A 62% improvement. The three-tier layout cut time-on-page significantly—less scrolling, faster decisions. Removing the account-creation step before checkout dropped cart abandonment by 23%.
The two killed tiers? Zero complaints. Nobody emailed asking where the starter plan went. The people who would’ve used those tiers either didn’t exist or weren’t valuable anyway.
The Takeaway
Most conversion problems aren’t about price. They’re about decision-making friction. Make the decision easier and the conversion follows.
That’s the whole thing. People don’t need cheaper options. They need clarity. They need you to get out of the way and let them say yes.
How It’s Built
Google Optimize for A/B testing (that was the tool at the time), Hotjar for session recordings, and a simple spreadsheet tracking daily conversion rates. No fancy dashboards. The insight came from watching real people make real decisions, not from staring at aggregate metrics.
Related: Playbook: CRO Sprint Checklist | Playbook: Website Audit Checklist