Ask HN: What could be putting limit on user engagement?

[reallycurious]

My SaaS product extracts data from pdf files. Free trial gets users 10 free extractions. Paying users get 100 jobs. User logs into dashboard, uploads pdf, and downloads the extracted data. That is one job.

While observing 50 users so far I notice that the user engagement seems to terminate after they run the job for the first time. Even if it is successful. Some users run it a few more times but the result is the same, they leave and never come back or they come back run a job and leave again. Another observation is that 30 out of 50 users never created any jobs (they must label the pdf using the web app before extraction can happen, I explain how to do it in the demo video).

Even reaching out to all 50 users asking if I could help them, I got one reply. Here's what one of my user said

"Give that your subscription packages allow customers to run a certain number of jobs, it’d be important to me as a customer to know that I don’t waste jobs trying to figure out what data are captured every time and refining the same job until I get it right. "

Is limiting the free trial to 10 jobs per user be the cause of engagement terminating after running a few jobs? I reached out to the user to see how they would respond to having no limits.

Are people having trouble with just figuring out how to use the tool evidence by a over 60% inactivity? Whats more frustrating is that they do not respond to my email queries where I ask them if they need help.

I would like to study more about user engagements and creating a business model that will get users to engage with the product in order to reach a key activation metric to find value in the product.

[justintocci]

This sounds like you'd be better off without a free trial at all. Charge a reasonable fee for unlimited use for a day or two. That way people would feel like they're going to be able to do whatever they need because its unlimited, but you get some renumeration. Just my first thought. i hope you figure something out. Best of luck to you.

[reallycurious]

you mean like charge a $1 for 2 day trial of unlimited use?

or give 14 day trial before card is charged.

[justintocci]

nobody is going to put their Cc in to pay you one dollar. charge $20 for two days. no trial. charge up front. but honestly, you probably shouldn't be listening to me, i'm just thinking out loud

[byoung2]

Is this a service that people need on a regular basis, or is it just a once in a while thing? If it's the latter, that would explain it, people got what they needed and left. If they need this on a regular basis, they probably should find a way to get the data before it is put into a PDF rather than relying on extraction.

[reallycurious]

some people just need it for one time job others more regular. I guess for one time usage I should charge and for regular users require a credit card...but they will cancel it and extract as much as they want in the 14 day trial....

or I was thinking if it's a huge pdf file, charge per row of data extracted.