Last week, with a little bit of nerves I opened up my calendar to anyone from this newsletter who wanted to chat.
The 3 spots I offered up were booked within 7 minutes but was so excited by the quality of guests that I kept it open a little longer.
I’ve met 5 incredible people so far, building everything from AI sales agents to companies helping save hours on construction permits and people dedicated to improving customer loyalty with another 4 meetings next week.
My main takeaway? I absolutely love this and cannot wait to meet more of you :)
I haven’t opened up any slots so I can properly fulfil this week’s calls first but I’m confident I’ll be doing this again so will post another link next week. If you’d like to discuss anything from pricing, reducing churn to improving top of funnel I’d love to connect with you.
And a special thanks to Lihong, not many people typically provide feedback to newsletters but she provided some great ideas on companies to feature in future articles.
Now into the article…
Intro
It’s fair to say AI is all the rage right now, and incumbents, including Adobe, have paid close attention managing to overcome incumbent bloat and release remarkable products like Adobe Firefly.Â
As a result you’ve likely seen a lot of marketing around AI products over the past 12 months. For good reason… Along with being a transformative technology enabling new, magical product features, using AI in sales and marketing copy has been shown to boost consumer’s Willingness to Pay by 17%.Â
This is largely the reason why Adobe has not only introduced AI products but it has become the core positioning around the Creative Suite.
And so let’s break down how Adobe is leveraging AI, and a whole host of other tricks to increase their average revenue per visit.Â
Adobe’s Homepage Design to Increase AOVÂ
When you first stop by the Adobe homepage it becomes very clear the value prop is focused on the bundle, instead of showing you their different products and allowing you to find the right product for your specific need.Â
By doing this they attempt to convert you on a £60/mo bundle instead of a £10-20/mo plan such as Photoshop.
However, despite their their very clear positioning around how Firefly (Adobe’s AI model) can help supercharge your creativity there’s several different CTAs on the homepage;
‘Free trial’. The main CTA and clearly the desired action.Â
‘See all plans’. Besides the Free Trial CTA but significantly less highlightedÂ
‘Start free trial’. Giving users the option to start a free trial for only Adobe Photoshop.Â
‘Get Adobe Express free’.Â
The problem with this is twofold: (1) multiple CTAs distract users from understanding what path they need to take, and (2) by providing options to start trials of lower LTV products (Photoshop and the free Adobe Express option vs the entire bundle) you’re nudging users to lower value actions.Â
This seems counterintuitive given their homepage’s main purpose is to sell the highest possible AOV product, not distract users and provide alternative options to lower priced products.Â
Now, curiously whilst product specific pages (e.g. Photoshop) show their starting price points clearly on the homepage this is not the case with their bundle. Why?
Whilst £20/mo may not be a sticking point for the majority of consumers, the starting price of their bundle, £57/mo, is likely a harder pill to swallow.Â
As a result Adobe instead decided to obfuscate this information until later in the checkout process when they hope you’ve developed enough sunk costs and can use even more expensive bundles to artificially anchor you to higher price points to make the basic bundle feel less painful.Â
Adobe’s Sign Up FormÂ
Looking at Adobe’s sign up flows is telling. Once you click on the ‘Free trial’ CTA, instead of showing you a payment details page and helping you get right into the product, Adobe tries to provide a tailored upsell to increase the customer LTV.
Adobe has a difficult job here as they’ve got a massive number of different products they could theoretically try and sell you, and not everyone may be ready to simply commit to their £52/mo bundle for the Creative Suite.Â
However, offering too many options is a dangerous path where users fall victim to Hick’s law, with too many options reducing conversion rates as a result of user confusion and their inability to confidently make a decision.Â
Instead, Adobe attempts to sell a single secondary product that is highly complementary, when I chose to start a trial for Photoshop they recommended Lightroom.Â
Additionally, Adobe understands that default selections are extremely powerful. They purposefully choose a small font size for the price and order the pricing tiers in a non-linear manner. The first psychological principle behind this move is that by using a small font it makes the perceived price smaller in the consumer’s eyes.Â
The second, and main benefit, is that it makes the price less obvious because Adobe is trying to trick you into subscribing to a more expensive plan.Â
By showing you the Lightroom + Photoshop package to the right of the Basic Photoshop package, you instantly assume the basic package on the left is the cheapest, despite actually being double the price, to try and trick you into a package you didn’t want.Â
On the next page we see similar dark patterns. Whilst Adobe laud the fact that Photoshop starts at £21.98/mo they forget to mention this is for their annual plan, billed monthly - likely because billing people £21.98 a month is less likely to result in chargebacks and payment failures vs a one-time charge. Choosing an actual monthly plan for Photoshop is £33/mo, 50% higher.
We’ve talked in depth about the importance of getting users to convert to annual plans, given the far lower churn rates and Adobe does this masterfully, but somewhat insidiously here.Â
The strengths of their design is that instead of showing you the traditional (25% off) they show you exactly how much you’ll pay per month if you commit to an annual plan vs the monthly plan (£21.98 vs £32.98).Â
However, Adobe have implemented 2 dark patterns here:Â
They’ve built a deliberately complex & obtuse pricing mechanism that is difficult to understand with their annual but monthly payments planÂ
They’re creating the illusion of choice as even though you may have deliberately chosen to pay extra for the flexibility of monthly there are extreme payment penalties if users try to cancelÂ
 "Should you cancel after 14 days, you'll be charged a lump sum of 50% of your remaining contractual obligation and your service will continue until the end of the month's billing period" Adobe Terms & Conditions
What does this mean?
If you cancel outside of the 14 cancellation period, say 3 weeks in and have ultimately decided it’s not worth it or you’ve been laid off and don’t need the software any more you’ll be charged for 6 months of your payment plan!Â
The final screen continues these blatant attempts to capture greater wallet share through less than moral means, by presenting you with supposed ‘curated trials’.Â
Whilst the idea that these are personally curated may seem flattering it begins to again appear insidious and commercially motivated once you realise they are the same for everyone and it is a disingenuous tactic to try and humanise the company.Â
That’s it for today folks, hope you enjoyed!
HB
The number of times I've seen this pop up in my feeds over the past few months is wild. I do wonder if the revenue they're retaining from these activities is worth the reputation hit. It feels like a department at Adobe was given a very specific target and then pursued it in the most ruthless possible way - without regard for how their actions would impact any other metrics.