When to ask for subscription payment

Question

We have a web-app that requires our users to register, get approved, and then begin using the service. We are requiring setting up subscription payments.

My question is when to ask for the subscription payment - during registration or after approval but before user can use the service? Curious if anyone has experience with this type of flow or know of any studies or research that can offer direction?

During registration? If so early in process or as a last step before submitting registration?

– Benefit: The User will be more aware of the payment requirement and can make determination to proceed at this point. Also registration, payment, and setup is all done at 1 time and when the user is approved they can immediately, without additional action, use the service.

– Downside: we are asking to set up payments before user can use the service (though of course we will not process charges until approval). There is also the possibility of user not being approved and we have already asked them for payment.

Or after approval? This would mean the user has already gone through inputting all their registration information, submitting, and then, once approved, in a subsequent session, are prompted to pay.

– Benefit is registration can be done without payment so theoretically registration is more frictionless and we don't set up payment before user can use the service.

– Concern: having registration type activity in separate sessions. User expectation not being set properly and they then decide to not follow through i.e. feel tricked after doing all the work of registering.

Our current thinking is to ask at the end of registration as a last step before submitting.

Answer 1

You asked for studies or research. Check out the following lightweight reading. I say "light" because although research is definitely involved, it's not cited:

• Check-out flow that uses BJ Fogg's motivation-ability-trigger work. I'm a fan of BJ Fogg's work.
• Amazon Merchant Tools, under Shipping/Billing. Guess where Amazon anticipates the highest drop-off?
• Tons of funny-and-painful critiques of how other companies handle onboarding. Learn vicariously from the design decisions of others?
• Plan to conduct some A|B tests. Regardless of what worked for others, each site performs differently, due to its unique mix of users, content, and context.

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I hope this helps you move forward a bit.