Can fun, slightly unprofessional text be good for conversion rates?

[blacey]

With things like this, you can't let you personal persona dictate what you do. What you want and what your target audience want could be two separate things entirely. This is why I said you need to take your target audience into account.

[PatrickGriffith]

Good points.  The audience is mainly 18-35 year old males.  That being said, there are also a fair number of 45-55 year olds.

I suppose there is a lot of wiggle room between "Gold" and "Kick-Ass". Maybe I'll try to tone it down slightly while still being playful.

[blacey]

Smashing Magazine has a good article on price plans (granted its not about price plan names) but I thought it might be of benefit to you.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/13/pricing-tables-showcase-examples-and-best-practices/

[SEOExecutive20]

I totally agree and that' why I clearly stated that it may decrease the conversions :).  I was just suggesting what I would do.  I guess I'm a little bit more of a risk taker

[stubby]

Looking at your site, I think you could get away with a lot.

I would be tempted to do something like:

"Girly Man Plan", then "Real Man Plan", then "Manly Man Plan" or whatever.

You would of course alienate the women, but I am guessing there are not too many there in your line of business.

Good Luck.

[PatrickGriffith]

Free-user conversion is really important for us because the data provided by the free users is what powers the paid memberships.  Without free users we have nothing to sell.

It's hard to explain in text how I want the word "boring" to be construed.  And that's my fear.

[PatrickGriffith]

Haha.  While that might work, I'm also thinking of making the change for ease-of-use purposes.  The new names, with "amateur" and "professional" already built into the names, saves me from having to include a lot of unnecessary text elsewhere on the site.

[SEOExecutive20]

Yes, I usually take on every project with a different criteria.  Depending how important this project is for you, it's probably better you play it safe.  Let's take SEOMOZ for instance, which has different names for user levels and they sound professional and fun at the same time.  I would tighten it up in this way by balancing between professional and fun.

[Copstead]

I would make it fun but keep them related to your sports industry.

[Boodreaux]

Maybe name it "Toe in Water", "River " and "Niagra Falls"

or

Mild Sauce, Medium Sauce and Hot Sauce (with flames)

Boring seems a little too risky..for the little guys getting their foot in the water.  I am not sure but SEOmoz has me hooked to sign up however they did it. lol I start my paid subscription tomorrow and even though I now I am not a "PRO" it makes me feel good that I am moving in the right direction.  So you have to look at the pre-sale and the post-sale.  After a person buys something you don't want them having buyers remorse and feel "Boring".  Again just thoughts but maybe your campaign would attract a different audience with more cash.

[Boodreaux]

If it is a sports related site then there are tons of different terms you can bring to bear on the matter!  Sounds fun.

[PatrickGriffith]

Good point on keeping it industry-related.

"High School", "College", and "Pro" would be the obvious, safe choice.

I'm going for something closer to "Little Leaguer", "College Superstar", "Professional".  I just have to figure out how to say it in a compact, memorable way.

[MassivePrime]

Here's my two cents. I run two web sites offering the same service, one in the UK and one in Italy. One of the qualities most people remember me by from what I heard (and what I've been told) is my sense of humour.

Last year I decided to incorporate this in my two sites and the results could NOT have been more contradictory. The UK market seemed to respond better to my naming the services and membership statuses in a humorous manner than their italian counterparts. I actually lost two Italian clients because they took offence to having their membership status as 'Principianti' which in essence means newbies.

I want to add that there was no rudeness in the humour employed by either site, I simply did away with any formality.

Result: Perhaps some A/B testing would have been clever in hindsight but ultimately what I lost with this experiment I more than made up for in clients with a sense of humour!