Fort Worth, Texas (August 14, 2006) -- Many companies have made the business decision to change their web sites from paid subscription to free subscriber services. However, as AOL has discovered recently, deciding to make the move and actually pulling it off are two very different things.
AOL's shift to a free-service business model has been rocky, with many of their paying customers enduring a lengthy telephone marketing process to actually switch to the free choice. This has led to confusion and frustration among AOL's customers, and they must address these problems while struggling to hold onto their subscriber base.
The Smartacus Corporation similarly decided to shift their College-Cram.com web site to a totally free subscriber service, but their results were very different from AOL. The transition was completed successfully on August 1, without frustrating their paying customers or experiencing any downtime.
College-Cram.com made their transition work smoothly through advance planning and proactive communication with their customers. The change was implemented in stages following the decision this spring to switch their online study library to be a free study resource for the Fall 2006 semester.
Subscription terms for new and renewing customers were limited to shorter and shorter periods until the cutover on August 1. According to Brian Shannon, President of College-Cram.com, this approach minimized the number of customers with paid subscriptions that ran beyond the free cutoff date. "We had some subscribers who purchased one-year subscription last semester, and a few that bought a one-month subscription in July. This made it the perfect time to implement the change when paid subscriptions were lowest and before students returned for the fall semester. On August 2 we processed refund credits for all remaining subscriptions, and you can be sure that nobody complained about getting a refund."
VP Rudy Lopes is pleased with the results. "We sent a brief announcement to everyone who had ever registered at College-Cram. The response has been an immediate and dramatic spike in usage that is continuing to increase. We've had more subscribers, more traffic, and more usage in the first ten days of August than ever before, and the fall semester hasn't even started yet."
If business success is all about proper planning and execution, then perhaps AOL could learn a thing or two from the folks at College-Cram.com.
College-Cram.com is an online study resource providing hundreds and hundreds of Cramlets and study sheets. College courses usually cover 100 or more concepts, but each Cramlet covers just one concept and can be completed in less than five minutes. Get better grades in less time at College-Cram.com.
