Key's to good trial to paid conversion ratio

This was a reply to a forum comment regarding our trial to paid conversion ratio that I though I would share here. The commenter said that they would like to know what our secret sauce is for our conversions and this was my reply

Obviously every company wants to keep their secret sauce to themselves as it directly relates to their competitive advantage.

I will say that conversion ratio's for trial to paid in my experience are the result of 5 factors.

1. How niche you product is.
2. How big of a problem you are solving for that niche.
3. How quickly a user can learn your product.
4. The level of free support you give to your trial users.
5. How well you are targeting your web traffic through marketing efforts. (The more broad your marketing on driving traffic to your web page the lower your conversion ratios will be.)

Balance those and you will have as good of conversion as you can for your product , market, and industry.