Trial/free tier: UI showing remaining searches.

LKD70

When in the trial/free tier, users are limited to a set amount of searches. A user can view how many searches they have performed, and how many remain through the billing page.

I propose that a counter be shown when a search is performed. I suggest it be next to the "results in X ms" element.

Why I think this is worthwhile:

Being caught out with no searches left halfway through your work day is very not fun (this may or may not have happened to me...). It causes a rush of "do I really need to buy this? Maybe I should just Google it? Oh gosh where's my damn debit card?" (Maybe that's just me)
It will show a user how much they really need to be private. Seeing in numbers of credit remaining as well as searches remaining could really go to show how much a user's data is worth, whenever I perform a search and I think "it cost them .X dollars to perform that one query" it reminds me of how much the data other search engines scrape from us is worth to them. It reminds me of how important a business model this is for my privacy.
It will go to show users how much they have already used Kagi, and how they keep coming back. "Even after 500 searches, here I am, using Kagi. That can only be a good sign!"

Mockup of this (quick and dirty design)
design

LKD70

LKD70 Zac from the Discord mentioned that it may be better to only show this when a user is low on available search results.

Whereas I like that idea I think it still has purpose when you're not low on results, but perhaps changing it to red text to indicate that you're low on searches could be good.

Another addition I had to this idea goes to the "cost" of these searches I had mentioned in the original feedback. Hovering over the counter could show a tooltip containing a round-about cost of the searches made. In addition clicking the searches remaining could take a user to the billing page (if so, underline as it's a hyperlink)

Vlad

Idea is not without merit.

Some issues I see with it is that on desktop things start to get very cramped very quickly.

Another problem is introducing the complexity of number of searches to the user. I understand it helps educate but I also understand that many will be taken aback by this, coming from a world where searches are free and more searches is better.

LKD70

Vlad Very true, and too much clutter makes for a very undesirable experience.
It could be seen as too intrucive too, sure some duller colours could help there, but it's still using a lot of valuble real estate.

I'm unsure how else this could be implemented though - The goal is to grab the attention of the user so they can be in the know about their free searches and maybe prompt for purchase. However you also wish to avoid user attention as it pulls away from the purpose of a search engine. I don't know it's a hard thing to balance.

If anyone else has any potential ideas for implementations, please do chime in.

partlycloudy

This is marked as Done - What is the UI/UX for this?

z64

partlycloudy This can be found in your Billing Settings. A counter also appears in the search box as you get close to 0 searches remaining.