...and thanks so much for the praise!

It took A-G-E-S. Since we have bootstrapped for the last 3 years (only just took some seed money) we don't have the cash to pay our way in like most suppliers. Back then I had already got Prof Espie on board (he and I are the co-Founders) after his techniques had cured my insomnia. Since he is a world-leading expert the Boots Innovation Centre attended one of his seminars, and that prompted the first conversation, whilst we were still at planning stage. But since then it's been a very long road, talking to literally hundreds of people and outlasting team after team of buyers and marketing folk...the only approach with someone like Boots is to build a partnership, but that takes time if you don't have money.

Well, the techniques are out there in the literature, but it's how they are tailored to your own situation - and more importantly how you actually deliver positive behaviour change, rather than just info - that's the real challenge that we're trying to address at a price less than the £600 you'd need to pay for a course of face to face therapy.

We're going to try a lower price point ongoing subs model to avoid that initial barrier; the assumption initially was that we need to front-load the value, since we're curing people!!

I'd gladly pay £100 or more.. If I actually believed the product would work on me. However, there is so much crap and scams on the internet that it is hard to believe a web site programme would be effective. All the thousands of "get abs in six weeks!" ads has made me cynical. Maybe if someone I trusted had taken the programme and could recommend it to me it would put be over the trust threshold.

Yep peer referral is the most powerful driver - you've echoed the view of pretty much every sleep sufferer I've interviewed!

The Boots partnership was in part to try to build that trust (and therefore value).

Have you tried anchoring against that £600 price in the copy/design? Could be compelling.

So - we've tried to be strict on limiting our messages, and we've developed these based on iterative testing - with users on the site, but also on the street with strangers (shoving the pack under their noses and asking what they think it is!).

So it's always been a candidate, but other messages seemed more important, largely because it seems that most people think poor sleep -> sleeping pills, and do not think -> CBT / therapy. As in, it's the immediate frame of reference. That's been confirmed in training/talking to Boots staff, but they have found that reference point useful in making the value case to customers.

Thanks. Yes we initially had a 7 day trial but are now trying it without. The challenge is how to manage expectations from that trial - you need to stick with the programme to see a positive effect (like a weightloss programme), and despite our explanations mot people expect to see some instant results in that first week. We were hoping the 'Try it now' might give people enough of a taste of what the user experience is...but we'll give it some thought afresh.

Ha! Top one is the best - not sure how effective that would be in getting anyone to sleep though...

It's a tricky question - there's no solid data on the awareness of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy but it lends credibility to those who do know it. In our (quick and dirty) research it seems that a majority of our main initial target (middle aged women) have heard about it but don't know what it is...

:-) Thanks Jof!

After a lot of iterative development and rigorous clinical testing, we yesterday released Sleepio - an automated, online Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) course for poor sleep. Would much appreciate the wise views of HN, positive and negative!

Tried to view it at college but there's no sound on the PC - any chance of subtitles/text only?

Good point. We actually have support for subtitles - but our first goal was to mimic a more human interaction and see how it helped adherence rates. So far since users make time to sit down and follow the programme each week this doesn't seem to have been a major problem, but I agree for trying it out the requirement for sound is limiting.

Awesome. I have to say, this is very impressive. Is there a free trial or anything available? I would love to try it out but, alas, I'm a skint student.

Especially since it's the start of the academic year I can imagine this going down well with my student friends - maybe some kind of discount would make it more enticing.

Either way, this looks awesome and clearly the result of a lot of hard work. The Boots partnership makes it all the more exciting. Congratulations guys :)

Thanks so much! We did have a free trial, but we're trying it without...and since we're so close to launch we need to coordinate with what Boots is offering. Out of interest what sort of price do you think you (and your friends) would expect to pay for this, based on what you've seen?

Well I'd be willing to pay £25-ish or maybe a bit more. I don't know if the fact I'm Scottish skews that at all :P

The Boots thing is very interesting. Are you willing to share how that came about? I'll need to nip in today and have a wee look.

Thanks. I'm a big believer in using physical retail to explain (and confer value on) digital products. See above - the Boots deal took years of time and effort.

£25? More than I was expecting!

A good summary of the key points from the literature. However it is possible to placebo-test CBT; we did it recently for our web-based CBTi programme sleepio.com. The paper's been accepted for publication by the journal SLEEP - read it here: http://www.journalsleep.org/AcceptedPapers/SP-025-12.pdf

Also check out the lengths we went to to develop a credible placebo here: http://www.sleepio.com/research. Basically a complete bogus system, with new tools, animation, voiceover and library...