Sell More Software Online - 10 Tips
When doing extensive split testing on our online software store SoftwareCasa.com, we realized early on that small changes on product landing pages can have a huge impact on visitor to sales conversion. Switching a red buy-button to blue with small text changes improved conversion rates with up to 50%. I just checked our statistics and one of the campaigns we are currently running is converting visitors to buyers at a rate of 11.62%.
Here are ten fast action steps you can take to greatly improve your online conversion rate (turn visitors into software buyers.)
1) Include Professional looking Box Shot of your product. Even if you are selling downloadable products you should display a box shot of your product.
2) Include a short Video presenting your product for suspects early in the purchase process. Not everyone will want to download and install a trial version so this is an easy way to present your product benefits. We will introduce a service shortly that can help you with this. More about using Video
3) Offer trials version of your software, but collect emails when offering them and follow up with an auto responder. The average number of contacts to close a sale is seven, so make sure you follow up diligently. Don’t request too much information up front or you will lose prospects.
4) Offer Screen shots of your product in action. This is a quick way to explain the features and benefits of your software early in the sales cycle.
5) Set up individual landing pages for different products. Don’t drive your clients to your homepage, but instead to specific pages featuring your products, or better yet, your product benefits or even product target groups.
6) Set up a blog and post news and specific features of your product. An excellent way to feature individual benefits and inform your client base about product news and releases.
7) Even if you are trying to drive online sales, include a clearly visible phone number. Not many people will call, but it helps that the prospects know they can reach you if they need to.
Make sure your product page has a clear call to action. If your goal is to make a sale, the buy button should be the most eye-attracting element of your page.
9) Offer testimonials from previous customers. Third party endorsements sell your product better than you ever could. Choose your testimonials carefully so they address the benefits you want to promote. If you can include pictures of your customers or even video that will drive sales even further.
10. Make sure your check out process clearly show the number of steps and what will happen next. Many sales are lost in the checkout process.
One website that does almost everything right is SalesForce. The only thing that bugs me is their phone number 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE. They call themselves “CRM Software Leader” and on the other hand they say “no software”. Anyone care to explain that to me 
The list above is part of an Online Software Sales System we have developed to increase conversion rates for software publishers and developers selling software online. This system includes over 100 action points that will help you increase your online software sales. The system covers both online advertisement campaigns, landing page optimization, checkout optimization as well as steps you can take in your overall strategy to increase software sales.
You can contact me directly for more details about our Online Software Sales System.
You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and this information intact. This Article was written by Peter Gillberg and published at http://www.SoftwareMarketingSecrets.com
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6 Responses to “Sell More Software Online - 10 Tips”
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Very interesting and significant figures. Clearly supporting the advantage of video ads.
More on “Buy Buttons” (point 8 above)
Elastic Path shopping cart provider performed an analysis of Shopping cart buttons.
The results are fun, but I wouldn’t read too much into it.
For example, 58% of the retailers in the study use “Add to Cart” on their button. Here are a few other alternatives:
Add to Cart 58.0%
Add to Bag 9.8%
Add to Shopping Bag 9.8%
Add to Basket 6.3%
Add to Shopping Cart 4.5%
Buy 2.7%
Buy Now 1.8%
See a collection of 107 buttons and be inspired
http://www.getelastic.com/add-to-cart-buttons/
I learned a lot from these ten tips on turning vistors into software buyers. Howerver, how can I attract more vistors to my website? I think this is a basis for the application of these tips.
Hello Linda,
Thank you for your tip. I will definitely write a post about that.
I took a quick look at your website and a few things I would like to comment on:
1) You are not collecting emails or any info when people come and download. You will then not be able to contact people in the future even if you have spent work and dollars to drive traffic to your site
2) The product description on the product pages are very difficult to read. You could increase font size and split it up into 2-3 line paragraphs.
3) I find it strange that you have about 300,000 in Alexa ranking, but no Google PageRank. I can see that you started this year, but you should still have some pagerank?
Best of luck with your business,
Peter - Software Marketing Secrets
[...] If you are interested in improving your online software sales, take a look at my previous blog post on how to sell more software online. We also provide a service on how to improve conversion on software publishers websites and we are currently looking for reference clients. You can contact me if you would like to know more about this service. [...]
Just wanted to let you know that I think your tips are good. However, while it’s easy to summarize how to successfully sell software online, implementation is sometimes a bit different. However, I think that analytics play a huge role in gauging the success of any online business and in software sales, can be critical to understanding the patterns of visitors to your site. For example, if customers are hitting the “online demo” page but leaving and not filling out a form or taking some other action, then you would know where your conversions are failing.
Anyhow, constant analyization of traffic, and the tweaking of any online business/site is part of the formula for success.
Just my two cents…