I have a favor to ask – the last batch of scanners that was sent to us came on a double stacked pallet. Our receiving dock isn’t able to accept these, so they asked that the next shipment we get if it could only be single stacked pallets.

Single stacked? Double stacked?
I don’t even know what that means

The joys of selling hardware, I guess. Sometimes, I long back to the days when we were just selling software, “shipped” by email.

But after looking at the Conference Schedule, I changed my mind. This could be quite interesting after all.

And of course it’s always fun to meet our ISV friends in person again, drink some beers, play Rock Band, etc…

So Sytske has just registered us for the conference, booked our flight to Dallas and the stay at the Hyatt hotel. Plus we signed up as a Bronze level sponsor.

See you in Dallas!

(I did find the “MicroISV” group, but the last post there was in Oct 2008)

So I figured, why not start a “Software Marketing” group myself?

My idea is to have an easily accessible place to find (and post!) tips and useful links about marketing your software. And to discuss marketing ideas and problems with other developers and people from the industry.

Topics: Adwords, SEO, trial versions, Website Design, A/B testing, email marketing, shopping carts, social media, sales tracking, press releases, etc…

Are you on Facebook? Then just go here and click Join at the top to become a member:

Software Marketing group on Facebook

It would be great if you could also invite any ISV friends that you may have in your Facebook friends list.

Let’s help each other sell more software.

The last time I did this, the main thing that struck me was all the Try/Buy “noise” on the right side of the screen. There’s a Sign Up for the Free Trial box, a Get it Free (TrialPay) option and five (!) different buying options (Standard, Pro, two “Pro + scanner” options, plus a “custom order” option). I realized that I had been replicating most of my shop page right there on the landing page.

So I started experimenting with a different approach, aimed at getting more people to sign up for the free trial. Then just let the trial edition and the autoresponder sequence do the conversion to sales. I didn’t want to remove all buying options though, because we see a lot of customers buying without trying. But it would have to be reduced to just one button, simply taking the user to our recently re-designed shop page.

The original design ( = Version A )

This is the A-version of my A/B split test, the original look of the product home page. The left side of the page offering lots of product information and screenshots (even separate screens for the Windows and Mac editions), the right side having all the try and buy options.

This layout has worked well for us for a long time, but for some first time visitors it may be a little overwhelming. Let’s see if we can make it a little easier on the eye.

The first attempt ( = Version B1)

Here’s my first “less is more” redesign. To reduce the noise on the right, I completely removed all the trying and buying boxes from the panel on the right, replacing them with 3 recent testimonials.
I rewrote the top part of the left side, aiming to give a full overview of the software with just 1 headline, 2 pictures and 3 bullets. Followed by two large boxes, one for the free trial, one for buying. Below these two call-to-action boxes I only placed a demo video and some more testimonials (not shown in the screen shot).

The results
Immediately after starting this test, the sign up conversion rate shot up. That was hopeful. But sales dropped.
Here’s the outcome of the A/B test after 7 days:

• Sign Ups: +12.3%
• Sales: -9.3%
• Average First Purchase: +8.6%
• Total Profits: -2.8%

After 7 days, sales in the B category had gotten stronger again, but were still 9.3 % lower than the A category sales. But interestingly, the average value of the purchases were 8.6% higher in B. So in the end, the drop in profits for version B wasn’t too bad: down by 2.8%.

What’s happening here? First, the removal of main call-to-action (buy!) from the top right seems to have resulted in the decrease of immediate purchases. The extra sign ups (and thus extra people on my autoresponder sequence) seem to compensate for this decrease later on. Maybe the autoresponder, and its Buying Guide on day 2, is also helping to increase the value of the first purchase.

The second attempt ( = Version B2)

I like the increase in sign up rate and the high value purchases of the B1 design, so it would be great if we could keep those and generate more sales at the same time.
That’s what I tried to accomplish in the in B2 version shown below, by adding two call-to-action boxes on the top right again, in the same style as the big ones on the left.

The results>

I tested this B2 version against the original A version, still my control. I let the test run for 18 days, so that the trial version and trial autoresponder would have the time to do their jobs.

• Sign Ups: +8.8%
• Sales: +5.9%
• Average First Purchase: 0%
• Total Profits: +5.9%

All numbers are green, so that’s great
But if we look more closely, we find two interesting numbers, especially if we compare these results with those of the previous test:
First, the increase in sign up rate is lower for B2. Which is strange because there are two sign up boxes now, one on the left and one on the right. Did version B1 have more focus on the two big boxes on the left, just because the panel on the right was more noise-free?
Also, we lost the increase in purchase values that B1 gave us. However, looking at the details I found that the average purchase was $50.30 for both B1 and B2. For some strange reason the value for A had gone down to $46.30 during the first test.

What’s next

I am preparing a 3rd test now. Version B2 will be my new control ( = my new version A). For the new challenger I am reintroducing the big screenshots of my iPhone apps (because these has gotten lost in the redesign).

So after yesterday’s version 9.1 update, I sent out the following email to all owners of a v8 license (or older):

Hi John,

Three months ago, we launched Music Collector version 9.
Since then, we kept hearing two complaints from users buying or trying it:

* Why do I have to add my music files one album at at time ?
* Why doesn’t it support .M4A files?

These people were right of course. So we got to work.

First, we completely redesigned the Add Music Files screen.
It took a few iterations (Ronald programming, Mark and I demanding changes), but the end result is pretty cool

It now scans your hard-disk and automatically groups the found music files into albums. The new screen lets you tweak the grouping with a simple drag and drop system (e.g. to combine two albums into one multi-disc album).
And here’s the best part, you can then select multiple (or all!) albums and add them to your database in one go.

You can find a screen shot of the new screen here (first screen on the page):

http://collectorz.com/music/upgrade.php

When that was done, Ronald started implementing support for .M4A files.
Not an easy task, because Apple is not exactly “open” about its formats.
But he persisted and Music Collector is now able to read and write M4A tags.
So iTunes users can now finally catalog their M4A files too.

Time to upgrade?
==================

Checking our files, I found that you are still using Music Collector 8.
So I was hoping that the above changes would help your decision to upgrade.

Please do me a favor, and take a look at the full list of What’s New in v9:

http://collectorz.com/music/upgrade.php

Then, if you’re ready to upgrade, just click here to go Vee Nine (for $24.95):

http://collectorz.com/up.php?product=music&key=[LICENSEKEY]

Remember:
Once you have upgraded to v9, you will get ALL future 9.x upgrades FREE.
And we’ve got a lot of cool stuff planned for this year.

I hope to welcome you to the happy “Vee Nine” crowd today,

Alwin
Collectorz.com

Are you doing paid upgrades? Then make sure you keep reminding your old version customers of the new version. And keep telling them about all the cool stuff you are adding to the new version (and to that new version only).

In any case, don’t let them get away with not upgrading.

From the shop, via the upsell interstitial page and the name/address page, to the payment details page and finally the order confirmation page. I have written some new back-end PHP classes and am now rewriting all website pages based on those classes, making the pages more consistent, and more importantly, easier to maintain. Easy maintenance is essential, because I am tweaking these pages quite often.

I have already posted about my upsell interstitial page a while ago, which was the first page I based on the new back-end classes. This long Easter weekend I have completely rewritten the first page of the check-out, the shop page.

The Collectorz.com shop

This page has always been a challenge, because it easily becomes pretty complex. We have seven downloadable products, all with a Standard and a Pro edition. For 3 products we also have Mac editions. Plus we sell subscriptions for our 3 Connect web-apps.
Then there’s the Priority Support and CD-ROM delivery options. And of course we offer two types of barcode scanners (a third one will be added soon).

In fact, this page is so complex that for our recommended Buying Choices on our product pages, we skip this shop page, taking visitors directly to our upsell page. But a full shop page that shows everything we sell is a necessary evil, so I keep trying to make it as simple as possible.

What’s New?

Of course the rewrite was a perfect opportunity to implement further improvements. Let me give you an overview of the changes I made compared to the old page. The best way to see how it works is to play with the live Collectorz.com shop, but here’s a screenshot for easy reference:

The changes:

• Cleaner design, using white-space for separation, not borders.
• Both Windows and Mac programs are now visible. The old page showed just Mac OR Windows editions based on the browser agent, but that caused confusion.
• Better handling of empty carts. Now shows “- your cart is empty – ” and disables the Continue to Checkout button.
• Easier switching between Standard and Pro editions. Previously one had to remove the Pro edition from the cart, then add the Standard edition.
• It’s now easier to remove items from the cart (people missed the little red X-buttons in the cart). You can now remove on the left side too.
• Added our iPhone apps, even though they cannot be purchased through our shop, just linking them to the iTunes App Store.
• Prominent random (but recent) testimonial.
• Added images of most important payment methods.
• Prominent 90-day money back guarantee
• Several question-mark icons that open small explanation popups (created with Thickbox). The old page had some “more info” links too, but these linked to other pages on the website, taking people away from the Shop page.
  The new page has popups for:
  • Standard vs Pro
  • Priority Support
  • Barcode scanner comparison
  • Shipping and handling (about delivery times)
  • Coupon Code (with the hint: “Don’t have a coupon code? Google is your friend!” )

What’s next?

Currently, the Shop and the subsequent Up-sell pages are consistent in look and feel. Next up is a rewrite of the other pages, the name/address page, the payment details page and the order confirmation (or “thank you” page). I am planning to make the look of all these pages fully consistent, then add some kind of “Step 2 of 5″ indicator at the top, showing the buyer where he is in the check-out process.
The payment details page is going to require some creative programming (read “hacking”), because that step does not happen within our site, but on the RBS server.

Oh, before I forget, all feedback on the Shop is very very welcome.
Just post below. Thanks!

You see, all our coupons are always published written in all uppercase, e.g. “CLZTWEETZ”, “GETORGANIZED”, “GOOGLER”, etc… But our order tracking system stores the coupons exactly as entered. And scrolling through this list, I found that for most coupons, users enter them in all lowercase (e.g. as “clztweetz”), indicating that they typed them manually (as opposed to copying/pasting from our emails).

With one exception: the coupon we give to all our trial users: ITRYB4IBUY

(“I try before I buy”, get it?). This one always shows up in all UPPERCASE, never like “itryb4ibuy”. Users are obviously copying/pasting this one.

What’s the problem here? Is it that my users just don’t “get” this coupon? Or is it too hard to enter manually, making them revert to the old Ctrl-C / Ctrl-V (or Cmd-C / Cmd-V for us Mac users). But isn’t copy/pasting always easier and quicker, even for the simple coupons like CLZTWEETZ or GETORGANIZED? I would think so.

So now I am wondering, could it be that many of my users simply don’t know how to copy/paste? Or maybe they’re not proficient enough with it and thus are more likely to opt for manual entry for short codes like this? And could it be that they are they trying to manually enter my ITRYB4IBUY code and failing to get it work? Scary…

Whatever the reason, I am changing my ITRYB4IBUY coupon to CLZTRIAL today.

If you want as many users as possible to evaluate your trial version, it makes sense to make downloading it easy as possible, no barriers at all.
On the other hand, having the email address of your trial users lets you follow up with them, hopefully increasing your chances of converting them into customers.

Which approach will bring you more profits?
Public Download Links or Mandatory Sign Ups?
As always, there’s only one way to find out: an A/B split test.

The Collectorz.com situation

Of course, testing any form of sign up approach only make sense if your going to follow up, either automatically or manually. Otherwise the reduced number of downloads will only hurt your sales.
At Collectorz.com, we have been experimenting with autoresponder (AR) follow-up sequences for over a year. We are currently using a simple, but effective 4-message sequence, that is being sent out to people signing up for the free trial:

• Day 0: Welcome, $5 discount coupon, download link, link to Getting Started guide, testimonials.
• Day 2: Buying guide, standard vs pro, barcode scanners, iPhone app, testimonials.
• Day 6: Subscribe to newsletter invitation, benefits of cataloging your stuff, testimonials.
• Day 30: Outright invitation to buy, more testimonials.

Up until 2 weeks ago we used the soft approach, with the sign up being sort of optional. That is, our product home pages only showed a sign up box, no download link, but on the Download page one could still download the trial without signing up. (the Download page could be reached through our navigation bar at the top).

I have always been procrastinating to go for the mandatory sign up only, because:

• I was afraid I might loose sales.
• I wasn’t sure my AR sequence was good enough.
• I didn’t have a solution for existing customers yet. I mean customers who already own a license and are just looking to (re)download the latest version of their software.

But I have been optimizing my ARs in the past year, plus a few weeks ago I implemented a smart download link request form for existing customers.
So I figured, let’s go for the big test.

The test

In the past 2 weeks have been running the following A/B split test:

Version A

As described above. The product home pages showing a sign up box only, the download page allowing direct download, plus offering an optional sign up for the Getting Started guide:

Download Page - Version A

Version B

The Product homes as in A, but the download page having a Sign Up For The Trial box only:

Download Page - Version B

Note that in version B i have added the Download Link Request box for existing customers.

The results

These are the results after running the above A/B split test for 14 days. In these two weeks, the test counted 69,000 first time visitors and just over 600 sales.

• #Downloads: down by 33.6%
• #Sign Ups: up by 20.7%
• #Sales: up by 3.4%
• Average First Purchase Value: up by 13.5%
• Profits: up by 15.4%

Interestingly, the sales of the B group lagged behind during the first few days of the test, then began catching up fast, to end the test as the winner. The effect of the AR emails at work, i guess.
Another fact to notice is the most of the gain in profits is caused by the increase in the First Purchase Value, not so much by the number of sales. Maybe the AR is helping to build trust, convincing users to include a barcode scanner with their purchase, or to buy multiple cataloging programs in a bundle?

My advice?

First, don’t try this at home! At least not until you have a tried and tested AR follow-up sequence in place.
And even then, your results may vary. My customers are home users and my guess is that these people are more likely to willingly provide their email address. If you are selling to more tech savvy users or to businesses, your download counts may drop too much to be compensated by better AR conversions.
But then again, business users may be more serious about evaluating software and therefore perfectly willing to let you email them more info. And if you’re in a “low volume, high ticket” business, you could even send personal follow up emails manually. Or here’a a crazy idea, ask for their phone number and just call them.

Anyway, for us a mandatory sign up process seems to be workig. And I haven’t even implemented all our AR ideas yet. Obvously, that is at the top of my to-do list now.

Don’t bother protecting your software against piracy. Your software will get cracked anyway.

If your software is protected, it will only take slightly longer before the cracker publishes his crack. Making the cracker’s life harder has no effect whatsoever on the number of users that get access to a cracked copy of your software.

In any case, don’t let piracy irritate you, drain your energy, waste your time or take away your focus from the important stuff: Improving and selling your software.

Well… I changed my mind…

Armadillo

I must say that my frustration with software protection was based on using Armadillo (now called SoftwarePassport). We have used it on and off for a couple of years. And each time we tried using it again, we immediately got complaints from users that the new build was suddenly slower or that it just crashed very often. Others even reported that the new build just refused to start on their machine.
Customer support was a nightmare: for every weird bug that was reported, we found ourselves wondering: Is this really a bug in *our* code, or is it caused by Armadillo again.

Also, our software got cracked anyway. For most new versions it took about a week before a crack was released, whereas unprotected builds got cracked within a day.

So we stopped using Armadillo and just released unprotected executables.

Themida

Anyway, after posting the above article, I received a lot of reactions.
Some of them proving my point, as they showed some developers can *really* get worked up about their software being pirated
But others suggested that I should take a look at WinLicense / Themida.

WinLicense is a full software license control and software protection system. Themida is just the software protection system. We have our own license key system that is fully integrated into our customer database and ordering system, so WinLicense doesn’t apply to our situation. Themida sounded great though, so I decided to buy a copy and test it.

Software Protection Requirements

First, here’s my set of requirements for a good software protection solution, in order of importance:

1. Must be quick to implement and hassle-free
2. Doesn’t cause weird crashes or other bugs
3. Doesn’t cause conflicts with other software (virus scanners, firewalls, etc..).
4. Doesn’t impact performance
5. Makes it hard or impossible to crack the software

I still want to spend as little time as possible on piracy protection and I don’t want any negative side-effects.

Testing Themida

In the first week of October, we released Themida-protected builds of both Music Collector and Book Collector. After these releases, we started closely monitoring support tickets and our forum for reports of strange behaviour, crashes, conflicts, etc… And of course, I kept an eye on new cracks being published (I use Google Alerts for that).

After a week, we had not heard of any problems from our users. Which is a good sign, because usually, if there’s something wrong with a new build we know within a day (having a lot of existing customers has many advantages).
And I could not find any cracks of the new versions either.

A couple of weeks after these releases, there was a forum post from a developer (and Book Collector user), who found that Book Collector refused to start while Sysinternals Process Monitor was running (“A monitor program has been found running in your system”). One other Book Collector user confirmed he had the same issue.

A week later one other developer (and Music Collector user) reported a similar issue with Sysinternals Process Explorer. He was quite angry though:

My current version of Music Collector (Version 8.7 build 1) refuses to
start due to this Themida technology, which I assume is newly included
in it. For the first time ever, I’m getting this error on program
launch: “A monitor program has been found running in your system
Please, unload it from memory and restart your program”.

Why doesn’t Themida identify the app that it thinks is a monitor
program??

I’m pretty sure from web research that it has a problem with
Sysinternal Process Explorer–is that true? If so, let me tell you
that that is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE! I’ve been using PE forever, and
I have it set to replace the Windows Task Manager, and I also have it
launch during Windows logon so that it’s pretty much always running.
Disabling it and rebooting every time I want to run Music Collector is
ridiculous.

I’m a developer and need PE. Furthermore, Windows is often unstable
and I use PE to resolve problems; I’m sure I’m not alone in this. If
this is the app that Themida is complaining about, then you’re forcing
me to stop using one or the other, PE or Music Collector. Why??

I need an answer before I reluctantly uninstall Music Collector
forever.

And that was it. No other conflicts with virus scanners, firewalls or anything. No weird Access Violations or other strange crashes. No reports of our software taking a long time to start, or performing slower than before.

And still no cracks.

Final test: protecting Movie Collector

After the successful test with Music Collector and Book Collector, it was time to go for the big one: Movie Collector.
Movie Collector is our most popular program, with the largest installed base. Plus it has always been very popular in the pirate scene (probably for cataloging their pirated movies). In the past, we’ve seen new Movie Collector versions being cracked within a day.

So on November 23, we released our first Themida-protected version of Movie Collector, version 6.5.

And to date, we have received no problem reports about it whatsoever (not even from developers). And what’s even more surprising, I still can’t find any version 6.5 cracks.

My revised view on piracy protection

Themida proved that it is possible to protect software against crackers (or at least make it very hard or time-consuming to crack), without causing conflicts or other software problems.
And more importantly, without spending a lot of time.

So if you want to protect your software against piracy, please don’t spend days or weeks building your own system (and constantly tweaking it for years to come). Just buy a copy of Themida (it’s ridiculously cheap) and spend a couple of minutes adding it to your build process. Then forget about piracy and spend your time improving your software and selling more of it.

Anyway, I think this post on a crack site sums it all up:

I would be very happy if someone had the crack for movie collector 6.5.1, I think I have seached the whole net for it now. It dont look like the crack excist, but that must be a first time ever if its true. Will be very thankfull if someone finds that crack or serial

Many developers default to working on their Product, spending most (or all) of their time programming. But that may not be the best way to increase your sales. For example, if you are getting about 100 visitors a day, then adding more cool features to your program is not going to help your sales. (Tip: if this is you, focus on Traffic).

On the other hand, if you are getting thousands of visitors per day, but are only averaging one customer per 1000 visitors, then spending time and money to get even more Traffic may not be the smart thing to focus on. You should improve your Conversion first.

Final example: if you are getting 1 or 2 sales each day, then trying to optimize the Conversion of your check-out process is not a good idea, as you won’t be able to measure the effects reliably.

That’s enough examples of what not to do. Here’s some simple guidelines for deciding when you should focus on Product, Conversion or Traffic.

When to focus on Product?

• When you get lots of trial downloads but they’re not converting to sales.
  Try to improve the user interface, add features that will help convert trial users into customers. (This could actually be seen as a Conversion job.) BTW: Adding exotic features for advanced users won’t do the trick.
• When there are bugs that hurt your sales.
  In particular, bugs that many trial users run into.
• When you can add features that you can sell as a major upgrade.
  This is only worth your time if you have large customer base already.
• When you can create an add-on that you can sell to existing customers.
  Again, only spend time on this if you have many existing users.
• When you can add a new feature that attracts a new audience.
  Change your product to open up new ways of getting Traffic.

When to focus on Traffic?

• When you have a great product, but no one knows about it.
  Make sure people do know about it. Get your product out there. Think Adwords, SEO, Adwords, download sites, and did I mention Adwords?
• When the numbers of visitors is too low to work on Conversion.
  You need lots of visitors (and downloads) before you can reliably do A/B split tests for website changes.
• When your Product and Conversion have been tweaked and tuned.
  Then you can safely go for new channels to attract visitors (Adwords Content Network, Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft Adcenter, Affiliate networks, banner advertising, offline ads…)

When to focus on Conversion?

• When traffic is high, but the number of downloads too low.
  Improve your website, make the “Download Free Trial” button easier to find, change its headline, your benefit and feature bullets, add cool screenshots and user testimonials. And track the results.
• When you have lots of visitors and downloads but not many sales.
  Improve the sales mechanisms of your trial edition. Check your check-out and pricing. And track the results.
• When you’ve got nothing better to do
  When none of the “When.. rules” for Traffic or Product applies to your current situation, choose to work on Conversion. Optimizing your download and sales rates is always an effective way to improve your sales. For me, this is what I work on “by default”.

What if you have employees?

Of course, if your company has grown larger and you have one or more employees, progress can be made on Product, Traffic and Conversion simultaneously. At Collectorz.com, we have 4 full-time programmers so we’re always working on Product. And Sytske (my wife) and AJ (our marketing assistant) are spending most of their time on Traffic and Conversion. But still, for myself, I find that I need to focus on only one of the big three at any given time.
For example, the last couple of weeks before a major release, I spent most of my time on Product, managing the development, testing builds, tweaking the UI, setting up product pages etc…
And once in a while I take a couple of weeks to focus on getting more quality traffic. Doing that now actually, taking another stab at the Adwords Content Network, taking my Yahoo and Bing advertising to a higher level, trying to get my Commission Junction account set up…
And in between, I work on Conversion. I always have some A/B split test running on our website. Tweaking headlines, the presentation of our product bundles, the pricing, etc…