

I'm selling my software for too much money and nobody is buying. Any ideas? - sktrdie
http://udeployer.com/
I've decided to create something that doesn't really exist out there. It's a program that makes it easier for IT departments and small networks to install software on many different Windows computers. Say you have a company with 20 windows computers... you don't want to manually install Skype, Flash and all the other free 3rd party apps... you want something that does it automatically for you. So I created uDeployer.&#60;p&#62;But I'm just a developer - the website sucks, the program UI sucks - and I'm lost with marketing... maybe the price for it is too much? I have spent a lot of time working on it (almost one year).&#60;p&#62;Any ideas?
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patio11
1) You need to radically increase the professionalism of that website to
support the $499 price point. That price point is not necessarily high for
someone in an IT group at a large company, but he cannot pay it to _you_
because everything about your site -- the design, the copy, the video, etc --
screams "risk."

Look at other sites which successfully sell to large corporations with buckets
of money and try to hit the note of restrained professionalism they go for:

<http://www.fogbugz.com>

<https://spideroak.com>

<http://smartbear.com>

I picked companies which are on the smaller side. Importantly, they don't
_look_ like they're not Real Respectable Software Companies of the sort that
will cost you your job if using their software breaks your entire office for a
day.

2) Price is typically not the reason software fails to sell. What is your
strategy for acquiring the attention of people who have $499 to spend on
software deployment? If I were you, I'd be thinking along the lines of
creating lots of content specific to their needs, since the organic SEO
benefits from doing so are substantial.

At least one B2B business hanging around the forums has had success with this
-- they turned a source of data that they already had into a lot of pages, and
those pages have lead to leads which bought things priced substantially north
of $500. Hopefully they will chime in with their experiences.

3) You need radically more textual content, to answer the numerous worries
your prospects have prior to shelling out $500 to you.

4) After someone credible buys this software, get approval to use their logo
and then mention that it is in use at Respectable Brand Name. This is social
proof and decreases the perceived risk of using your software.

5) (Much love to the HN community but I have to say this.) Ignore the opinions
of anyone who says "Reduce the price" that does not also have authority to
install this software at their corporation, because they are not your
customers and they will not buy your software at any price. Among many other
reasons: price signals quality, and if you adopt App Store pricing (or even
$29.95 pricing) you will be communicating that you are not _nearly_ reliable
enough to be trusted with computer systems which would burn six figures or
more a day in the event of downtime caused by a botched deployment.

~~~
markessien
Your first point is quite wrong. I've been selling $600 value software for
years now, and design of the website has typically had no effect at all on
sales. What people care about is "does it work" and "will it be supported"?

~~~
three14
Can you share your website? I would expect that patio11 is correct, since I
wouldn't recommend it at my company just because the website doesn't inspire
confidence. Maybe your case is special in some way? Are you actually making
sales through some other channel?

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markessien
It seems to me that when you ask for feedback here on this site, most answers
are about website design and typography and length of text and other
unnecessary but very visual stuff. This stuff is unimportant. If a person
needs your software, all that stuff will not deter him from trying it. If I
need some deployment software and your text is a bit gaudy, I'm not going to
abort the download.

I've been selling software at your pricepoint for 5 years and more. If you
want to sell, follow these rules:

\- Design of your website don't matter

\- Add a price-list request form and remove the price

\- Get into a real and genuine conversation with each person who requests your
pricelist

\- Answer emails within 30 minutes and be very helpful

\- Make sure there is no competition with exactly the same featureset who is
cheaper

\- Use affiliates and people who are selling similar stuff. Get into
partnerships with them

\- Make sure you have your website listed in all download sites possible. They
will rank higher than your actual site typically

\- Make sure your software works perfectly, has an easy install and does not
require any additional installs and does not crash

\- Capture the email addresses of your potential customers and email them

People want software that works well, is at a reasonable price and that has a
human behind them, when they buy at those prices. All the other stuff is
really secondary.

~~~
sktrdie
The "human behind" was exactly my selling point. I wanted to show people that
I have full interest in their success with my product, and that I'm passionate
about my product and its future.

And I totally agree that if I'm selling a desktop application I should
probably concentrate in making its UI simpler instead of my Websites UI...
it's not a web-app.

These price-list requests are quite interesting, I would think people would
like to know right away what the price is, but maybe that's not the case
considering your experience - thanks for the advice.

~~~
prodigal_erik
If I don't see a price, I assume I'll have to endure some pushy sales guy
whose job is to pocket most of the consumer surplus by charging almost enough
to make us walk, so I'm only going to call as a last resort if none of the
competitors work out. I also expect to hear a price many times higher than
$500, simply to cover his commission draw for however many hours it takes to
land a sale.

------
peterhi
When clicking on the free download button IT SHOULD NOT take you to a page
that essentially says "Dumbass you should have registered first!"

If you need to register then make it part of the download page. Now lets be
honest here, I am very reluctant to give my details for a free download which
might turn out to be a POS (or worse a trojan) and give my details to someone
who is going to spam me. Not to mention another login to maintain.

I'm not saying that your software is a POS or that you are going to spam me
but I don't know that :)

I couldn't find the price (but then I didn't register). Being coy about the
price makes me think that it is overpriced.

The front page is not really selling the product, it doesn't explain the
problem it is trying to solve, it doesn't make clear who the target audience
is (school/college/company IT departments).

Make the blog part of the site itself so the the branding and navigation does
not change.

~~~
markessien
Yes, that's really silly. The first step in the funnel should be easy -
putting a roadblock right at the start is not very clever.

------
bdfh42
Your blog needs to focus on the customer's pain and how your product fixes it
- it should be a key part of the marketing message to bring IT shops with the
same problem into your site.

Off the wall - but the price might be a bit low for larger corporates.

------
arethuza
My immediate reaction on seeing that it is for deploying applications and
Windows is mentioned was "Why not use Group Policies or System Center
Configuration Manager"?

Also the applications that you show being deployed aren't exactly the kinds of
things that most enterprises would be bothered about pushing to desktops...

~~~
sktrdie
The company I worked for last year actually needed to deploy these 3rd party
apps. Flash and other free software needs to be updated to the latest version
to avoid security concerns... so the idea for uDeployer sparked.

~~~
arethuza
OK - sounds plausible - but the website needs to tell that story!

------
callumjones
Your video needs more professionalism. Given that video, I'd rather just use
Windows Deployment Services or pay for Altiris.

* What's with the closing statement? You need to redo that, this YT video feels more like a developer demo than a demo that needs to sell to the stakeholders in the business.

* "Trust me" is not a word used in most demonstrations aimed at corporations

* Don't go searching for the Finance Copy Area machine in your demo, just know exactly where it is.

~~~
sktrdie
The video is totally unacceptable, I know. My accent is horrible and I need a
professional to do this for me. I just wanted something quick to show people
how it actually worked - but I guess it's not enough for large companies.

------
Electrostar
1) The website doesn't justify a 499 dollar app. (the website is to simple) 2)
The GUI of the software is old fashion and to simple which isn't worth 499. 3)
Your marketing can be much better. You don't appeal to your audience which are
system administrators. I had to look for 3 minutes to understand what deployer
did. 4) Where are the bullets with the benefits? Like saving time, money error
etctetc

------
csomar
I think you should move on from the website idea, especially if $500 equal to
a monthly salary in your country.

My father has a software which sells for around $1,000, but doesn't have a
website. He find clients (through his business network, word of mouth, a phone
call...) and then install a trial version for them and guide them until they
agree and purchase a license.

It's quite important to note that in my country $1K is equal to a professor
salary; so that still a big deal for him.

You could do that with Skype, since (I assume) your audience is all over the
world map. You may want to spend more time with your customers and to make the
product works for them.

If you are selling many licenses, you may consider outsourcing someone to do
that work for you. This strategy doesn't work for $0.9-$100 products, but
works well for $500. Even if you are paid $100/hour, that still 5 complete
hours.

------
TheRealGL
Make your download and buy buttons bigger. They look like 10px in size- are
you ashamed of charging?

~~~
praptak
It is essential to an extensive A/B testing first. Otherwise how can you
possibly know that 11px is better than 10px?

~~~
ryantownsend
I'd go much bigger than 11px... I think it's pretty much a given that the
download trial link is way too small. It needs to be clear for people that
they can give it a try without having to fork out $500 immediately. I don't
think you need A/B tests to prove that - it's pretty much a given that 10px is
too small.

I'd also agree with @patio11 - the website is outdated, unprofessional and I
wouldn't trust it. I'd pay a decent web designer a couple of thousand to get a
bespoke design that will be much more suitable than what you have now.

~~~
patio11
You don't even have to pay a couple of thousand -- $50 for any of the SaaS web
templates from themeforest.com or $70 or whatever for one of the product
highlight ones from WooThemes would be a quantum leap in the perceived quality
of the site. You can always reboot the design later with more professionally
placed drop shadows and Helvetica after the software has sold a bit.

------
Steve0
What's your added value compared to ninite?

Why does one need to register to dowload the trial?

~~~
sktrdie
What would you suggest to implement on the backend for unregistered downloads?
I'd like to track who's downloading... don't want spammers downloading my app
a million times. Should I track by IP address or what? Any ideas?

~~~
rmc
What's wrong with people downloading your app lots? Do you have that problem?

What do you want to track about a download? How many times it's downloaded?
Just use your apache logs (or make your download link a simple webapp that
records a value then redirects to the proper file url). Do you want to track
email addresses of a download? If so, you should be aware that it might put of
X% of customers. Are you willing to give up tracking emails if it leads to an
X% increase in downloads?

------
robryan
What are your biggest competitors? I am assuming the big players would be at a
higher price point?

More the an GUI complaints people have pointed out the thing that initially
gets my attention is that I can only see 6 programs, unless this was able to
install just about everything someone needed when provisioning new machines
the value proposition seems to be lacking.

Something I think of when I think of a suite of applications is portable apps,
a quick browse of their applications list shows probably a couple of hundred
apps.

~~~
sktrdie
The funny part is that there's no competitors. So far nobody (that I've found)
has chosen the path of creating a Windows repository of free software (Skype,
Flash etc.).

But you're right, I need to show and support more apps. After I finished
development I just put _all_ my efforts in marketing and now, after one year,
I'm quite tired of just adding refinements to the program - I would love for
someone to just buy it so that it would really drive me to get back into
development.

~~~
regularfry
There's <http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/>, but I don't see it pushing to
multiple desktops.

~~~
sktrdie
I've seen that, but like you said, it doesn't push to multiple computers.

------
Terretta
Someone has to authorize the purchase. Spending $500 to download 7zip or a
couple free utils sounds like a lot. Add software that Windows IT guys have
all heard of, so your repository screenshot has a scroll bar.

Then try pricing it at $59 so the IT guy can put it on a corp card now and
explain it later if someone asks.

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EliRivers
The first thing I notice is the bad spelling; "continuosly" infers amateur who
doesn't proofread or run a spellchecker.

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gte910h
Go to themeforest.net buy theme, retheme website, add more copy.

------
base
why not start by 100$ and then increase over time?

------
ido
Try reducing the price?

~~~
syaz1
Don't know who downmodded you. Perfectly acceptable advice. I'm not saying
it's _the_ answer, but relevant nontheless.

IMO $500 for deploy tool is a bit too much, when there are so many free tools
available already... or whip up your own bash script.

To OP: You should have a Features link. It's always the first link I find when
comparing products.

------
InclinedPlane
The main page is a bit messy, it doesn't have consistent typography, colors,
or layout (at a glance there are 6-8ish distinct content areas). Clean it up a
bit, simplify things (compare it to <http://basecamphq.com/>, as an example,
which only has about 3 distinct content areas), use fewer font colors, etc.

