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:
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.
Thanks for your points. I also think the website is very unprofessional, not to talk about the video demonstration; my accent is quite horrible and the absurd amounts of "hrms.." are unacceptable considering my target audience.
I guess I wanted to go for a more "casual" feeling. In the sense that companies would feel more comfortable knowing that I was just a casual developer and that I will have full attention towards them and their success with my product. I guess that's not how the real world works though.
I mean this constructively, but I cringed when I read the second paragraph. A company manager is more likely to interpret "casual" tone as: "This developer may disappear at any time, leaving me with no support for the product I've integrated in to my workflow."
In order to sell to a customer, you must understand what is important to them. Humans respond to people with whom they can identify. When you sit across from a business manager and your selling points match their concerns directly, a sense of comfort overcomes them. You should take any opportunity you get to talk to customers about what is important to them; not only from a software perspective, but from a business perspective. What companies do they enjoy doing business with? What software are they most satisfied with? What's the best product website they can tell you off the top of their head?
Understanding what your customer wants is half the battle. Developing a quality product is the other half.
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"?
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?
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.
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.
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.
When you email people, they are not interested in your passion or anything else. They have a problem. They want someone helpful to fix their problem without trying to sell them anything. That's it. Don't be too chummy, don't be too cold. Just be straightforward and helpful - like a guy fixing a computer.
If you are too friendly, you often lose the sale.
Also, being a human behind it is not a selling point. It's not a differentiator. It's just the expected thing. Your product is your selling point, don't try to sell anything else.
People want to know immediately what the price is - but people who are communicating with you are a LOT more likely to buy from you (assuming you know how to communicate with them).
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Come on! You think that someone who needs that software will be deterred by a 10px different in download button size? He found this website somehow, but then can't find the download button because it'S 10px too small?
I don't think that someone who needs that software will not purchase simply because a font is not the right size, but how often do you get frustrated when wanting to buy a product when you don't know the price or can't find the checkout? I'm just saying that if you make it easier for people to buy, then they will. App stores (Apple et al.), music players (iTunes), games consoles (Xbox), independent software developers, massive online book stores (Amazon), internet marketplaces (Ebay), payment providers (PayPal et al.) have all done the work here. Have a look. I challenge you to find the smallest "Buy Now" button, then lets compare that to someone whom is actually making money on the internet. It's called usability.
But if someone is buying a $500 product they will not be side-tracked by small annoyances (like not being able to find the Download button). If they're interested they will most likely send me an email - which I hope is clear enough.
I think you misunderstand how little $500 is to many of your customers.
I know while I'm happy to make an additional $500, the amount of time I spend thinking about spending it to try something out which could save me a day or so is getting very small. We're talking minutes to maybe hours.
Stick a big honking buy button there, and make it easy as hell to buy your stuff. Hire a real voice person to explain it if your accent is an issue, toss a presi presentation up there, and go with it.
Someone buying a $500 product will absolutely be side-tracked by small annoyances. Especially when those annoyances are the only impression the prospective buyer has, so far, of you or your product.
Seconded. In my experience, visitors very rarely provide feedback to problems even when asked. Many have recommended on this thread that the site be overhauled and I agree.
Clearly, he's not getting enough conversions now to be able to get a statistically significant result in a reasonable time frame.
I'm all for A/B testing, but the problems here are at a much more fundamental level--it is about understanding your market, and matching your customer's expectations. There will be plenty of time for A/B testing, once the sales volume is there to support it.
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.
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.
Yeah, I know. I should give away trials to non registered people as well, I'll put that on my todo list.
This is quite different from ninite. Ninite doesn't let you install software on many different computers - uDeployer is actually meant to install software on many different computers.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.