Let’s discuss one more element of software sales funnel – price table. Price table is a final element your customers see before making order decisions. It mostly depends upon the price table how many customers will proceed to order form and enter credit their card number. So, it’s very important to compose your price table properly.

I’d like to tell you about a real experiment with our own price table.

We produce and sell Dr.Explain, software for making on-line manuals, help files, and user guides.
We offer two types of licenses with different function set: Regular and Advanced. Also we offer discounted multi-license packages. Moreover, we offer upgrades from Regular to Advanced license for every package.

So, our old price table looked like this:

Problems:

• There are too many options. It’s hard to understand their value and to choose from.
• There is no a recommended “Best value” option. Customers sometimes simply preferred the cheapest price.
• The difference between Advanced and Regular licenses isn’t explained. Users had to click on “Compare” link or contact support.
• The design is not visually appealing and looks outdated.
• Sometimes big companies ordered multi-user packages of Regular (i.e. cheaper) licenses while they easily could spend more and buy the same package of Advanced licenses. We lost that profit.

We wanted to get rid of these problems.

Currently, our new price table looks like this:

Benefits:

• There is no matrix anymore. Just a simple list of packages.
• The most popular single-user package of Advanced license is highlighted as recommended one.
• The differences of packages and of Advanced and Regular licenses are clearly explained.
• The modern design is more visually appealing and provides more confidence. Confidence is very important when we want people to pay for something.
• There are no multi-user packages of cheaper Regular licenses. We don’t loose extra profit anymore and have not to deal with upgrades for multi-user packages.
• For multi-user packages we show per-user price to prove the discount value.

I cannot tell for sure how these changes exactly affected our view/order conversion rate because sales are affected by too many factors. However, the benefits are obvious and we see that the number of orders get definitely increased while the number of presale questions (e.g. “What’s the difference between licenses?”) get decreased almost to zero.

This is a real improvement that cost nothing and gave the real effect. This is real Kaizen.

If you need design ideas for your price table simply Google for “price table design” images. There are hundreds of design samples suitable for different business models and product types.

Your users will be pleasantly surprised when your application unexpectedly congratulates them and wishes them a Merry Christmas or Happy New Year. This may be a specially decorated splash screen or logo graphics, funny animation, music, or video with your wishes to your users. For instance, VLC Media player puts up a red Christmas hat icon as an Easter egg in 2009 festive season.
Moreover, you may hide this secret feature deep in the application interface and hold a contest on your website with prizes for those who will find the “Easter egg” feature first.

Make and publish a video about how your team is celebrating these holidays

Show to your users that there are good people with positive attitude behind your product. Tell them a holiday story about your team. Find a good idea for your story to make your video remarkable and viral, so people would re-share it via social networks. This will give additional exposure to your products. Don’t be afraid to be slightly sentimental. People like touching stories.

Hold a holiday sale

Christmas and New Year eve is a season of sales. These days people are hunting for big discounts and special offers. It’s time of impulsive purchases. Don’t miss this opportunity to increase your customer base. Offer a time limited discount and announce it on your web site, blog and newsletter.

Hunt for special offers yourself

It’s not only you who must offer discounts for the holiday season. Other vendors and professional services do the same. So, if you need to purchase development tools, to order copywriting or design services for your business, go to their web sites now and you’ll likely find lots of Christmas offers there. Use this chance to pay less. For example, iSpreadNews PR agency that helps developers to promote their applications for iOS and Mac offers today discounts for everyone who announces some Christmas-related specials for iPhone/iPad or Mac application through their service.

Create a special Christmas bundle with products of another vendor

It’s not a secret that other ISVs are also looking for good Christmas ideas and opportunities for their businesses. Offer them a partnership. Make a Christmas bundle of your products and offer it for a special holiday price. If you both promote this bundle on your websites then this will double the product exposure, cut the promotion costs, and will increase sales. Cooperative bundle is a good way to quickly increase your user base.

Become Santa. Give away something for free

In the festive season most people expect to receive a gift from Santa. Become Santa for your users and offer them something for free. This may be a handy add-on or extension for your core product or just a part of it. For example, icon designers from Aha-Soft offer several icons from their commercial icon sets for free.

Create a holiday special edition of your product

December is a month of Christmas decorations. Before holidays we decorate our home, gardens, and offices. Decorate your application as well. Create a special holiday edition of your program or an add-on. For example, this might be a set of Christmas icons or backgrounds, a special Christmas level for your game, a skin with snowflakes for your utility, or document templates with Christmas ornament for your editor. Offer such extension as a freebie and watch your web site traffic and number of downloads explode.

Decorate your web site for holidays

Web site is a place that you must decorate for holidays in the first turn. Update your logo and background. Add special elements like bells or Christmas balls to make your web site, blog, or on-line store remarkable and charming. Creating custom Christmas balls with your original design, text and logos is easy and fast.

It took just three minutes to make such animated ball with TBS Cover Editor.
Watch the short video about how to create such Christmas ball graphics.

Design a remarkable flash postcard and virally spread it through your users

Also help your users and clients to congratulate their friends and pals. Create a viral flash postcard with an interesting story for them. This card must include a humble mention of your product or service and it must be customizable. Your clients must be able to insert name of a recipient and add their personal wishes before sending it. So, everyone who receive and watch such flash postcard could insert a name of another person and resend it to his or her friend as well. If the postcard’s idea and design are interesting and creative then people will virally resend it to each other and your company will receive great coverage and numerous mentions.

Tell about your achievements and progress in the past year

People like both success and failure stories. People like truth. So, if you have a blog tell your subscribers the truth about your results in the past year. Tell what you did to grow your sales, to improve user experience in your products, and to increase conversion. Disclose how you build your business. Share your experience about various approaches: what worked and what failed. Publish real figures and I promise your post will get very popular. For example, Patrick McKenzie, an author of Bingo Card Creator application, does this every year and his “Year In Review” posts attract many visitors to his blog.

Disclose your plans for the next year

Another way to attract many readers to your blog during the holiday season is sharing your plans for the next year. Tell about products you’re going to release after the New Year, about projects you’re going to launch, and about ideas you’re going to implement. Spread the words about your upcoming projects now and attract early adopters even before official release.

Send gifts and souvenirs to your key partners and major clients

Don’t forget about your key partners who helped you and your business in the past year. Send them original souvenirs. This shouldn’t be an expensive gift but it must be a physical thing sent via regular mail. For example, a remarkable hand made souvenir would be a perfect choice. Strong and mutual relationships are invaluable. Appreciate your business partners and be thankful to them.

If you know other Christmas ideas for ISV then please tell us about it in comments.

We wish you happy holidays and all the best in the New Year! Cheers!

For me, entrepreneurship means using my skills to help other people to solve their problems. In the same time, I often have to solve problems of my business and turn them into opportunities.

Surprisingly, competition, finances, suppliers, and management aren’t real problems in many cases. Often, there is a main problem in the way we think and behave. Every successful business comes from founder’s heart and is driven by his or her entrepreneurship spirit.

What is a real entrepreneurship spirit?
Who is intrapreneur?
What skills and personal qualities will set you apart from other entrepreneurs and competitors?
How to keep your mental, psychological, and physical health and not to become a slave to money?
How did the Internet impact on entrepreneurship?

Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs ask themselves similar questions. Keith Johnson gives answers to many questions about entrepreneurship in his new e-book “Entrepreneurship Matters! For 2012 And Beyond”.

This book is a great collection of real business stories, inspirational thoughts, and deep reasoning. Keith’s ideas aren’t citations from MBA theory textbooks. They are proved by many years of his experience. As a documentation specialist, he has been working with many businesses ranging from individual entrepreneurs to big companies. Documentation writing gives insight to the nature of business – its structure, problems, communications, achievements, and people. Such expertise is worth a lot. Fortunately, Keith is a very open person who loves to share his knowledge with other people. So, today we have a lucky chance to read this excellent book.

Check it out at LuLu: “Entrepreneurship Matters! For 2012 And Beyond”

Likely the reason is that Google+ is still in Beta mode and most of early adopters are developers as always. So, now it’s a perfect moment to expand your professional network through Google+ while it’s a purely programmers land.

BTW, I’d be glad to intersect my Google+ circles with yours. Find me on Google+.

Use cool infographics instead of boring and dull text press releases

Here is a good show case from Hoot Suite: HootSuite Reaches 2 Million Owl Milestone and Releases Infographic

However, creating cool infographics is a kind of art and magic. If you able to do this you will hit the jackpot.

The same approach works for national markets. For example, what French-speaking users are looking for:

Screenshots are taken with Dr.Explain help file authoring tool

You may easily adopt this idea for a local regional market or a specific niche. Good luck in your researches!

Check the Search Terms section in your Adwords account:

This is an extremely useful tool for optimizing your campaigns’ effectiveness. The Search Terms section will help to find new negative (irrelevant) words, to add new phrases, and to change keyword matching to increase CTR and conversion rate.

“Every time someone reads your document and they walk away with a greater understanding of the concept or analysis at hand, you are taking steps to becoming an established and recognized writer.”

This is a quote from new e-book “100 Power Writing Tips for 2011” written by Keith Johnson, an educator, technical writer & technical communicator with many years of extensive experience. Keith is one of the top bloggers who regularly writes about technologies, writing, communication & effectiveness in his Great Documents blog.

In the new e-book Keith summarized many years of being in profession into a hundred of chapters which cover all key aspects of power writing: from Accuracy, Agility, & Analytics to Ubuntu, Understanding Others, & White Boards. Every article is full of original ideas that help to look at technical writing from new perspective. For instance, Keith unveils how music can help you to improve writing effectiveness & quality, or if “geekery” is good or evil for writer.

As friend of Keith, I knew that he was working on this e-book and I was also waiting for it. This week I’ve finally got and read it. It was so good that I assumed that Keith would sell it for serious money. I was wrong. He shares it almost for nothing. Just for three dollars! So if you deal with writing you should read it. It’s a great chance to learn many fresh ideas how to be a really power writer in 2011.

Get your copy of “100 Power Writing Tips for 2011” e-book

With agile methodology applied, organization can lower its expenses by producing cost-effective documentation. Because of incremental way of delivering help files, the whole help rarely has to be fully rearranged. Everything is done practically on the fly.

Read full article: Agile Technical Writing Basics

… Most software businesses are built on people emotions. People don’t buy software products. They buy emotions: safety, beauty, pleasure, respectfulness, hope, and dream …

Which emotions does your software bring to people?