Software Business Blog

Multiply your recurring revenue opportunities with the latest collection of features in Avangate’s 2013 winter release. Take the digitization of your customer centric experiences to the next level, embrace the proliferation of touchpoints and diversify your reach across channels. We’re continuing our investment into enhancing configurability and control, providing deeper alignment with your systems and accelerating time to market.

Advanced Subscription Management

Subscription management enables you to manage recurring revenue intelligently to increase conversion rates, optimize the purchase funnel, boost retention and minimize lost sales.

Cards on file for returning customers

Generate tokenized payment links for returning customers to display their previously used credit cards in the shopping cart, along with their pre-filled billing information. Advanced customizations can reduce the length of the purchase funnel and streamline the purchase process all the way down to a single click.

Custom renewal buy links for on-demand subscriptions

Your customers can start taking advantage of dedicated campaigns and special offers to renew their subscriptions on demand, well ahead of the expiration or renewal deadline. This is a great way to:

• Increase retention rates using early renewals and amendments for specific subscriptions to specific customer cohorts.
• Decrease churn by creating tailored subscription offerings to incentivize renewals, such as discounts, superior options, extended lifecycles and even upgrades to different products or plans.

Intelligent payment routing enhancements

The latest upgrades to payment routing along with the retry logic and Account Updater service have increased conversion rates by as much as 30% in some scenarios. Avangate’s payment engine can route payments to the appropriate gateway based on easily configurable rules like transaction type (new acquisitions and renewals), payment methods, currencies, customer billing country, and now also authorization response codes for failed communications. The addition is designed to recover recurring payments if the initial transaction fails (due to an expired credit card, for example) by automatically utilizing backup gateways covering payments generated from auto renewals and trial conversions.

Expanded Customer Management

Reducing customer churn is a key best practice in recurring revenue management strategies, but minimizing attrition is just part of the story. You can now empower your customers to take an active role in payment management and facilitate successful conversions.

myAccount multiple card management

myAccount now features advanced functionality that enables customers to add and update credit or debit cards to their accounts. Payment management is available for imported subscriptions, as well as for purchases that involve PayPal, Direct Debit and bank transfers.

Advanced multi-channel promotions

Avangate promotions have evolved to allow unmatched granularity. Discounts can now be configured to impact pricing options, allowing you to incentivize very specific purchases. For example, discounts applied to premium offerings can enhance the appeal of more expensive configurations and add-ons compared with basic subscriptions.

In addition, we’ve added a new piece of functionality to the mechanism that controls the price of partner orders. You can take advantage of coupon codes to offer discounts, on top of on-demand price cuts and highly configurable partner margins to increase sales via indirect channels.

Enhanced cross-selling and up-selling

Provide vendors with flexibility and control over the point in the purchase process when a cross-selling offer is displayed to shoppers. The options available include placements within different steps of the ordering process – in cart, review page or at the end of the funnel in the Thank You page.

PO Reference Tracker

Customers using Purchase Orders (POs) as the payment method during the ordering process can now set purchase order identifiers to track and manage purchases in their own system. The Shopper Reference Number (Internal PO Number) entered during the ordering process will be included in invoices, order details and notifications to help make PO management more efficient.

Deeper Integration with New APIs

The Avangate API can easily extend your reach across touchpoints and channels, offering comprehensive support for order, subscription, product catalogue, customer and partners  management.

JSON-RPC support

We’ve expanded Avangate API protocol support to provide additional flexibility and control by enabling you to invoke methods using JSON-RPC (JavaScript Object Notation remote procedure call) protocol, a lightweight data-interchange format. New Purchases, Subscription Management, Product and Pricing, and Channel Manager APIs all support both SOAP and JSON-RPC.

Products & Pricing API

Use the new Products & Pricing API to easily extract product and pricing details from the Avangate system. This release is only a part of the full Products & Pricing API story, and we want to let you know that we’re working to expose additional cPanel functionality in this API in the near future.

Channel Manager API

Avangate is now exposing Channel Manager (Partner) functionality, such as placing new orders and making payments, through our API. Both SOAP and JSON-RPC are supported for the Avangate Channel Manager API.

Single Sign-On for myAccount, eStore, Partner Portals

Simplify your customers’ and partners’ login experiences in Avangate myAccount by using single sign-on (SSO) to provide seamless account access to customers authenticated in your system. With SSO, users are required to provide their login information to your system only once. After that, you can easily redirect users into their myAccount to leverage our advanced order, subscription and payment management functionality. Additionally, SSO is a big part of the process that lets repeat customers use cards on file for streamlined ordering.

SSO also helps get partners authenticated in your system for their Avangate Channel Manager accounts. Use SSO to expedite access to Avangate Channel Manager functionality for authenticated partners, enabling them to place orders as well as manage payments, and customers.

Leading Commerce Platform

Import/Export XML – Products & Pricing

XML support for importing and exporting product and pricing information offers:

• Frictionless account migration.
• Simplified importing of products from a third-party system.
• Automated product and pricing management.

New payment methods support

We’ve added support for new payment methods so you can achieve higher conversion rates when selling locally in Brazil and Russia.

• Local Brazilian cards /with installments – Customers in Brazil can now pay for your products with locally issued Visa and MasterCard cards (national cards account for around 70% of cards issued, while international for 30%) for transactions limited to home currency Brazilian Real to pay for your products/subscriptions. Furthermore, you can enable Brazilian shoppers to take advantage of installment payments to segment their total order cost into manageable amounts. The customer can thus pay through an agreed number of installments which usually counts between three and six. In conjunction with Boleto Bancario, this gives you access to over 80% of Brazilians using local payment methods online.
• QIWI – Millions of customers across Russia and the CIS already use QIWI for online purchases. QIWI provides shoppers with control over how they are billed online, as well as the flexibility to make offline transactions using a large network of ATM self-service terminals.

Better support with UX enhancements

New contextual tutorials in the cPanel help make even the most complex task a breeze and drastically reduce the learning curve during onboarding to the Avangate system. These helpful walkthroughs will take you step by step through every aspect of your tasks, acting as your personal on-page tour guides.

We’re speeding access to information, that is key to your business process, with the advanced quick search upgrade. Using the menu search capabilities you can easily locate features and functionality across the cPanel, as well as find order, customer and subscription details.

Chargeback Management 2.0

New chargeback reporting and monitoring tools are now available, simplifying tracking and management of disputes opened by your customers. We’ve also invested in advanced visibility and insight into how chargebacks evolve from the moment they open through to resolution.

This release brings over 200 new functionalities and 510 fixed bugs and enhancements since the last one. We appreciate the support of over 200 partners which contributed with feedback and inputs in our product development and encourage you to continue to share your experiences and requirements via our Control Panel, surveys and direct contact.

Despite all our advances, a lot of companies are still selling software like it’s 1985. While they may not have acid wash jeans and fade haircuts to match their software approach, they are using old-school sales techniques that just feel… dated.

Traditionally, for B2B software sales ( e.g. enterprise software), most companies adopted a direct sales model, and to reduce the length of the sales process responded with a complex lead qualification process. Sales professionals formed close relationships with purchasing and IT departments and went through long RFP and proof of concept processes in hot pursuit of major sales. Making a sale took a lot of time and effort – and each sale had a big payoff to match.

But today’s software buyers are no longer restricted by silos in large organizations, subject to their company’s nitpicky purchasing processes and blessed by IT. They’re increasingly agile and empowered, with access to more information and resources than ever before. Buyers are smart enough and connected enough to quickly find answers on their own, and are no longer dependent on salespeople. In fact, it is estimated that 60% of the sales process is complete even before the first contact with a sales professional.

Today’s software buyers are also accustomed to using a lot of remarkably complex software for free, or using the freemium model to try before they buy. Savvy buyers are more skeptical and more apt to jump around in the sales process, ask to skip the demo and try the software on their own terms, and request time with technical experts.

In addition, software buyers bring their “B2C” sensibilities as a consumer in demanding ease of use, small purchases, personalization and familiar interfaces. It is more than likely that good consumer applications find usage in enterprise contexts, and vice-versa.

They behave as “individuals” – like the folks on Portlandia,– and they demand to be treated like it.

That implies companies can no longer live in the past and stop looking at the world through the traditional lens of B2B or B2C. Instead, they need to adopt a new approach to sales: business-to-individual, or B2i. This involves recognizing the individual needs and context of each buyer, and customizing the sales process to meet unique needs.

Stay tuned next time to learn more about how to address the complexity placed by demanding modern software buyers – and how old-school sales processes are really failing them (kinda like Crystal Pepsi failed us all).

Customers often ask me: When should I install the Universal Analytics code? 

I always reply with the same question: Why do you think you need it? They usually shrug their shoulders and look at me for a smart answer. Since this happens so often, I decided to write a blog post about it. This post will help you determine whether to upgrade, and walk you through the upgrade process when you decide to make the leap.

What is Universal Analytics, and why should you care?

Universal Analytics is the next generation of Google Analytics.

It has already excited the entire community of web analysts, and for good reason: it’s by far the biggest update to web analytics since the switch from web logs to JavaScript tracking.

I won’t go through all the great new features of Universal Analytics right now, but here are the basics:

• It focuses on visitors (meaning people), not just visits.
• You can track people across multiple devices (web, mobile, tablet).
• You can set custom dimensions and metrics to track what is important to you, not just what Google Analytics gives you by default.

Instead of focusing on features, I will focus on when it’s the right time to upgrade to Universal Analytics, based on the profile of the company using analytics.

Profile #1: Knock knock! Who’s there? A web analyst

You should absolutely upgrade. Universal Analytics is a game changer and there is a lot to learn about the system. Sooner or later, everyone will switch to the new technology and you’ll want to know everything about it before this happens.

If you are a web analyst or work in a company where there is a web analyst on the payroll, you’ll probably switch to Universal Analytics sooner than others do. Not everything that used to work in classic Google Analytics will work with Universal Analytics, but web analysts should have the knowledge and skills to identify and resolve the differences.

Those making the switch will need to plan accordingly as all the existing tracking codes on your websites will need to change. This is a major undertaking, but the increased power and flexibility from Universal Analytics will be worth it. Web analysts may want to consider upgrading a personal or smaller site before tackling a corporate upgrade to help them master the process.

Tip: While you are upgrading, consider switching to Google Tag Manager as well. You’ll kill two birds with one stone and you’ll make any future analytics updates much, much easier.

Profile #2: Knock knock! Who’s there? A SaaS startup

You should consider upgrading. Universal Analytics requires changing the whole tracking code on your website, but being a startup you are probably agile enough to make this change quickly and enjoy the advantages of the new technology immediately.

For SaaS companies especially, tracking people and not visits makes a huge difference in day-to-day activities. Being able to look at data across different devices and know that you are dealing with the same person will open up a new frontier of reports that will help you improve the bottom line.

From a technology point of view, you’ll need to know that after switching to Universal Analytics, Google Analytics will only set a single cookie in the user’s browser. That cookie contains very little information, essentially just a unique ID for the person visiting the website.

A documented method allows you to set that analytics ID to match an ID that already corresponds to that specific user in your system, like a CRM or affiliate ID. That means that each time a user is logged into your app, no matter the device is being used, Universal Analytics will always use the same ID to track that person – and you’ll be able to connect that tracking data with your internal data.

Tip: To unlock advanced campaign reports, many SaaS companies used to log Google Analytics cookies on their own servers. Once you switch to Universal Analytics, this option will not be available anymore.

Profile #3: Knock knock! Who’s there? Major software company

Upgrading is not your priority yet. I’m pretty sure that your IT department won’t be happy to hear that Universal Analytics is still in beta. Also, switching to a whole new tracking technology will probably put many of your other developments on hold, which is obviously not desirable.

Right now, it’s most important for your company to plan for the inevitable upgrade to the Universal Analytics technology. One Universal Analytics feature that big companies will love is the ability to define custom dimensions and metrics. Google Analytics allows you to define a max of 20 for each. These dimensions and metrics can help drive your upgrade plan.

Think of a visited web page as one of the few dimensions that were available for you to customize and send contextual data about your visitors to Google Analytics. Now you can use 20 such dimensions! While this is a big step up, without proper planning you can easily reach the point when you have used up all of these dimensions but still need many more.

As a major company, you probably already have a web analyst on your payroll who’s already familiar with Universal Analytics (see the first profile in this post). That person should start documenting target dimensions and metrics to plan the deployment on your main websites.

If there’s any specific information you would like to have available inside your Google Analytics account, now is the time to talk to your web analyst to make sure it will be available after the switch. If you don’t plan the upgrade appropriately, you will be stuck with dimensions you don’t need and without dimensions you do, so allocate sufficient time for planning.

Tip: Remarketing lists defined in Google Analytics are not available in Universal Analytics (at least at the time of this article). If you use remarketing lists, make sure to plan the upgrade deployment to happen after remarketing becomes available.

Switching to Universal Analytics

The migration to Universal Analytics should not give you headaches. It is a well documented process and Google Analytics even provides a guide for the switch.

Companies looking to upgrade can follow the example of PadiAct, a SaaS startup Avangate started working with a few years ago, that recently started switching its web properties to Universal Analytics.

Here is the checklist PadiAct followed to make sure all the elements of the upgrade were covered for each of its websites:

1. Change the tracking code that was placed in the header templates of websites. PadiAct also decided to switch to Google Tag Manager to make future updates much easier.
2. Create an inventory of all the custom Google Analytics codes added on website pages anywhere other than header templates (e.g., custom link tracking, other events). Remove any such tracking and replace it with Data Layer event tracking, which is then customized with Universal Analytics inside Google Tag Manager.
3. Add custom dimensions and custom metrics tracking where needed. This can also be done via Google Tag Manager to accelerate and future-proof the process.
4. Identify any third party system that you used to track with Google Analytics. For PadiAct, this was the Avangate payment system and support platform. PadiAct replaced all its analytics codes there as well.
5. Define custom reports for each custom dimension. These reports will help you make the most of the upgrade to Universal Analytics.
6. Validate the reporting data with other sources (own database, past Google Analytics). Fix bugs, if any are found.

Once the upgrade process is complete, it’s time to celebrate – data-driven decisions are now closer than ever. Congratulations!

Good luck in your migration to Universal Analytics, which will build a path to new insights regarding how your visitors interact with your web properties. And feel free to share your stories about these new insights in the comments!

Start using one of the 4 most affordable A/B testing tools to improve your customer experience 

A/B testing is a simple process that will help you optimize the customer experience across your website and shopping cart. By testing different versions of key pages, you can easily determine which one produces the best results among your target audience. This is a simple way to remove the guesswork from your design and development process and focus your efforts on finding conversion enhancers.

It may sound simple, but the market is saturated with all kinds of A/B testing tools, so assessing which one will work best for your business can be a daunting task. To help you out, we’ve been investigating the best options available on the market. Based on our research, we’ve created descriptions of the top tools and developed a few guidelines on how to choose your own testing tool so you can start A/B testing sooner!

Here are our top tips regarding A/B testing solutions. Most of these 4 affordable and easy-to-use tools offer not only A/B testing, but also multivariate and split URL testing.

• Google Analytics Content Experiments

Google Analytics Content Experiments allow you test up to five full versions of a single page, each delivered to visitors from a separate URL (A/B/C/n). Compare how different web pages perform using a random sample of your visitors. You can define what percentage of your visitors is included in the experiment, choose which objective you’d like to test, and receive updates by email about how your experiment is doing.

•  Optimizely 

Optimizely’s simple visual editor makes each element on every page editable. After inserting a single line of code from Optimizely into your site’s HTML, you never have to touch the code base again, which is wonderful. With Optimizely, you can use A/B and multivariate testing along with WYSIWYG editing and real-time reporting.

• Visual Website Optimizer 

Visual Website Optimizer is a complete testing and optimization suite. Along with an A/B testing tool, it includes methods for multivariate testing, behavioral targeting, heat-maps and click-maps, and usability testing. Multiple editing options allow you to change any part of your web page. You can even specify different URLs to split traffic and measure which page performs best.

• Convert

Convert is a testing suite that includes A/B, multivariate, and split URL testing. It offers a simple testing wizard to walk you through setting up A/B tests. Just by using a drag and drop approach, you can move elements around and build out your own tests easily.

All of these testing tools integrate with most popular web analytics platforms, such as Google Analytics and Site Catalyst. With the exception of Google Analytics Content Experiments (which is totally free), all of the tools also have free trials or free pricing plans available depending on the number of visitors tested each month. And all of these tools can definitely support enterprise level traffic in case you want to scale the testing capabilities.

What factors do you need to consider before making a selection?

There are many factors to consider when choosing a testing tool. For example, when using Google Analytics Content Experiments, you’ll need to work closely with your web development team, because the test pages are delivered from your server. By contrast, if you are planning to use one of the other 3 tools, you can modify the content of your page ‘on-the-fly’ by manipulating your page content with JavaScript and CSS, directly from the admin interface.

The downside of this method is that a slight delay will be added to your page load time while the test script figures out the combination of elements being requested for testing, then alters the content as your page loads. However, for the first year of A/B testing, I would recommend starting with simple A/B testing ideas and ramping up as you learn, so load time shouldn’t be a major problem. I am sure that you have lots of conversion killers lurking on your untested pages – it’s time to find out what they are!

How can you choose the testing tool that fits your needs best? 

Once you have decided to start A/B testing, prioritize the types of tests you are planning to run: A/B, multivariate, split. Then try each one of the tools listed! The free trials should offer enough information to help you assess whether you like the tool or not. Test each one yourself and then evangelize the tool internally. I recommend teaming up with a designer and a technical person to help you work out the more advanced steps. If you need more than 1-2 days to create and launch your first A/B test, you’ve overcomplicated things. Keep it simple for now and in time your tests will get more sophisticated!

We’ve created the following quick guide to find the tool that matches your current and future needs based on the internal resources you can devote to testing. Then, choose the plan that most closely matches the volume of visitors you intend to test. This way you will be able to pay as you go:

Solution
Experiment Types available	A/B testing	A/B testing, MVT, URL split testing	A/B testing, MVT, URL split testing	A/B testing, MVT, URL split testing
Ease of Use	Medium	High	High	High
Development required	Normal	Minimum	Minimum	Minimum
Price	Free	Plans start at $17/month. Free trial available for 30 days.	Plans start at $49/month. Free trial available for 30 days.	Plans start at $9/month. Free trial available for 15 days.
Link	Access from your Google Analytics interface	optimizely.com	visualwebsiteoptimizer.com	convert.com

It goes without saying, but we always love your feedback. Below, please share with us which other testing tools you are using and describe which ones have worked best for you.

MajorGeeks is one of the most popular software sites online. Behind this “very large toolbox for your PC,” as they like to describe their business, are just two guys: Tim Tibbetts and Jim McMahon. Both Tim and Jim share computers as a major passion. Jim was kind enough to share with us MajorGeeks’ approach to affiliate marketing, as well as some valuable tips on how to grow a successful business in this competitive industry.

1. How did you get into the Affiliate Industry?
Tim (my partner) and I started in the online business in 1999. Affiliate sales offered a natural progression from and augmentation to traditional banner ads.

2. Describe your business in 3 words.
Big. Green. Geeky.

3. What’s the best part of earning money as an affiliate?
Generating revenue by promoting products that we like and use? What’s not to like?

4. Is there a secret to success in the affiliate business?
I’m not sure if there is a secret, but diligence works. You have to pick good companies and develop a solid working relationship with them. You need to be very focused on what your targets and goals are. Then you have to commit to those goals, targets, and companies. Do that and you’ll have a fair chance to succeed. Doing things only halfway or spreading yourself too thin will fail every time.

5. Name the most valuable services an affiliate network could bring to you?
A personal masseuse. But few companies are willing to see my viewpoint on that one. ;) Barring that, good tracking is essential. I am utterly shocked and how staggeringly bad some affiliate companies are at tracking sales. Then you also need a variety of ways to be able to promote what you are selling. Whether it is link variety, a good selection of banners, custom builds, or something else – the more tools in your toolbox, the better off you’ll be.

6. What do you think are the hottest trends in the affiliate business in 2013?
I’m pretty focused on the software space. So the trends there are going to be different than those in the macro environment. But that said, I have seen more newer, smaller authors embrace the power of affiliate marketing earlier in their sales cycles than in the past. I suspect I’d see that in other markets too.

7. What advice would you give to a new software affiliate?
Don’t. Stay away. Get a real job. Go work a 9 to 5 job like your parents told you to. I’ve got enough competition out here – I don’t need any more! But if you HAVE to, rule number one is KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. Offer the products that they want. And don’t overthink it. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve tried to be more clever than my data suggested.

Many thanks to Jim for talking to us about MajorGeeks’ expert affiliate practices! Stay tuned to get more top tips from our next Avangate Affiliate Interview.

Everybody knows fluffernutter sandwiches are delicious. And they’re where fluff belongs. For a long time, marketing teams struggled to measure and prove their value. Sometimes, this led to an over-reliance on “fluffy” metrics like “awareness” or “brand image.” Now, though, new buying behavior cuts deep into the fluff and extends the marketing arm way into the sales cycle and more sophisticated tracking tools are providing hard data on marketing’s contribution to the bottom line. Clearly, marketing is becoming busier (and less fluffy) than ever.

But at the same time, the bottom line is getting much more complicated. For example, there used to be two simple sales paths for software buyers to follow – B2B and B2C. For either path, marketers were responsible for building awareness and interest to guide buyers into a sales funnel, where salespeople took over, built up intent, helped provide a framework for evaluation, and eventually handled the purchase. The process looked like the left side of this diagram:

The fact that marketing covered less area also meant that it had fewer metrics to support its success. But now, software purchasing paths are expanding in new directions as modern software buyers educate and lead themselves instead of taking direction from sales teams. This means that B2B and B2C approaches are in some ways relics of the past, and an unprecedented number of points of discovery and resources – from Twitter chats to free content to help documentation – are empowering the modern B2i software buyer to make decisions independently, without aid from sales teams.

In fact, the CEB Marketing Leadership Council has found that customers will only contact sales representatives once they’re 60% of the way through the purchasing process – much farther along than in the past. The shift toward B2i has made the new buying process look more like the right side of the image above. Marketers are taking over more sales functions, interacting with customers more frequently, through many channels and providing information that guides customers all the way through to making actual purchases or trials.

As buyers interact with more marketing touch points, marketers can gather larger troves of data about the effectiveness of their campaigns. They can then use each data point to identify and appeal to each customer’s individual preferences with custom messaging – and, in turn, prove the value of different marketing efforts by tracking precisely what and when customers actually buy.

In fact, software sales have evolved so much that software sometimes seems to “sell itself”. A big part of marketing now centers on delivering value by educating customers through self-service tools, available at any time, from anywhere. These not only let customers create their own custom software suites (in some cases at least), but also make marketers smarter and more efficient. You could even say that marketing is teaching customers how to make their own sandwiches – no fluff involved. That’s a tasty outcome for everyone with a stake in software sales.