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It’s got to be the single-most asked question in the software business world. Beginning startups – both rolling in VC hay and bootstrapping – ask it. Existing software companies, as they get whacked around by a changing market (Mobile, where’d that come from?) and changing user expectations (You mean, I don’t just run in my browser?) ask it. The polite form of the question is, “How do I/we define what product to create?“. What they’re really saying is, how the hell do we invent (or re-invent) a software product that will sell like mad before we go broke like in out of business?

The traditional way to cope with this is,

1. Founder has brilliant idea,
2. Team works like slaves to bring it to market before anyone else,
3. Startup gets funded by VCs whom Founder sells idea to and lo and behold!,
4. the Software arrives at Market, to adoration and sales.

Except for the other 9 out of 10 startups whose software arrives to a vast collective yawn and are dead meat in 3 months.

What makes a person want to whip out their credit card and buy your software?

Hint: It’s not being nagged about how many days they have left in their trial every time they run your program.

It seems logical to nag the user.  Remind her that the trial is “time-limited, so act now!” like a fast-food commercial.  Remind her that she’s using your software for free, and doesn’t she feel guilty about that?

Sales people say “Pressure until they pay“, which for software trials means you should ask for money or at least guilt the user into paying. But you and I don’t like used-car sales techniques, and neither do your potential customers.

Want to sell software in China?

I bet you do. It’s a multi-billion dollar market (packaged software accounted for US$4.7 billion in 2008) that has seen positive growth even through the recession. Admittedly, there is a software piracy issue that shadows the country, still it’s a huge market and provides sales opportunities, especially in the B2B area.

A good enough reason for Avangate to partner with AliPay, China’s leading online payment service and part of giant Alibaba Group, so Avangate vendors can accept Alipay for China domestic payments in Chinese Renminbi (RMB or CNY).

Just in case you missed it, we are organizing our first Software Selling Conference in China that will take place on December 5th at the Park Plaza Beijing Science Park.

If until now China was just a very big country or a very fast developing market, now it’s getting personal:  I’m going there and join for a couple of days the Avangate Chinese sales team. Well, I should say we are going there, as 3 geeks and one lady are going to play a very serious and challenging role of the host at the event :) We are going to try to make it fun.

What is this event all about?

For a start I am looking forward to meeting some of our clients I’ve been working closely with on web analytics implementations or a/b testing.  Talking about testing, this is going to be the main focus on my presentation: Effective and tested ways to increase conversion rates. I will also try to make things interesting and hold a workshop just after the presentation, analyzing a website from the audience… depends on who will volunteer. Nothing staged there.

I’m sure you all know that Black Friday traditionally marks the beginning of the holiday shopping season in the US. Well, nowadays big retailers are starting to promote Black Friday sales more than a week in advance. But that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that Black Friday (Nov. 27th) and Cyber Monday (Nov. 30th) are definitely useful dates to keep in mind.

Why?

Simple – in 2008, the Black Friday weekend brought along an 18% increase on the total spending in the US compared to the year before, which, given the context of the economic downturn, was a more than good figure. Other reports show a 15% increase in Cyber Monday online sales, with only 1% increase in Black Friday sales compared to the previous year. Either way, sales went up.

For the last couple of months there has been a frenzy here in our web marketing department about A/B testing and Conversion Rates. Why the frenzy? Basically because all elements came into place: we developed a high performance A/B testing module within the eCommerce platform, we finished rolling out Omniture Site Catalyst on the shopping carts and we improved the template editing areas for all the accounts so it’s easier than ever to start testing templates.

We have finished quite some tests so far, some with better results than others, so we are pretty confident on making some bold statements on the 3 factors that impact conversion rate in our experiences.