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.

You know that we don’t like to brag about how the Avangate eCommerce platform is the best in the Universe ;) , but a recent survey of eCommerce providers for software vendors shows that, well… we are the best! Hurraaay!

It turned out that out of 14 major eCommerce providers rated by 192 software vendors on Andy Brice’s blog, Avangate was rated highest!

The survey covered important aspects that software vendors need to keep in mind when choosing an eCommerce provider: features, ease of use, reliability, support, fraud protection, ethics, value for money.

Don’t Lose Users on the First Screen!

This is part 4 of a 5-part series: How to convert more software trials to purchases.

Nothing’s worse than opening new software and staring at a vast white screen with millions of toolbar buttons.  Now what?

1. Most users don’t care enough to find out.
   They want to solve a problem, not root around in your menus.  They don’t care about your “project” paradigm or your innovative new work flow concepts.
2. Of course you also have to satisfy your power users.
   They probably don’t want paperclips popping up every five minutes distracting them from real work.  Power users are the ones who are going to spread the word about you, tell all their friends to download your software, and Tweet and blog about how awesome you are, so you have to keep them happy too.