The Agile Micro ISV Blog

Potential customers arrive at your page with a mug full of suspicion. It’s your job as a copy writer to remove that fear. I’m trying something a little different with PDF Scan Pro.

I thought about what might prevent someone from making that initial purchase and becoming a customer. I think some of it is going to be because they’re not sure if your app is the one for them. Is it right? Is there another app out there that is better/faster/cheaper. A traditional approach might operate a little like this:

“Don’t bother checking out the opposition, we’re the best.”

I think people are so used to this approach that they’re immune from it. I’m not going to spend my time developing an application I didn’t believe in – so I know my applications’ USPs, I know there strengths and their weaknesses, I know where they sit in the market. So why not spend a little time telling your customer about your competition, so they can see where your product fits in?

I’ve not tried this before, but I’ve added a section to PDF Scan Pro’s Trial/Moneyback page listing the competition. I’m hoping that this approach might show a little confidence, and might alleviate fears that ‘the perfect product’ might just be a Google search away.

Anyone else tried this or anything similar?

With great interest, I’ve been watching the unfolding drama that kicked off with this post on 37Signals, later followed by this response from GetSatisfaction.

In
case you missed its arrival, GetSatisfaction is a really nice web app
focused on facilitating open conversations between businesses and
customers on a level playing field. The essence of Jason’s complaint on
the 37Signals blog is this:

I’m going to use (everyone’s friend) Bob Walsh as an example. Bob’s awesome task management application, MasterList Professional is sold by his company, Safari Software
Inc. Now, let’s say that Dave, a customer of Bob’s pops across to the
GetSatisfaction website. He searches for Bob’s company but can’t find
it. Now here’s the interesting part; Dave can, without Bob’s knowledge,
set up a support site for Safari Software and MasterList, and ask a
question on it.

So what does Bob do? Nothing. Why? Because he has
no idea that this unofficial support site exists, let alone that one of
his customers is asking for help there. Now that doesn’t seem like a
nice state of affairs does it?

That wasn’t the only (or even the
main) problem. On Bob’s unofficial support site, GetSatisfaction might
use Bob’s company name, even his logo, making it seem quite official.
What really rubbed Jason up the wrong way, was the badge that
GetSatisfaction placed on the GetSatisfaction website.


Clearly the suggestion is that if you’re not signed up for GetSatisfaction, you’re not doing open the open conversation thing.

This
has been something on my mind since I started using the service. I do
use GetSatisfaction for Home Document Manager, and I like it. It’s a
good app, and integrates well with product websites. But there has
always been a subtle undertone of ‘participate here or be excluded’.

To
participate fully on GetSatisfaction, you also need to get a premium
account, and they’re not cheap. In fact, they’re pretty pricey,
especially for a micro ISV.
Their basic plan starts at $99/month. They used to offer a $49/month
starter subscription, but I couldn’t find it just now, there has been a
bit of a redesign, so it may have vanished altogether.

But
whether the price was $49 or $99 per month, it would still be the
single biggest outlay after my office. And that just doesn’t
seem….right. $49/year and I would sign up in a heartbeat, but $49 is
insanely pricey, for what it is. And $99/month is just….silly.

If
GetSatisfaction are truly comitted to facilitating open conversations,
they should offer all companies a free, single user pro account, so
that small companies can compete on the ‘level playing field’ that
GetSatisfcation seems so keen on. If they got the buy in from startups,
they would no doubt make the income as the startups grew.

They
offer a good service, but I think that a single free pro account to
each company would go a long way to losing the “mafioso protection”
image that Jason was writing of.

Image by jgrantmac via Flickr

Just been catching up on my Business Of Software reading. It seems that Yahoo
has spat the dummy, thrown its toys out of the pram
and flicked the self destruct switch. Now that’s a lot of metaphors!
Their domain customers are receiving emails with the following text:

Important note: Beginning on July 1, 2008, Yahoo!’s annual domain renewal price increases to $34.95 per year.

Now, as if the price wasn’t ridiculous enough, they’ve put this into the public domain by emailing their customers, but their website
makes no mention of the increase. That means someone buying a domain
today is told a renewal will cost $9.95, when in reality, Yahoo has no
intention of offering such a price.

A little dishonest? I think so.