ISV Kaizen

I’m currently following an interesting discussion in Sales/Marketing VP’s & Directors - Software & Technology group at LinkedIn.

The main question of the discussion is devoted to the most important things in the art of selling. Most of ISV and microISV do the marketing and sell their software or services on their own. So, they must pay attention to these things also. Here is what I’ve learned from that discussion and completely agree with this:

• Be passionate about your product
  You have to believe that your software or service will make your clients successful. Otherwise, your clients won’t believe it. You’ll hardly sell something that you are not passionate about.
• Care about your customers’ success
  Remember you are there to help them out. Its not about putting money in your pocket, its about putting money in their pocket. Demonstrate real concern for a positive outcome for the client.
• Ask good questions and then shut up
  Learn to listen. The more you know, the better you can position your software. People like to talk about themselves. And they like someone who listens to them when they do it. A good listener who is genuinely interested always gets the information and the relationship.

The principles are really simple but very important. Don’t sell products but do offer solutions for clients’ problems.

Our team is passionate about our software help authoring tool, Dr.Explain. That is why we’ve recently created a stunning video that shows how it’s easy to create software documentation with Dr.Explain and how Dr.Explain will save money for your business.
Check it out at http://www.drexplain.com/live_demo/

For the next 5 days (starting on June 8′th), guys from True BoxShot will give away several free licenses a day, as part of “Out of the box” free contest.

Everyone may participate. The contest rules are simple and fun:
- Each morning we’ll post a new cartoon without a caption.
- To win the contest, you must supply the best caption in the comments.
… more details: http://www.trueboxshot.com/out-of-the-box-cartoon-contest

Daily awards:
• 1’st place: TBS Cover Editor free license
• 2′nd place: True BoxShot or True BoxShot for Photoshop plugin free license on your choice
• 3′d place: 50% discount coupon on any TBS product
• all participant will receive 5% discount coupon on any TBS product

Have fun and win!

And invite your friends and colleagues to take part too!

I’m currently watching an interesting discussion on Business of Software forum.

The topic is about if having your personal photo on your business card is a good idea or not. It’s like everything in business - you don’t know the right answer until you try it yourself. There are cons and pros.

Advantages:

• Breaking standards
• Easier to recall what the discussion was about
• Easier to recall who was that person
• Personal photo causes a feeling of trust and openness

Disadvantages

• Breaking standards
• May look vain
• May look geeky or amateurish

However, most of the discussion participants are inclined to believe that this may be a worthwhile idea. Also, they give other practical advice of effective business card usage. Check it out

BTW, do you know that you may create virtual 3D business cards with TBS Cover Editor like the sample below?

The recent release of Dr.Explain 4, help file authoring and documentation writing software, is a big import step in our company history. So, we needed a new visual identity for the application itself and for the product website to emphasize the great improvements and progress made.

First we decided to begin with a new logotype image design that would become a start point for the rest redesign works. The logo should express the following metaphors associated with our software:
- Intelligence
- Work
- Automation
- Technology
- Simplicity vs. Complexity
- Easiness
- Precision and Accuracy

We tried several “great looking” designers and studios and had failures with them due-to their flat vision and standard template-based approach. They all offered to us combinations of boring circles, paper sheets, lines and meaningless colored shapes.

After we had spent many days and many dollars on such graphical trash, we finally made a discovery - BrandBerry, a small branding and logo design company.

Designers behind the BrendBerry have an out of box attitude, non standard ideas, and simply amazing drawing skills. They had immediately abandoned the idea to use common logo template solutions and offered to invent a character. Now you can see this character on our website and in all promotional materials.

Meet the Dr.Explain. Here it is!

He’s smart, intelligent, industrious, neat, prompt, helpful, and friendly! We love him. Dr.Explain users love him. Everyone loves him!

Are you interested in process of the Dr.Explain character creation? Guys from BrandBerry have recently published a wordless pictured story of the Dr.Explain logo birth.
Check it out! For me, it is a kind of magic!

P.S: If in addition to the logo you need to design photo-realistic box shot images then look at TBS Cover Editor.

This post is my short response to a request in Business Of Software forum: “… what’s the best place for us to submit web application?”

Here are some links from our company’s Wiki. Just a list of links, without comments.

• eHub
• KillerStartups - submit via FeedMyApp
• DIY Startup News.com
• Ziipa
• Startup World
• Great Startups
• WebWare
• go2web20
• Ajax Projects
• web2list
• Blippr
• Mashable.com
• I Want To …
• boingboing.net
• carolsvault.com
• Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog
• Web Worker Daily
• Digital Trends

I’ve recently discovered a very interesting resource where web entrepreneurs share real experience on how they improved their web site conversions.

ABTests: http://www.abtests.com/

Although currently the number of samples is not great you may find there some interesting ideas for improving your web site’s \ application’s conversion ratio.

You are also welcome to share your own cases to inspire other visitors to share their ones… You know… It’s all about the social interaction and collective intelligence.

This is a meaningless emotional post about a great achievement of our small development team - Indigo Byte Systems in partnership with True BoxShot Software.

Our application, TBS Cover Editor was selected by Embarcadero ( owner and producer of Delphi and C++ Builder) for their Delphi application showcase: http://embarcadero.com/application-showcase

Without any hesitation our team is very proud of this fact.

It proves that even an application made by a relatively small workshop of several developers can be a high quality product that meets the highest standards.

That’s very inspiring for our team and I hope for all ISV teams!

If you deal with software development technologies, services, or programming tools then you likely have some useful articles on your web site or blog that you want to share with other software developers. General purpose social sites like Digg.com, StubleUpon.com or Reddit.com are good but their audience isn’t well targeted and has pretty low conversion rate.

In addition to those common resources I’d recommend to submit your articles about software development to the specialized sites. Here is a list of my favorite resources mainly devoted to programming for Microsoft Windows platform:

• DotNetKiks.com
• DotNetBurner.com
• DotNetShoutOut.com
• DZone.com
• WebDevVote.com

Feel free to submit your interesting and quality content to those resources but double check if your content is not just pure hype or a sales copy. Your submission must be topic relevant and must have real value for readers. For example it may be a how-to article, troubleshooting, use case description, in-depth review, technology report, tutorial, manual, or another useful content.
If your follow this simple rule people will actively vote for your submissions and you may easily receive hundreds of targeted visits to your web site or blog.

If you know more similar social resources devoted to software development then feel free to mention them in the comments. I’ll appreciate your feedback.

We actively use AdWords for marketing of our software products. AdWords is not “setup and forget” tool. To improve and maintain its effectiveness I permanently track our campaigns and test different approaches, ad variations, targeting settings, bids and so on.

Also, I’m hunting for new and fresh ideas how to make the AdWords’ performance even better. Today, I’m happy to share an excellent article: 31 Killer Writing AdWords Ads Tips.

The article isn’t really new and fresh. It was published in October 2007. Nevertheless, I’m sure it’s actual and extremely useful for everyone who deals with AdWords. Check it out!

Recently, we’ve discovered that up to 40% of the Dr.Explain website’s organic (non-paid) traffic that comes from search engines do actually land on pages of our on-line manual. This proves that on-line documentation is not only a helpful tool for existing customers and users. It’s a good marketing and sales tool as well.

If you already have published your product documentation on your website then check if it’s properly optimized from search engines’ points of view. Don’t try to over-optimize your on-line manual. Just follow the simple rules to make your help pages to display higher on a search engine results page (SERP) for relevant search strings:

Use appropriate words and terminology in content.
This must be the same terminology that your target audience uses daily. They will likely use the same words and terms in search requests.

Use unique and keyword-based titles for your pages.
“Topic 2330: Transparency” is a too general title. “Transparency Settings - Cover Designer Advanced Customization” is a better title.

Use topical keywords in file names of your help pages.
Again, “topic2330.htm” is a bad name. “cover-designer-advanced-settings-transparency.htm” is a much better name.

Use header tags for titles.
Wrap your headings and subheadings in H1, H2, H3, and so on tags to make them more meaningful for search engine ranging algorithms.

Mark specific terms and phrases with bold.
Write specific terms and targeted keywords in bold (strong) font to highlight their importance and relevance.

Cross-link your help pages.
Insert links to certain help pages in content of other pages. Use keywords for link text. For instance, “To read more about boxshot rendering click here” is a wrong way. “Read more about boxshot rendering” is a SEO-friendlier approach.

Create or solicit external links to your help pages.
A big number of external links that point to your help pages means a bigger page rank and higher position on SERP. Put links to your on-line manual wherever it’s possible on your product and company websites, partner websites, support forum, and so on. If some topics of your documentation can be considered as a standalone articles with useful content (trouble shooting, glossary, reviews, problem overview, etc.) then try to gently solicit links from third-party websites: topical forums, article directories, industry blogs, and resource collections.

User manual is a huge bunch of words, highly targeted words, which are specific to your product’s market. People use these words in their queries when they are looking for specific solutions on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other search engines. On-line manual will increase your web site rank in relevant search results and will bring highly targeted traffic to your web site. Let the manual work not only for your users, but for your business as well.