Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

simpleContact Pro is now available from codecanyon.net

Wednesday, February 16th, 2011

As of the 15th February, simpleContact Pro is available to buy from CodeCanyon. CodeCanyon is one of the popular Envato marketplaces and joining is a move to help increase exposure.

Approval process

Submitting to an Envato marketplace is somewhat like adding a product to Apple’s app store. You have to go through an approval process before your product is made available to buy. They also receive a percentage of sales which varies depending on whether you are selling exclusively through them (I’m not). I don’t mind admitting that my original submission, about two weeks ago, was rejected. It wasn’t without good reason though: I had provided the application exactly as it is found on this website and that proved to be a useful lesson about context.

On this – its own website – you can see visual information about what the UI of the application is like – screengrabs, colours etc. It is also clear from the Pro page that there is online documentation. Outside that context though, these clues are absent. The reviewer rightly thought that the application was insufficiently documented and didn’t get a good sense of what the UI is like from the supplied screengrabs and live demo. So they rejected it.

I spent the time since improving those supporting materials. I re-made my live demo, created new screengrabs (which I may put in place of the existing ones) and made local HTML versions of the support documents, which I included in a special version of the application download for CodeCanyon. I may add those to the regular download, but I think it’s best to keep documentation online so unless there’s significant demand I’ll leave it as-is. In response to these changes, the application was accepted.

Pricing

Pricing is a big part of this marketplace experiment. Again like the app store, a developer must accept that you will make less money per-sale with the aim of making more sales to compensate for that. Many developers, particularly those with Mac products that pre-date the Mac app store and continue to be sold outside it, actually charge less in the app store than they do on their own website. Money by Jumsoft is one example.

I should point out at this point: the pricing of simpleContact Pro on CodeCanyon is not under my control. Envato set the price, and adjust it over time. I will periodically review whether or not it is appropriate to continue to sell there. I don’t wish to upset existing customers.

The price of the developer license (they call it the “extended license”) on CodeCanyon is almost the same, at $55 (vs $60 here). The single domain license though is considerably less at $11 (vs $25 here). In both cases the price increases by $2 if you have not bought pre-paid credits in the marketplace. It’s up to you to decide which is more convenient for you – to pay by credit card on CodeCanyon or directly to me by PayPal here. I promise to support all customers equally.

I’d appreciate any feedback you have.

Posted in Development, Indie, Marketing, News, Pro, Updates | 2 Comments »

Find simpleContact on Facebook and you could win simpleContact Pro!

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

Remember when people used to phone their friends and talk to them? You can’t deny how important and useful social networks, particularly Facebook, have become though. Facebook alone has almost 500 million members, which is just staggering. It’s a great way to create awareness but best of all, to provide service and support to your customers. They can directly and publicly to you and with each other – which is very exciting.

I’ve made a Facebook page for simpleContact to dip my toe in the water. I’ve got lots of ideas for this page but as a sweetener I’ve decided to do a regular monthly giveaway.

Monthly giveaway for fans

On or around the first of every month, I’ll give a single domain license of simpleContact Pro (worth $25) to a fan of the Facebook page. I might do a random draw one month, a poll the next, whatever takes my fancy so watch this space!

Become a fan of the Facebook page today, and you could win very soon!

Posted in Indie, Marketing, Support | No Comments »

User feedback about simpleContact Lite and Pro in the new Buzz page

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Successful businesses build a relationship and trust with their audience. Which begs the question, how do you start to do that? One thing is certain: it doesn’t involve writing endless pages of marketing-speak and hoping it means something to somebody.

You can’t buy trust

It helps if you can minimise a person’s risk. That’s why simpleContact Lite is more than just a free PHP contact form solution. You can also use it to confirm that simpleContact Pro will install successfully on your website. Its interface is consistent with Pro, and you can migrate your settings and data when you decide to upgrade.

We all want to try before we buy. That’s why there’s a live demo that you can use to explore the admin interface in full and decide whether it will satisfy your needs.

… But there’s no substitute for unbiased word of mouth. Proof that someone went first, spent their money, and were happy with the result. Happy enough that they wanted to share the experience.

Don’t take my word for it

It’s time I shared some of the feedback I’ve received since I released these applications. I’ve added a buzz page to this website which contains comments from real users of Lite and early-adopters of Pro.

Businesses, design agencies, freelance web designers and marketers – it’s quite a mixed bag! Maybe something in there means something to you.

On an unrelated note, I completed a maintenance upgrade to the support forums last weekend. It’s now dressed in a snappy shade of green and should be more useful than before.

Posted in Buzz, Lite, Marketing, News, Pro, Support | No Comments »

My 10Things consultation with Ian Lurie

Saturday, November 7th, 2009

I had an interesting opportunity this week to get some constructive feedback.

To paraphrase his website, Ian Lurie is an internet marketer with 14 years’ experience. He is the president of Seattle-based Portent Interactive. He blogs at Conversation Marketing, wrote a book by the same name (which I reviewed on my personal blog), and recently co-authored Web Marketing For Dummies. He’s also on Twitter.

He recently launched a new consultancy service called 10Things, aimed at small businesses. It includes an appraisal of your site, 10 recommendations to improve it and an hour’s discussion with Ian himself. This costs $500 which isn’t pocket-change, but if you’re unwilling to invest that much in expert advice perhaps you should cut your losses and quit.

He announced this new service with a blog post and competition to win one of three 10Things sessions. I was fortunate enough to be one of the three, so on Thursday night we spoke via iChat.

Since this website is new I was a little nervous about inviting direct criticism. It felt a little like handing my homework in to a teacher and waiting to hear my result! In truth, there would be no better time, and thankfully I didn’t get an “F-, See me after class.” It was a very positive experience and I am more confident than ever that this website is on the right track.

It would be unfair to reproduce his advice in full, but I’ll touch on three points that relate specifically to this website:

Uniformity in design

This is my most urgent priority, and something that Ian also identified. In order to get the website launched without any delay, I postponed some tasks. The blog, forum and product documentation need to be integrated with the navigation and graphical identity of the site. I will also modify the colour schemes of the applications themselves in their next releases.

This will result not only in the improved customer confidence that comes from visual consistency, but also the SEO benefit of making sure the site’s pages are properly interlinked.

Screencasts

I’d already thought about creating some screencasts (video clips that show the application’s behaviour), but Ian confirmed the necessity of this. All the written explanation in the world is no substitute for simply showing the the user what is meant. I’ll look forward to making screencasts for this site next year. I think it will be fun!

Trust

Well written copy is important, but trust is hard to come by on the Internet. Ian suggested that I put more of a personal stamp on the site, explaining who I am and linking to other parts of my online identity. I should also offer social proof of the product’s popularity, which I hope the buzz section I am working on will help to do.

Over the next few months I have a lot of work to do! I’ll be putting a lot of Ian’s advice into practice and I hope you will see the benefits. I look forward to going back for 10 More Things in future.

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Posted in Buzz, Design, Development, Indie, Marketing | 2 Comments »

Mailchimp brings Power To The People with Free Forever plan

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

A question I’m often asked is “can you recommend a solution for sending email newsletters?” simpleContact helps you collect permission to email people via its contact form opt-in and subscribe form, but once you have a mailing list you’ll want to start reaching out to people.

This is the next step in a marketing process, which I consider to be outside the scope of simpleContact. I firmly believe that a tool should know its job and do it well rather than try to do everything and do it poorly. There are many reasons why a hosted solution is better in this case than self-hosted or a program on your PC.

My usual recommendation is Campaign Monitor and I stand by that. I have used it to successfully deliver campaigns and I have yet to see a compelling reason to switch to another system. That said, there are several other hosted systems on the market that are worthy of consideration and may be more suitable in your case.

Mailchimp has great design, a comprehensive feature-set and a refreshing sense of humour. It’s popular with web designers as well as companies as large as Canon and Intel. It’s about to get a lot more popular too, because this week they announced a new “Forever Free” pricing plan that is just too good to ignore.

Under this new plan, you can store up to 500 subscribers and send up to 3,000 emails a month. This is a fantastic deal for anyone starting out in email marketing. You may take a long time to outgrow this plan, and you can send many campaigns in the meantime. As Mailchimp say:

This is perfect for small businesses and e-retailers, artists, bands, bloggers, non-profits, churches, and anyone just getting started in email marketing.

I look forward to seeing how the rest of the market responds.

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Posted in Email, Marketing | No Comments »

Seth Godin: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

I’d like to share a video from a new favourite author of mine. Seth Godin is a marketer with a perspective all of his own. His blog is one of the most popular on the internet (I read it every day) and I’ve read four of his books so far: Purple Cow, Meatball Sundae, The Dip and Tribes.

In this talk at the TED conference, a inspiring gathering of leading thinkers from around the world, he argues that the key to success in this new world is to be “remarkable”.

I must point out that his use of the Japanese word “Otaku” is in common with the way Edge magazine uses it, and a bit generous. They use it to mean “enthusiast, expert, early-adopter etc.” I have it on good authority from a Japanese friend that its meaning is closer to “nerd.” The sentiment is accurate though.

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Posted in Inspirational, Marketing | No Comments »

Adventures in indie development

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

One of the things I want to do with this fledgling blog is share my new experiences as an independent developer. Building a software product and releasing it to the general public is a very different activity to making websites for clients. It has a learning curve all of its own but is rewarding in all sorts of ways – I’m looking forward to talking about them.

I believe the main topics for discussion are these:

  • The Idea
  • Planning
  • Design
  • Development
  • Release
  • Marketing
  • Support
  • Feedback

I’m going to try to be open and honest about all these things, in the hope that it will enable you the reader to not only understand my work and methods better, but to contemplate doing something for yourself.

Posted in Development, Indie, Marketing | No Comments »