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Yes, having the
back-up CD option can increase your sales but certainly not
over night. The impact is rather indirect: the money comes
not from selling the back-up CD itself, but from generating
trust and convincing your customers to push the "buy
now" button, plus from some other marketing tricks
you can find out about bellow.
First, who would want to buy a back-up CD?
- All those who, at least once, had to reinstall their software
and could not find the activation code anymore. The easiest
way to find its key is to get it from the CD in your library
(the key is printed there, on the CD label) - and that's easier
than remembering where the email you registered with is.
- All those who like to buy tangible products (in contrast
with digital ones) and need to feel the package. They want
to put their hand on what they've bought and then, it's always
nice to receive a colorful, professionally printed (vs. home
made) cover, personalized with your name and the activation
key right at hand on the label.
So, a back-up CD is about customer behavior when shopping
online and it has been already tested that building reputation,
credibility and trust is sure to increase sales - while loosing
all these will drop them.
There are vendors who say back-up CD is more trouble than
good - apparently, it increases support issues with people
who claim that they did not receive their CD. Not entirely
true, as this can be solved when your eCommerce provider takes
full responsibility and accepts resending the back-up CD at
no charge.
How do you actually make money with back-up CDs? First, it
adds trust and increases conversion rates from visitors to
buyers who may also return or at least refer your site - yes,
here are the higher sales volumes in the long run. In the
short run, it saves you all the trouble with customers that
contact you to resend them the activation key - time is money,
after all. And last, but not least, the back-up CD is an excellent
marketing tool where you can include trial versions or presentations
of your other products.
Bottom line -here is what's in for a software vendor:
- increased trust
- products promotion
- time support saved
- increased sales volume
Back-up CDs are never too low to be worth the effort,
because their added value is not measurable by its intrinsic
value (and this is small) but by the trust it generates and
by the overall higher software sales volumes. They may not
make you rich but it will ad some good percentage to your
sales.
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