Bonsoir Lars,
I second Richard completely.
When you know that it takes five minutes to set up a 'Buy Now' button
using Paypal web tools then just note the corresponding url given by
Paypal and put a one liner in a button: go url <url> to display a
well known secure HTTPS page where your customers even may buy with a
credit card if they don't have a Paypal account. One minute later you
will receive an email accounting for a payment with the email of your
customer.
Then you may act accordingly.
Why wanting to build your own solution when all this is quick and
free (or almost since Paypal takes a tiny commission).
My two cents.
Le 10 déc. 08 à 17:15, Richard Gaskin a écrit :
Lars Brehmer wrote:
I think the KRM process of buying and unlocking with a click
without navigating a store, shopping carts, checkouts etc. would
be the perfect way to go, at least for me with this particular
project, and worth every penny of the fees thay charge for using
this service.
It certainly seems convenient, but unless you have an uncommonly
strong brand association and trust level with your audience you may
want to also maintain a shopping cart on the web.
While no financial transaction is entirely hack-proof, customers
are used to buying on the web, and as long as they see the "locked"
icon in their browser they feel reasonably assured that their
sensitive credit card data is secure.
When building a custom purchasing solution into your software, you
not only have the technical challenge of implementing it but also
take on the risk that your conversion rate may be lower because
customers have no idea what your software is doing under the hood.
This perceived risk issue is exacerbated by an ever-growing number
of malware programs floating around, contributing to an erosion of
trust throughout the environment.
The degree to which this trust factor will affect conversion will
of course depend on a great many factors, and for some audiences
the convenience might just outweigh the perceived risk.
Just the same, you may want to play it safe and offer an option to
buy on the web.
I haven't seen specific studies of conversion rates for software
sold on the web vs. with a built-in shopping system, and if anyone
has one I'd be very interested in reading it.
But as a general rule, when it comes to generic business questions
common throughout the industry, I tend to follow trends established
by the most successful companies, not reinventing those wheels and
instead devoting any resources I might spend on innovation to
crafting the differentiators in our products.
Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, and pretty much every other major player I
can think of sells software through their web site, and do not
include a payment system in the software itself.
An exception to this is iTunes, but that package has a very
different business model based around frequent low-cost purchases
of individual songs and albums, rather than a one-time purchase for
the software itself. That said, it should also be noted that Apple
has an unusually strong brand recognition and trust factor which
raises consumer confidence to levels most of us can't hope to match.
If, like iTunes, you sell a wide range of low-cost content, making
a built-in shopping system may prove worth the expense.
But in reviewing this option with clients, we decided that the cost
of adding this feature provided a low ROI in even the best case,
since it's a feature that if used at all will be used only once.
So instead we put that development expense toward features that are
used in the daily workflow, the things that make our product worth
buying.
Tip: provide a PayPal option for your customers. Mine kept asking
for me PayPal for years before I finally got around the spending
the five minutes it takes to set it up, and boy did I feel dumb for
not doing so sooner - conversion rates bumped noticeably.
Using PayPal has two attractions:
- It's ultra-convenient to make a payment; just enter your address
and password and you're done.
- Because it's in a separate account from one's normal banking and
credit cards, it doesn't feel like spending real money; it feels
like play money, making impulse buys much more frequent.
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World
Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
Best regards from Paris,
Eric Chatonet.
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