Greetings from Ireland!

Hi folks, it seems like being an independent software vendor (or whatever we are called these days) is the loneliest job in the world, so I am glad I found this group :slight_smile:

I sell a product that converts documents to HTML files https://wordcleaner.com/ traditionally it was a desktop product, but we have recently launched a web app version.

To be honest, sales have slowed down recently, and I am not quite sure why. Our SEO position has dropped, but I set up a feeder site word to html .net this site does well, it is number 2 in Google for our keyword, but we don’t see many people going on to try our core product.

I would love it you could check out our site and give me any suggestions on what I could improve? If you would like a free copy of the app just let me know.

I was thinking of reducing our Standard version price from $99 to $49. Not sure if this would help?

Appreciate any advice you might have.

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Welcome Brian. I’ve made your link clickable.

Conversion tips

Pricing was hard to find. Not on the home page, not on the “Pricing/Buy Now”, but finally after that. I think some people would get suspicious after the first click and bounce off your site. Your Google Analytics will help confirm that.

I think you should simplify the two nav bars at the top of the home page. There are just too many leaks and distractions. Think of your home page as a pure landing page for converting new visitors into downloaders. Remove every link from the nav that doesn’t help achieve that goal. For more on this concept, read some of Unbounce’s resources. Take a look at this website for one of my products, that converts extremely well. Notice how few distractions there are.

Consider adding an explainer video. Keep it short, say 60 seconds. Videos are becoming more and more an almost required part of a home page.

Drop in traffic

If your SEO position has dropped is it because you are doing worse? Or because a competitor is doing better?

Here’s a trick I learnt from @jitbit: every week I note down the top 20 Google results for my most important keywords. This lets me see what my competitors are doing to improve their SEO. If I notice that someone else has gained ground, I try to reverse engineer what they’re doing.

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Nice to see another European here. Peculiar market vs the North American market, right? Needs tackling slightly differently than the Silicon Valley style we keep seeing. Can’t put my finger on it myself, but there are many here who aren’t as ‘in tune’ with internet norms as others. Or are, but reject them. Confusing landscape at times, anyway.

As for your conversions, I wonder if your front page doesn’t need to better describe why I shouldn’t use ‘Save as > HTML’ or even Pandoc (OK, I might not be your target market at all, but you catch my drift).

Also, see my recent thread on improving conversions on my site: Why is my SaaS not converting? - loads of useful tips there, perhaps applicable universally.

every week I note down the top 20 Google results for my most important keywords. This lets me see what my competitors are doing to improve their SEO. If I notice that someone else has gained ground, I try to reverse engineer what they’re doing.

That’s smart. Clinical, tough to do consistently, but smart. Perhaps a cronjob would help in my case…

That’s the programmer’s mindset, and I had to stop myself from doing this. I intentionally do it in a very manual way. I copy and paste each result into a spreadsheet. It is somewhat monotonous, but I find this keeps me hyper-aware of any change in the rankings.

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I also like to manually track my rankings on main keywords. As you say, it makes one fully aware of who’s around at the table and how it is changing.

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Thanks for the great suggestions guys. Should I get an email alert when someone replies to my posts? I did not seem to get anything.

I do have a main page for the product https:// wordcleaner.com/desktop-application-for-windows/ this page has a video overview and more details on the product.

I was using hotjar.com, and no many users scrolled down to read the other info so that is why I trimmed the homepage down to the current version. Here is a heatmap for the current version:

I will look at video again. Maybe get something professional done.

For tracking our SEO rank i use https:// online.seranking.com/ it is a good product, worth a try.

I take your point about the links. My issue is the different versions of the product, but i will look at simplifying it.

Do you think $99 for the standard version is too pricey? Was thinking of trying $49. We have a business version at $199.