design Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Customer-centric Growth by Lincoln Murphy

SaaS Free Trial: Your Customer Qualification Machine

August 14, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I believe in the saying “high-tech allows for high-touch” and that we can use the self-service nature of the web – including your SaaS Free Trial – to not eliminate the human-powered sales force, but to scale it efficiently to let each salesperson work better leads and close more sales. In my experience, SaaS Free […]

SaaS Free Trial Optimization: When to start?

August 3, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Before you start Optimizing your SaaS Free Trial to improve free-to-paid Conversions, learn the 5 things that must be done first… Here are five things that are required before optimization really makes a lot of sense. You don’t want to spend a lot of time optimizing your Free Trial if these aren’t already in place. On […]

7 Tips for Software Vendors Moving to the Cloud

July 26, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

As a Strategic Consultant, I have worked with the Executive Teams of many Enterprise Software and Independent Software Vendors (ISV) to develop strategies for becoming Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Services vendors. …and I must say that I’ve come to what I consider to be a shocking conclusion: Far too many people think the Cloud is […]

How to keep App-generated Email from Being Marked Spam

July 26, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

The most concise definition of Transactional Email I could find (after a 7 second Google search) is: Email primarily containing information about current or prior business dealings, such as confirmation of a sale, a registration number, an invoice, or an opt-in or opt-out confirmation. Contrast this with “marketing email.” UPDATED FOR 2014! Transactional emails are those […]

SaaS Free Trial: Confused Minds Don’t Buy

July 25, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

When it comes to your SaaS free trial, complicated isn’t cool…it kills conversions! Confused minds don’t buy… they bounce, and take the money that you spent to get them to your site and their lifetime value as a customer with ’em! Look at your SaaS sales funnel, your Free Trial sign-up process, their first in-app […]

SaaS Free Trial Users are a Vanity Metric

July 6, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

There is no such thing as an “inactive user” in a SaaS free trial. You can’t be a “user” if you aren’t “using,” right? Makes sense. I think we get confused because in software the “user” connotation comes from the fact that a user is literally someone for whom an access account has been created. […]

SaaS Pricing Page Design: Highest Price on the Left?

May 20, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

SaaS pricing page design is always evolving, and when I created the Pricing Page Success Formula for SaaS and Web Apps in 2009, the jury (me) was still out on whether placing the high priced version of your product on the left and moving lower to the right really mattered.

SaaS Conversion Rate: A Simple Trick to DOUBLE Your Revenue

April 15, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

When your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it drives down your SaaS conversion rate by doing exactly what it was designed to do. Think about that for a second. There I was working on a ‘Optimizing SaaS Conversions’ presentation and I wrote this statement: For many SaaS & Web App vendors, 100% of sales […]

9 Ways to Instantly Improve Your PPC Results

March 25, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

The success of your Free Trial in converting customers is directly tied to the quality of prospects that enter the trial in the first place. That’s something I tell the Free Trial Dominator Premium Members all the time…. you’re success depends on your ability to attract the right audience. So this means that the Attention […]

Why SaaS Free Trial Optimization is So Important

March 20, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Over the years I’ve been called on by the CEOs and Executive Leadership of several hundred SaaS and Web App companies around the world to help them achieve Profitable Growth. In that time, I’ve learned a thing or two about the importance of Free Trials. For instance, I know that if you offer a Free […]

SaaS Free Trial: The #1 Reason You Fail to Convert Customers

March 19, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

The #1 reason your SaaS free trial is failing to convert customers is simple… Right after a prospective customer signs-up for your Free Trial, you fail to engage them. Data shows that prospects active in the first 3 days of a SaaS Free Trial – regardless of trial length – convert at a significantly higher […]

Switch from a Reactive to Proactive SaaS Free Trial

March 13, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

There are two types of SaaS Free Trials: Reactive and Proactive; you want to be one of the latter because they will convert more prospects to customers. Period. Reactive SaaS Free Trials Most SaaS & Web App vendors fall into this category, and their mindset about Free Trials is something like this: Get them to […]

SaaS Free Trials: The Shorter the Better?

March 12, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Most people don’t realize that the length of a SaaS Free Trial is just a marketing gimmick designed to get prospects into the trial. Sure, 30-day Free Trials are the de facto standard for SaaS apps, but whether it’s 7, 14, 15, or 30-days, few providers can say WHY they came up with that length. […]

SaaS Pricing: The Advanced Stuff

February 27, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Let’s Improve your SaaS Pricing For immediate consultation and advice on all things SaaS, schedule a 60-minute meeting with me via Clarity. If you feel a more involved engagement is required for me to help you, email me with the specifics of your situation (as much detail as you’re comfortable giving) and we’ll setup a meeting to work […]

SaaS Pricing: The Basics

February 27, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Where is Your Ideal Customer on the Awareness Ladder?

February 3, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I recently gave my clients some interesting questions to ask themselves… and I thought you might want to ask yourself these questions, too. If someone looks at your marketing site – main page, pricing page, sign-up page, whatever – for 5 seconds, what will they think your app does? If your ideal customer looks at […]

What’s the biggest issue you’re dealing with right now?

January 26, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I do what I do for one reason… to help SaaS & Web App vendors be more successful. Period. If I’m not doing that, I’m not doing my job. Some I will help be more successful by working with them 1-on-1 or through programs like the Free Trial Dominator (which is awesome, IMHO). But others […]

Your Signup Form is Hurting Your Free Trial Conversions!

January 10, 2012 Article by Lincoln Murphy

I had a SaaS vendor ask me the following question when I mentioned “average” Free Trial conversion rates: When we look at broad Free Trial conversion ratios, I would assume some of the variances may depend on how much information is required to sign up for a free trial. For example, there are a number […]

Your Revenue Crutch is Killing Your SaaS Startup

November 12, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Web Apps and Software-as-a-Service that comes from consulting companies or other service businesses can be lucrative but can be held back by non-scalable revenue streams. Do you have a less-scalable revenue stream that you rely on even though it is holding your business back? We’ll call this a Revenue Crutch. It is something you keep […]

Web Apps use Customer Support to Increase Revenue

October 4, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

SaaS vendors know getting the sale is just the first step; keeping the customer means keeping them happy and that a happy customer will generate more revenue over time! A client that I am working with on their Pricing Strategy just sent me the following question (you can send me questions, too): Lincoln – This […]

As SaaS Matures, so will SaaS Pricing

June 21, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

The common SaaS per-user, per-month subscription revenue model is rapidly evolving. From time to time I feel I must remind everyone – buyers, sellers, pundits, commentators, & analysts – that SaaS is not a pricing model or pricing strategy. From the vendor side, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a unique Software Business Architecture where service is the […]

5 SaaS Pricing Mistakes to Avoid

June 11, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

For SaaS & Web App companies, Subscription Revenue is a no-brainer, but doing it right is not! There are many pitfalls Web App & SaaS companies need to look out for when it comes to pricing. If you keep the “Pricing is Marketing” mantra running through your head and “What’s In It For Them?” (them being your […]

SaaS Pricing: Please Learn From the Zendesk Fiasco

May 18, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

It is time for SaaS & Web App startups to sit up and pay attention. SaaS Pricing is very important to your venture but not just to ensure you make a profit or cover expenses. It is so much more than that and you should seek to get it as right as possible out of […]

Cloud Acquisitions Create New Opportunities

May 12, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

So you’ve built a killer SaaS product and [Google or Oracle or Microsoft or…] just bought your big competitor; is this good or bad for you? NOTE: This post is originally from May 2010, but the last two years have been full of Legacy Software vendors snapping up SaaS and Cloud providers. From SAP buying […]

SaaS Distribution: Time to Change the Channel

May 12, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Do SaaS products require, or can they benefit from, distribution through a 3rd party? I’ve written in the past about SaaS channels and how most people are doing it wrong, and there seems to be renewed interest in this topic. Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much. Since this is “software” as-a-service, people cannot get away from […]

SaaS, Web Apps, or Just ‘Apps’?

April 20, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

On my last trip to San Francisco I sat down with Matt Childs of DreamSimplicity to talk about the state of SaaS. We shot some video as we talked about how Google & Apple have changed the distribution landscape for SaaS & Mobile making App Stores & Marketplaces a new reality for SaaS vendors and […]

SaaS Pricing: Commodity Metrics and the $240 GB

March 31, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

SaaS pricing strategies that use low-value commodity metrics – like storage – to differentiate tiers force customers to make price comparisons that shouldn’t be made. Updated for 2014 This topic came up with a client who wanted to pass on the storage costs associated with the use of the system to their end-customer. We quickly […]

SaaS Pricing: Versioning for Market Segments

March 5, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy

Rags Srinivasan posted a great article titled “The Science of Optimal Versioning in SaaS” to his blog that talks about SaaS pricing. In the article, Rags talks about taking apply SaaS pricing to through different bundles of features at different prices for various market segments. The whole article is great, so I encourage you to […]