The eulogies have been written: downloaded software is dead with the advent of tablets and smartphones. Apps are the future and we don’t need desktop computers anymore.
Well, let the naysayers howl because downloaded software is alive and kicking, and smartphones and tablets are actually adding to the software industry. So if you are a software developer pay attention to changes in the market. Take advantage of these changes in order to disrupt your own business before someone else does!
Best Buy: Check for Shipping
Ten years ago, people talked about the death of software in retail stores due to the emergence of affordable high speed internet access at home. TechCrunch even published a story on the death of packaged software (and inherently the rise of the digital download) as recently as November 2008. Although we can agree that retail boxed software is a declining market in 2012, it still isn’t dead as evidenced by Best Buy’s online store selling software where you can “Check Shipping and Availability.”
So if you don’t believe me that digital downloads are going to be around for a while, here’s my case for you: Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under Apps, Forrester, SaaS, Smartphones, Software Market, Tablets
While traditional models of selling games online is alive and well with veterans of the B2C sector, we have also witnessed the rise of alternative, social approaches to online marketing strategies.
In this post, we take a look at the online video game industry and analyze two different marketing strategies utilized by B2C companies. Our goal is to see how these different strategies can be applied to other e-commerce verticals.
When I think about the major social video game companies producing massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, I think about Electronic Arts, Activsion Blizzard, and wunderkind Zynga. These are the corporations structuring our play on the Internet.
It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway), that the way we play and pay for video games today is different than it was 25 years ago. Back then, I had an Atari 7800 with 4KB of RAM. I could buy a cartridge of Joust from Toys “R” Us, put the game in the console and I was ready to be interactively entertained. Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under conversion optimization, Customer Engagement, Landing Pages, SaaS payment models, zynga ea ecommerce
Forrester Research Principal Analyst Brian Walker recently shared the results of the cleverbridge-commissioned study, “Software Vendors: The Shift to SaaS,” in a webinar presentation. This 60-minute discussion offers practical, strategic advice to help software vendors adopt SaaS solutions.
Adoption of SaaS is increasing among businesses, which gives software vendors a unique opportunity to increase their market share by offering SaaS solutions along with their traditional on-premise software. According to the study, 31 percent of companies are already moderate to heavy users of SaaS software and 68 percent of larger companies have already begun adopting SaaS software solutions. But SaaS is not just for large enterprises. SaaS is also ideal for expanding a vendor’s small-to-medium business market (SMB).
The first step in developing a SaaS strategy is to understand that buyers have the following goals when looking to purchase SaaS products:
- Cost reduction
- Improved data security
- Speedier execution of business processes
- More efficient channels for collaboration and information exchanges
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under B2B, Brian Walker, Craig Vodnik, Forrester, SaaS, webinar
