SoftGram Bi-Weekly for 1.01.2006, Vol. 2, No. 1 SoftGram Spotlight: Building Effective Landing Pages ______________________________________ SoftGram is a Softletter Publication and is published on the first and third weeks of each month. To Subscribe to SoftGram, please visit us at http://www.softletter.com/aspx/Profile.aspx ========================================================= To unsubscribe from SoftGram, please use the opt-out link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/optout.aspx?u=[[user_id]]&un=[[UserName]] To change your profile and various user options, please use the link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/Profile.aspx Before you can use this option, please login into your account. If you have not changed your profile, your username is the first letter of your first name and the first seven letters of your last name. Your password is "softletter." 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The industry's leading licensing solution gives you the flexibility to quickly offer new pricing and licensing models without taxing engineering resources. CLICK BELOW to try our License Assessment Model and find out which licensing models are right for your business: http://www.aegis-resources.com _________________________________________________________ THE SOFTLETTER FORUMS ARE FREE NEW on the Softletter Forums: "One thing we're seeing more and more is PR being used as a search engine optimization tactic. Putting press releases on the wires increases the number of links back to your website from quality sites, which improves your ranking. " _________________________________________________________ Building Effective Landing Pages Excerpted from the 12/31/2005 issue of Softletter In the (selling) spirit of the just recently concluded holiday season, we provide some practical advice on developing web-based landing pages. The most effective promos and E-mail campaigns typically direct potential buyers to a special page designed to support your campaigns, but we’ve seen way too many clumsy and poorly-built landing destinations over the years. An effective landing page incorporates the following elements: * A strong headline at the top of the page. Typically, the headline should mention the product or service by name, be clear and use proper grammar (though in some cases this rule can be selectively violated) and should provide a compelling reason to act on the promo or offer. * Tell a story. The best landing pages encapsulate a story within their content. In most cases, the outline will follow the “fairy tale” format. Your story should incorporate these elements: – A happy kingdom (the company or industry your wish to sell to). – A fair maiden (the potential or actual users of your product). – A villain (a problem or obstacle threatening the Fair Maiden’s happiness). – A knight in shining armor (your product). – A battle between the villain and the knight (the product solves the problem). – A happy ending (the result(s) of the problem being solved). Don’t be obsessed with copy length; a compelling story will draw people into your copy. * Be meticulous about web content preparation. Examine your use of text carefully. For instance, if loading speed is absolutely critical to your site, consider using sans serif fonts such as arial or helvetica; they load more quickly (less dots per inch). Of course, check for spelling mistakes and optimize your graphics. Don’t make the mistake of taking large graphic images and resizing them; they may fit, but they’ll make your site a performance pig. * Incorporate testimonials from users of your software in your whenever possible and always fully identify them. Bill Jones, IT manager of Acme, Inc., has credibility. Bill J. from New Jersey has none. * Think through your E-mail capture strategy carefully. In many cases, particularly when selling enterprise-class software, the goal of a campaign is to capture a contact E-mail address for lead development and further direct sales efforts. Offers for online newsletters, whitepapers, and newsletters are traditionally effective if they are perceived as relevant to your audience and support your offer. For higher-end products, consider refusing G-mail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and similar “junk” addresses when someone signs up for a whitepaper or case study download. For more “retail oriented” products, you can consider being more inclusive (but be prepared to receive a lot of throwaway addresses). Pop-unders have proved to be effective in increasing E-mail sign-up rates. * Be careful of your use of the color blue. Blue is associated with links. If, for example, your headline is blue there will be a tendency for people to want to click on it. If that’s not what you want, use another color. And never, ever underline blue text (unless your goal is to irritate people). _________________________________________________________ INFO POPS are sponsored by: License Technologies Group Since 1996, License Technologies Group (LTG) has been the established leader in providing solutions specifically designed for software publishers to more efficiently manage their software licensing business. Our systems and services support software license management, renewals management, eCommerce, Digital Rights Management, Partner Relationship Management and global fulfillment. We understand all of the nuances and best practices necessary to harness the power and profitability volume license and compliance programs can provide. Our experience in providing these solutions helps softwa practices and gain a strategic advantage on their competition. Smart Tools. Big Savings. http://www.licensetech.com ******************************* INFO POPS It may be something of a footnote to the $1-billion (U.S.) deal between Google and AOL, but to me (and others like Stowe Boyd at Corante and Gary Price at SearchEngineWatch) the proposal to blend Google's GTalk messaging service and AOL's AIM sounds like a great idea -- and possibly the beginning of something more. It may take some technical voodoo to accomplish, but at least allowing GTalk and AIM to talk to each other takes us down to two main instant messaging networks, since Microsoft and Yahoo have said they plan to make theirs interoperable. I've been using Trillianand Gaim (both of which let you connect to multiple networks), because I know so many people on other networks, and I haven't used GTalk because I know most of them won't switch applications just to talk to me. Excerpted from:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040622.geekwatchjun04/BNStory/Technology ******************************* Google is set to unveil two major moves today -- distributing video over the Internet and providing a bundle of basic desktop software -- that are likely to heighten its competition with other technology giants, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple. The Mountain View company is expected to announce plans for an online video store where people can buy a wide array of sports, entertainment and news programming from partners such as CBS and the NBA, a knowledgeable source told the Mercury News. Google President Larry Page will unveil the service at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, adding Google to a growing list of tech companies that are trying to build businesses around online video. Excerpted from: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13563267.htm ******************************* Tallies kept by the U.S. government's computer security group show that Linux and Unix operating systems faced nearly three times the number of vulnerabilities in 2005 than did Microsoft's often-maligned Windows. In the US-CERT (United Stated Computer Emergency Readiness Team) year-end vulnerability summary, Linux/Unix accounted for a whopping 2,328 vulnerabilities, about 45 percent of the 5,198 total. Windows, on the other hand, sported just 812 vulnerabilities during the year, said US-CERT, or 16 percent of the total. Another 2,058 vulnerabilities affected more than one operating system. Excerpted from: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?sssdmh=dm4.162581&articleID=175801215 ******************************* Microsoft has not specified how many Windows Live services the company ultimately expects to field, but according to some sources, there may be as many as 50 such offerings on the drawing board. Microsoft officials also have said they plan to field complementary Office Live services, as well as other add-on-service components from nearly all of the company's business units. The model for these services is Xbox Live, the online gaming service that Microsoft offers to its Xbox console customers. Excerpted from: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1908400,00.asp?kc=ewnws010606dtx1k0000599 ________________________________________________________ CHANGE YOUR SOFTGRAM SUBSCRIPTION : To unsubscribe from SoftGram, please use the opt-out link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/optout.aspx?u=[[user_id]]&un=[[UserName]] To change your profile and various user options, please use the link below: http://www.softletter.com/aspx/Profile.aspx Before you can use this option, please login into your account. If you have not changed your profile, your username is the first letter of your first name and the first seven letters of your last name. Your password is "softletter." To update your address or change your profile, please use the link below (this link takes you directly to your profile assuming you have chosen to stay logged in via a cookie exchange): http://www.softletter.com/aspx/myMain.aspx