Young (and not so young) people today are very literate regarding programming languages and applications. This means that individuals with the right training and talent may come up with new software products that they want to market themselves. Invariably, this demands a website that showcases your software and provides a means to make purchases. If you want to set up your own website to market your software, make sure to include these three tips in your plan:
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Website Design: The website should show off your software to its greatest advantage. That means you will want to have a video presentation and perhaps a demonstration system online. The most flexible designs use a WordPress website because it can accommodate content pages and blogs/forums easily. Your site should have testimonials, a shopping cart, and a download page. Calls to action should pepper your site with offers that entice potential buyers to further interact with the site, such as free 30-day subscriptions or downloadable documentation manuals. Each page should serve a single purpose, and related pages should be linked together in a silo fashion.
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Website Content: You need really good writing to sell your software, because buyers don’t want to deal with a company that can’t produce grammatical, well-structured content on its website. Excellent content reinforces the aura of quality you want to surround your software product. Make sure you pack in the proper keywords so that Internet searchers will find your product, hopefully on Page One of the search results. If you are not confident of your writing skills, hire a freelance writer to help you prepare content and perhaps ghost-write your blogs.
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Website Optimization: You need to optimize your website for search engines. Besides using keywords, the most important determinant of your Page Rank will be your site’s backlinks. Backlinks are hypertext links from other websites back to yours. If the linking site has a high Page Rank, they lend you “link juice” – they help you improve your own Page Rank. Only backlinks from highly ranked sites with related content will help your website. You can check backlinks using an Internet tool to tell you who’s backlinked to you and what are their Page Ranks. You can also check out competitors’ backlinks to see if there is someplace you should think about establishing your own backlink. An SEO expert can help you ensure you have the right kind and quantity of backlinks to boost your website’s Page Rank.
You’ve developed a killer app, now put it on a killer website and make your fortune!