Localization Efforts Pay Off in NCH International Offerings

It has been about a year and a half since NCH Software put in place a localization initiative in order to offer our most popular software applications in French, German, Japanese and Spanish. The challenges have been many but we now provide numerous applications, including WavePad Sound Editor, VideoPad Video Editor, Prism Video Converter, and several more, in the 4 languages mentioned. Working in cooperation with NCH developers, the localization specialists at NCH translate the general user interface (GUI), test functionality for country-specific appropriateness, suggest changes to implement to better adapt NCH applications to non-English speaking markets. They also translate a significant number of web-based material to make sure that French, German, Japanese or Spanish-speaking Internet users can find relevant information, download and purchase products securely in their own languages.

Bucking the current trend of outsourcing translation and localization and relying instead on "in-house" linguists allows NCH to leverage a valuable internal product knowledge and capitalize on direct interdepartmental relationships to produce more accurate translations, faster.

Please click on the language of your choice to find out more about NCH Software's localized software applications.

• Français
  
• Deutsch
  
• 日本語
  
• Español

Hitting the Software Nail on the Head

How many shirts do you need to try on before you find one you want to buy? How many cars do take for a test drive when shopping for a new car? And how many pieces of software do you download and try before you find one to solve your problem? Results from a study of software vendors show only about 1 sale is made for every hundred trials that are downloaded, which is a remarkably low number when you think how many programs people must end up trying or how often they just give up without finding what they want. In the blog post Why Hammers Sell Better Than Your Software, Bob Walsh concludes that the reason there are so many people walking away is that it is simply too hard to figure out how to use the program and they give up.

His suggestion to software companies is something that NCH has been striving for for years - make users immediately comfortable with your applications. Simplify things: provide quick start guides and tutorials or screenscasts to help get the user get through the first few minutes of uncertainty when they don't know what to do with the software they have just downloaded. We have long focused on the first three minutes of a user's experience when using our software, trying to remove as many road blocks as possible so that you can start using the program immediately. Our range of video tutorials and documentation resources helps those who prefer to see how it all works before they dive in. We are doing our best to make sure that when you download our software you will find that the shoe fits and you don't need to worry about breaking it in.

Software-Buying Decisions

This article on Organic Search Driving Software-Buying Decisions caught my eye since I have a continuing interest in Software Buying Trends. Some of the key findings from the research done by iPrsopect in their study on the effects of organic search, paid search and online display advertising were:

• 37% increased likelihood of visiting a website
  
• 30% increased likelihood of purchasing a software product
  
• 14% lift in brand recall with exposures to both organic and paid search results
  
• No change was seen in brand favorability based on organic results
  

Familiarity with a brand name has long been looked as important when making purchasing decisions. People tend to select things they are more familiar with, associating familiarity with reliability, so I have to agree that it is interesting that increased exposure didn't seem to have any impact on brand favorability. For a closer look at the research and findings see the full report on iProspect,Real Branding Implications of Digital Media - an SEM, SEO, & Online Display Advertising Study .

Software Buying Trends

Earlier this year, LifeHacker posted a wonderful info graphic depicting data from the US Census Bureau comparing how many sales are being made online versus in retail stores across a number of categories.


I found the results of What People Buy Online vs. in Stores fascinating. I'd love to see something that showed trending over time, so I'll have to keep my eyes open for results in years to come. As the world becomes increasingly more connected online, I imagine these numbers will continue to shift in favor of making purchases online.

I did find the software results a little surprising. There is nearly a 50/50 split between computer hardware and software purchased online and at retail stores. I would have expected a larger percentage of purchases in this category to be made online, similar to what is seen with other electronics.

I imagine consumers perceive software products as more legitimate or reliable when seen inside retail stores because they fear online products come from fly-by-night businesses that will be gone tomorrow, or maybe consumers don’t feel comfortable buying something so intangible. On the other hand, consumers who do buy online recognize the ease and immediacy of being able to download an application and have a solution instantly. For example, the software utilities we provide at NCH Software download and install, in most cases, in under a minute. That means you can install a program like Prism Video Converter to convert a troublesome movie file that won’t play on your computer before you could so much as make it out your driveway to go to the store in search of a solution.

Until late last year, 100% of NCH Software sales were made online. We are still new to the retail market and our retail presence is still actively growing, so I am curious to see where the split will be in our overall software sales once we are more firmly established in retail stores. Shoppers in the U.S. can currently find Golden Records, Express Invoice as well as software suites of our audio, video and burning software utilities in stores, with additional products including dictation/transcription software, Inventoria, WavePad, VideoPad, and FlexiServer also being added to the mix. Will we eventually see half our sales being made through retail stores, or will retail sales settle at a lower percentage as more customers migrate to online purchasing? I guess only time will tell.