Getting Greener with Better Performance

I was reading a blog by Lilac Berniker Fortisphere where she talks about virtualization and green.

I agree with much of what she said, personally I think that Green has taken a back burner in the economy, lower gas prices have definitely taken the pressure off transport and people are afraid to sign up for the typically higher acquisition costs associated with the “green solution” and instead are trying to spend less. One of the great things about Online Demos like our TestDrive Solutions is that they are much greener than printing thousands of CDs or mailers and sending out – it’s all online.

I have been looking at our data center costs and analyzing what new hardware we are going to need over the coming months as business grows and her article was very relevant. We have many servers that are underutilized, but we always have to be ready for those unexpected spikes in demand or a failure in one of our data centers. Because of our need to always be able to support all our users if we suffered a catastrophic failure in one of the two data centers, we probably will never be able safely to go beyond 50% utilization of hardware, but we could still improve by an order of magnitude the usage on some servers.

The majority of our servers are 2U 2CPU rack mounted servers, the majority running Windows Server 2003 x64. We still keep some running x86 because of application compatibility issues which limits the usage on those servers. We’ve been playing around with blade servers for a while now and they definitely qualify for a green status, they use less power and air conditioning than our current servers, but have 2 main disadvantages for us – the limited internal storage and the risk of an enclosure failure (which is very low, but would take out many servers). Moving our entire infrastructure to a virtual based one will allow us to overcome all these issues, and once we complete more performance testing and make sure that our management platform is equipped to maximize the benefit and track the virtual servers, we will make the move. For now though I am, like I expect most companies are, looking to be green without additional cost, so optimization of existing hardware is the plan for now.

Virtual servers should allow us to give a better service to our customers and at the same time reduce our environmental impact!

Green Software Marketing - online demos are better for the environment, and can be cheaper too

Happy Earth Day!  I hope everyone has taken a little time out of their day to to figure out what they can do in their lives to help the environment and our planet.  Even the smallest efforts can have a major impact.  If we evaluate our business practices for green alternatives, we can have an even larger impact than with our personal green decisions.

A lot of people equate green with expensive.  Organic foods are more expensive, certified green products are more expensive, hybrid cars are more expensive than the traditional gas guzzlers.  In the current economic climate, people who may be inclined to lean green feel that green may be a luxury and give up on environmentally-friendly practices and products.

What I'd like to touch on today is the fact that online demos are more green than traditional demos.  Specifically I'd like to point to trial CDs as compared to downloads and hosted online demos.

Trial CDs
Not many people consider the environmental impact of CD production.  During production of the actual CD petroleum plastics and metals are used to create the CD.  During packaging, plastics, paper and industrial inks are used in large quantities.  Petroleum is often used in the production of these plastics.  The use of paper in packaging contributes to deforestation.  Commercial printing inks often contain volatile chemicals that can harm the environment.  Very few CD manufacturers have green production processes, and if you must provide a CD trial, you can ask if the manufacturers use green practices in their manufacturing processes.  All of these CDs must also be delivered; depending on the service used CDs are delivered via ship, plane or truck - adding to the carbon footprint.

Online Demos
The green benefit of demos delivered online, such as downloads or TestDrive online demos, is that the same resources are used to provide demos to thousands of potential customers.  Online delivery ensures that nothing needs to be manufactured or shipped.  With no physical trial, no CDs or packaging will end up in landfills.  Depending on how your downloads or online demos are hosted, the hardware and infrastructure can be extremely energy efficient.


With a hosted online demo, your software is virtualized so that it's available online at all times and can be reused for all potential customers.  The same hardware can be used for multiple software companies and multiple end users since isolation is used to prevent users from viewing each other.  This type of demo lends itself to efficiency since the hardware is shared and used to its capacity. 

Online demos tend to be less expensive than Trial CDs, in-person demos or even downloads.  In an earlier blog post, I covered how online demos haven been proven to cost less and generate more revenue than both CDs and downloads.  So not only can you be a little more green in your marketing efforts, but you can also save money - accomplishing both tangible and intangible goals.

Many people think that being green is a gimmick or don't take it seriously.  But in 2009 especially, I have seen an increasing amount of conversation in the news, on Twitter, in blogs and amongst the people I know about the environment.  We continue to see more evidence of global warming and oil shortages, hybrid vehicles have been well publicized lately and we continue to send satellites to space that monitor our environment.  I think being green is becoming less a fad and will be embraced more by the public.  The more companies are not only perceived to be green, but are actually backing up their green claims, the more they will be accepted and respected by the public.

Evaluating the way you provide software demos and how it affects the environment may be a small factor in the grand scheme of things, but we all have to start somewhere, right?

What do you think, would replacing your physical software demos with online demos make sense for your company?

Looking to sell more software online?

Now more than ever we marketers need to keep the revenue stream flowing come hell or high water, our basic lively depends on it these days. Sometimes we are thinking so far outside the box that we can miss some of the easiest online marketing tactics out there.

Here are 10 fast and easy actions you can take to greatly improve your conversion rate online.

1. Post professional box shots of your product. Even the downloadable products should display a box shot of your product.

2. Include a short video presenting your product for prospects to review. Not everyone enjoys waiting for a trial download to install, offering a video is an easy way to present your product’s benefits and most useful features.

3. Offer online demos of your software, but collect emails when offering them and follow up with an auto responder. Don’t request too much information up front or you can lose prospects.

4. Create individual landing pages for different products. Don’t drive prospects to your homepage, but instead bring them to detailed pages featuring your product(s), or better yet, your product benefits.

5. Don’t forget to include a clear call to action. If your goal is to make a sale, the buy button should be the most eye-catching element on your page.

6. Set up a company or product blog and post news and specific features of your product. This is a great way to interact with your customers, through their interaction with the blog they can in some cases urge others to buy your product and offer ideas on how to enhance your current software.

7. Even if you are trying to drive online sales, include a clearly visible phone number. This helps visitors know they can reach you if they want or need to.

8. Post testimonials from satisfied previous customers. Third party endorsements sell your product better than you ever could. Choose your testimonials carefully so they address the benefits you want to promote. If you can include pictures or even video of your customers that will help to drive sales even further.

9. Make sure your check out process clearly show the number of steps and what will happen next. Many sales can be lost in the checkout process.

10. And of course the key to achieving more sales is to analyze your traffic when engaging in any online marketing activity. Recording the data can help you set benchmarks and view trends so you know how to better engage your prospects.