{"id":174031,"date":"2018-09-19T13:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T13:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/premium.wpmudev.org\/blog\/?p=174031"},"modified":"2018-09-19T03:09:39","modified_gmt":"2018-09-19T03:09:39","slug":"how-to-grow-your-sales-of-wordpress-plugins-and-themes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpmudev.com\/blog\/how-to-grow-your-sales-of-wordpress-plugins-and-themes\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Grow Your Sales Of WordPress Plugins And Themes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Selling WordPress plugins and themes has become a profession. Actually, scratch that. it\u2019s an art. Gone are the times in which you could do it easily as a side gig, alongside a full-time job.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, the WordPress ecosystem just has too many options & competition in it, and there are so many \u201ccorrect\u201d decisions to be made if you\u2019re going to create a prosperous and a sustainable business from your WordPress plugin or theme.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\nEditors Note:\u00a0This is a guest post, which regular readers will know is pretty rare here at WPMU DEV.<\/p>\n

In chatting with our friends at Freemius, we thought some of their insights and stats would make for an interesting read here on our blog.\u00a0We know that a good number of our members and readers create their own plugins and themes as part of their businesses, and for the rest of us, it is always good to be aware of the current tips and tricks being used as we go shopping for WordPress products and services around the web.
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In this post I\u2019m going to uncover the most important insights, we, at <\/span>Freemius<\/span><\/a> have understood when it comes to selling WordPress products.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those of you who do not know, Freemius\u00a0is designed to handle all of the eCommerce aspects of selling WordPress products and, due to the nature of our business, we have been obsessed with optimizing the way we handle things like <\/span>checkout, licensing, recurring payments, automatic updates, taxes (EU VAT), trials, affiliation, cart recovery, decreasing the uninstall rate, collecting user-feedback, customer communication<\/b> and many additional aspects of running a successful WordPress product business for our WordPress product sellers. The obsession with optimizing these aspects has helped us to substantially increase the conversion rate for WordPress products that sell through Freemius. Let\u2019s dive into a few of our best practices:<\/span><\/p>\n

First-time User Experience Is Crucial!<\/span><\/h2>\n
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A good UX (User Experience) will leave the user satisfied rather than overwhelmed and confused. When it comes to WordPress plugins, this means your plugin should be easy to install, easy to set up, and easy to use.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you offer both free and paid versions of your plugin, the free version should delight them in such a way that when they need any of your paid features they won\u2019t think twice about upgrading. In the long run, a great user experience not only benefits the users of your plugin but you, the plugin author as well, because it leads to better conversion rates.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some developers have little to no knowledge when it comes to topics such as user experience and how to create intuitive products, so as you can imagine, some WordPress products suffer from a very poor UX and are very challenging for the end-user to handle. In fact, based on data we captured from hundreds of plugins and millions of plugin installations using Freemius: 20% of plugin uninstalls are related to bad FTUX (first-time user experience). A user installs a plugin and then has no clue what to do next.<\/span>
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\n<\/span>There are many ways to improve the FTUX of your plugin, but the simplest solution can be found by including a <\/span>post-install welcome screen<\/span><\/a> and automatically redirecting the new user to that screen upon plugin activation. Adding a welcome screen that explains where the plugin settings can be found and guides them through the setup can greatly improve the overall user experience in WordPress plugins (this solution would work particularly well for the more complex ones).<\/span><\/p>\n

When it comes to freemium themes with a free version on WordPress.org, redirection is actually not allowed, therefore, adding an admin notice with a \u201cGetting started\u201d link to the welcome screen should do the trick.<\/span><\/p>\n

The main thing to keep in mind is that the users don\u2019t know what they\u2019re supposed to do after installing your product for the first time, so your goal is to guide them in the right direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let Them Try It Out (For Free)<\/span><\/h2>\n
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Trials for software products and SaaS (Software as a Service) have been a standard practice for years and are considered an excellent way to get a higher reach and improved conversion rates. That said, only a small fraction of the premium WordPress plugins and themes on the market offer them.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Types of Trials Can You Offer?<\/span><\/h3>\n

There are three well-known trial offerings that are currently popular on the market:<\/span><\/p>\n