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If someone were to ask me what are some quick things to do as an ISV that won’t take too much time I would tell them the five following things;

1) Create a Google Sitemaps Account
You don’t even have to create a sitemap, although doing that is very easy. All you have to do is add, and verify, your web site with Google’s Sitemap program. The information you get about your web site is simply amazing!

Here are some quick screen shots and descriptions of some of the information you get;
1) See Exactly Where Your Web Site Appears In Search Engines
2) Find Out Why Your Web Site Is Not Appearing In Google
3) Control How Often Google Scans Your Web Site
4) See Exactly How Many Web Sites Link To You

This service is absolutely free and the information you get will help you improve your search engine rankings, find out who is talking about your web site/products, and locate broken links or HTML errors in your web site.

2) Create A Google Analytics Account
If you do not have a Google Analytics account, you don’t know what you are missing! It’s not just the details it provides, but how it lets you easily compare data against previous dates. The best part comes when you link it with your payment system. You can see how much money, on average each visit gets you separated by country, region, city, source, etc… to name just a few. So for example, if you know new visitors from Toronto bring you on average $0.34/visit, that gives you a good estimation for your Google adwords campaigns. Many payment processors will easily link up your data including eSellerate. If you use PayPal, I have never used them, but I’ve heard good things about e-junkie. They take care of a lot of things including sending payment details to your Google Analytics account.

3) Buy A Really Nice Stock Icon Set
My favorites, for Mac OS X, are from Icon Drawer. You can also try Icon Buffet, and of course Icon Factory. Stock Icons are always good to have around and add a level of professionalism to your web site and products.

4) Buy A Psychology Textbook
From motivation, to time management, to understanding how people react to different kinds of advertising, an Introductory Psychology textbook will cover all the topics that all those self-help gurus and marketing know-it-alls pretend to know about. From somebody who has spent a fair amount of money and time reading books upon books of “advice”, a Psychology textbook will cover it all, complete with actual, real-life studies instead of personal opinions and misinterpretations. Many are available from Amazon.

5) Take One Big, Huge, Gigantic Risk - Without Asking
Ever get an idea that you think is really great, only to be shot down by friends or colleagues you ask for advice? This time, don’t ask, just do it! I always get the impression in various newsgroups, mailing-lists, and forums that developers have these great ideas and than when they ask whether or not they should do it, they get conflicting advice from other developers. Sometimes their ideas are trivial like adding an online forum, some are much bigger and take longer to implement. Maybe it’s an advertising opportunity or exhibiting at a trade show. I say just do it! Maybe it works out, maybe it doesn’t. Naivety is your best friend.

For the past year or so I have been reader of Shareware Promotion’s Software Marketing blog. Although I have never used their services, the content and information that Dave Collins writes about has always been very interesting and extremely useful.

Recently he has stopped posting to his blog and instead moved all of his future content, and insight, to a monthly newsletter. I have been a subscriber of his newsletter for a few months now and can highly recommend it to any software developer.

The newsletter talks a lot about Google adwords, search engine optimization, and general marketing advice.

What caught my attention in last months issue was not necessarily what he spoke about, but how he used his advice in the article he wrote. The article was about seeing the world through the eyes of your customers. Knowing what they need and delivering it to them, without the extra fluff. When you can identify what your customers need, and what problem you are solving, you won’t have to overwhelm them with so much information about every feature or service you offer.

The newsletter is free, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t be a subscriber.

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