Boost in Sales – Due to Minor Tweaks?

Over the last few months I’ve been based in Beirut. Not a great place to run an Internet-based business due to the lousy Internet in Lebanon. Not to mention the many fun distractions in Beirut that keep me from working too hard. Yet during these few months my sales have risen roughly 25%.

I’ve made many small tweaks to Poker Copilot over these few months that I haven’t announced because they are not interesting to most people. Who they are interesting to are brand new Poker Copilot users. Except they don’t know about them. These tweaks are all in response to my most common support problems.

I’ve been relentlessly taking note of my top support requests, and making small changes to make the problem go away. What I want is for first time users to have the smoothest possible experience. Some claim that the first couple of minutes of a person using a software product are the most important for making a buy-or-don’t-buy decision. The theory goes like this: If the software causes pain, many people will simply quit using it and never try again. If the software causes joy, then those some people will continue using it, fall in love with it, become accustomed to it, and buy it.

Is the 25% increase in sales due mainly to these tweaks? Hard to tell. It is far from a controlled experiment. There could be many other factors at play. Seasonal variation. Increase in poker playing. Increase in Mac sales. Better Google ranking for the Poker Copilot website. Dumb luck. One of the new features I’ve added (player icons, status bar info)  in recent months appealing unexpectedly to many people. All one can do is guess.