Now for the analysis. As we shop around for things we need (or simply desire), two or three fairly standard criteria help us make an informed decision… cost and quality among others. But in the case of making a decision about Sunfleck software, do people pay attention to the charity aspect? Is this a factor in making a decision to purchase out software? One indication of the importance of this may be the number of times people visit our page describing the charities. If only out of curiosity, certainly people should be interested in this aspect of the company. So let’s have a look. Our Home page accounts for over 50% of all page views, which makes sense. That’s where most people start their shopping experience. Many people are of course interested in finding out more about our products before they buy, so our Products page gets a fairly high number of hits as well. Next is the Downloads page, where people may access a test drive of our software. (The number of actual downloads, incidentally, is much higher than indicated, since many folks opt to download our software directly from reputable shareware sites). Following that, the Purchase page receives about 10% of the total hits as people, quite naturally, seek information on pricing and delivery options. Next is the Endorsements page, an important page to check out if you are looking for evidence of quality in a product. That leaves the Charity, Blogs and Support pages, which rank the lowest in the number of page views, each with about 3% of the total. Does this mean that people are not interested in these aspects of the site? Don’t they care about our support features, or what we say (well, that I can believe). Admittedly, I was a little surprised to see that people did not flock to the page describing our charities since this is something that is not on the agenda of most companies. Are people not charitable? No, I don’t think that’s the case at all. It’s simply telling us that, when it comes to shopping, nothing can replace the standard criteria of cost and quality. The opportunity to make a charitable donation is not a key factor in the decision to make a purchase. However, once the decision to purchase is made, no one has ever clicked the option of not making a charitable contribution at all. And that makes us happy.
