Optimize your commercial marketplace listing
Your product's listing in Microsoft AppSource or Azure Marketplace is the primary way that Microsoft customers can learn more about what you're selling. You can create a digital presence that helps customers find and purchase your product in Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace.
In this unit, we'll look at some best practices to create your online store listing, followed by some recommendations to engage your customers and give them additional options to get your solution.
Creating a compelling listing
Your marketplace listing in the online stores has a lot of useful information for buyers. When you publish your offer in Partner Center, you'll be required to provide certain information that will appear on your product listing in Azure Marketplace and Microsoft AppSource.
Here's some of the required information with suggestions to get the most out of your listing:
Offer name: Choose a name that communicates the value that your product delivers and captures your customers' attention.
Offer Description: Write a description that positions your solution in a way that encourages customers to learn more and, eventually, purchase your offer. Good offer descriptions go beyond a list of tasks your solution is designed to complete. Communicate why your customers need it using scenarios they can understand.
Category and Industry selections: You'll select product categories from a list in the Properties tab in Partner Center. Make sure you select the categories that match the kind of solution you're offering to make it easier for customers to find your offer using search filters.
For Microsoft AppSource solutions and consulting services published to Azure Marketplace, you'll also be able to identify industries that your solution was built to serve. Customers often filter by industry, so make sure you choose the most applicable options.
Customer reviews: Encourage user reviews for your listing by reaching out to existing customers and asking them to write reviews of your solution. Ratings and reviews affect your product's search results and help customers decide if they want to purchase your product.
Best practices to engage your customers
In addition to the information you provide customers in the online stores, you can build optional features into your commercial marketplace offer to improve customer engagement.
Free trials and test drives: Many customers will want to try your product before they buy it, so we recommend building a trial experience into your listing. The commercial marketplace allows publishers to enable two different kinds of trial experiences: free software trials and test drives. When customers select Free trial or Test drive on your offer listing page, Microsoft will send leads to your CRM so you can follow up to continue the conversation.
Plans and pricing: Customers like options. You can give your customers choices by offering multiple plans of your listing, with each plan representing a different version of the same product. You can split plans by tiers of functionality, capacity, seats of access, or other variables depending on your solution. We recommend that you give customers as much choice and flexibility as possible by offering multiple plans at different price points.
Think strategically about your product's pricing model. Pick a pricing model that makes sense for the customers you serve. For more information on pricing options in the commercial marketplace, you can reference the pricing model documentation.
Sell through Microsoft: Publishing an offer that users can purchase through Microsoft gives your customers the ability to start using your software with less friction. We recommend that you sell your solution through Microsoft to let your customers self-serve.
For more detail on these suggestions and a longer list of recommendations, you can download the Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace Best Practice Guide from our documentation.