11-18-2004, 06:00 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Handango Changes How Top Selling Software is Calculated
"This post is really off-topic for the PocketBreeze forum but I just feel I have to say what I feel about Handango new "most popular" rating system that was activated a few hours ago. For those of you who don't know, Handango was planning to change their "most-popular" rating system in the last few months from the old system who rated the most popular software by the number of software-purchases to their new system based on software revenue. With the new system, based on revenue, there is simply no place for lower priced software , if you will check Handango's new best-selling list you will see the only two software titles that cost less then $15 among all the top 35 software titles are PocketBreeze ($12.95) and Pocket Plus ($14.94)."
We had several people submit this today - on the surface, this seems like a strange move to me because it will distort the results towards higher-priced apps, not the ones that people are actually buying. I wonder what motivated Handango to make this change?
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11-18-2004, 06:06 PM
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Editorial Contributor
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 5,411
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Re: Handango Changes How Top Selling Software is Calculated
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
I wonder what motivated Handango to make this change?
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$$$ Not sure how, but I'm sure it's at the root.
__________________
Sometimes you are the anteater, sometimes you are the ant.
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11-18-2004, 06:13 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Sep 2005
Posts: 211
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I'm sure they get a lot more traffic on the best-selling titles since the top 10 are featured front and centre. They're probably expecting that they'll start selling more of the higher priced titles. I know I often look at the best-sellers list when I'm on Handango to see if there's anything new and interesting.
This is probably just going to make me buy less from them. I tend to buy software under $15 as an impulse purchase and will often find things on the best seller list. If they're promoting higher priced titles, I'll be a lot less likely to make an impulse buy.
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11-18-2004, 06:32 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 80
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The Handango top 10 is a fairly coveted spot for Pocket PC software developers. It's displayed on many sites (including this one) and if a new PPC user starts looking for software it's one of the first things they'll see. While I'm sure the decision was based in part on driving sales towards the higher-priced products, I think it was also done to lessen exploitation of the old ranking system.
Under the old system, it was possible for developers to discount their products by 99% or to $0.01 and then buy hundreds of copies of their own software. So for a small entry fee an application could propel itself to the top 10 instantly, knocking out a legitimate best seller. We saw this as products that moved radically within the best seller's list overnight, or appeared in the top 10 having only a handful of sales. The new system should prevent that.
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11-18-2004, 06:35 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 75
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Re: Handango Changes How Top Selling Software is Calculated
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Originally Posted by Sven
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Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
I wonder what motivated Handango to make this change?
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$$$ Not sure how, but I'm sure it's at the root. |
I totally agree...
If higher priced applications are on top of the list, people will tend to buy those thinking they buy quality...
Since handango gets up to 40% of the paid price... :devilboy: *suckers*
I recommend to buy directly from a developer or use pocketgear or other 'fair' shops.
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Jorlin
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11-18-2004, 06:43 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 194
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I must say I'm really frustrated with this change from Hadnango's side, I think the decision to promote software titles that gives higher revenue is wrong, and after almost two years of hard work and support we give our users this change that hearts us is really frustrating; I think this doesn't reflect a real popularity scale; I'm aware to the fact that selling a $70 software is much harder then selling a $15 software, but at the same time (these are only my thoughts of course), the popularity rating suppose to rate which software caused more people to decide to buy a certain software taking in to consideration it's functionalities, support and price.
If we will also take Hadnango's previous best selling list we could see no software title that costs less then $10 was on this list and still many software titles who cost $30 were on this list too, which means that even if there are many software titles who cost -$5 on Handango's catalog, people still identify good software with good support and buy these titles, not only based in price.
As some also mentioned on the post on our site, when I check for most popular car sales I won't see Mercedes on top of the list because their revenue is high; I will find cars which most people decided to buy due to a good combination of price and feature (quality at this case  ).
I also think this change will heart the users in the first place. This change only puts more pressure on the developers to raise their prices for their software (as some already did) because this is what we need to do now to stay on top of the list - and then, get better promotion.
For example, when we decided to add additional tabs support to PocketBreeze we decided to sell all optional tabs that we have (and will come in the future) in separate and therefore keeping PocketBreeze price low for the users who want to use only PocketBreeze alone - I always believed it is best to give the user the right to decide. With Handango's new system this ideal is hearting us. Until today, 1/3 of PocketBreeze users also purchased ContactBreeze, which together could have been sold for $18 and then put us much higher on the list, but then we would heart all our other users who doesn't need the additional tab and just want to buy PocketBreeze alone.
As bigkingfun said, I also think this change will eventually heart Handango's sales the most because more and more users will move to new distributors especially newbie's that will find only software titles for +$30 rated as best selling title and will be intimated.
I still hope Handango will find the right way to promote software titles on their site and not just according to revenue, maybe some kind of combination of all parameters will be the right thing to do.
I can say that from our side, from day one when we started, our main goal was to create good software and give the best support we can to our users (which is the reason I sleep 3 hours a day) at a fair price, and we have no plan to change the prices of our software as long as we can pay the rent with it
Maybe now that this issue was posted on major forums, if many users (and not developers) will email Handango they will decide to change this new rating system.
I really hope we will be able to continue selling our software at the same prices and keep the same level of massive promotion we usually do on Pocket PC community sites (which also supports the community I think).
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11-18-2004, 06:51 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 194
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by smashcasi
The Handango top 10 is a fairly coveted spot for Pocket PC software developers. It's displayed on many sites (including this one) and if a new PPC user starts looking for software it's one of the first things they'll see. While I'm sure the decision was based in part on driving sales towards the higher-priced products, I think it was also done to lessen exploitation of the old ranking system.
Under the old system, it was possible for developers to discount their products by 99% or to $0.01 and then buy hundreds of copies of their own software. So for a small entry fee an application could propel itself to the top 10 instantly, knocking out a legitimate best seller. We saw this as products that moved radically within the best seller's list overnight, or appeared in the top 10 having only a handful of sales. The new system should prevent that.
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I can agree with you on this point, and we both can see now which software titles stayed on the top list. But I think there are much simpler ways to limit this, for example, not counting product sales which are priced less then %50 of the product price (which is usually the upgrade price for a product) - this way you can pretty much solve this.
Currently, we really have no chance to hit again the top 8 best sellers after we were located there for a long time, with a software that cost $12.95  it really doesn't matter how much we will sell, I just don't think we have any chance competing with a $70 software.
Before this change we were located in #7-8, right after the change we dropped to #18, and if you will notice PocketBreeze and Pocket Plus are the only two software titles that cost less then $15 that still stayed in the top 35!! this only shows that we really have no chance out there anymore. Handango simply became a place that pushes high cost software.
Regarding the actual software you are talking about, I'm pretty sure you are talking on a certain software ($19.99) and there were much better ways to remove them from the list as I said above; at least now we can be sure as they dropped from the list (although this was not such a cheap software).
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11-18-2004, 07:12 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 1,734
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If they really wanted to be fair they could have made a couple of bands e.g Best seller under $10, Best seller under $25, Best seller over $25.
Then the whole thing would still have some meaning.
Its obviously a cheap marketing trick. Maybe if we should loud enough they can still change it?
Surur
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11-18-2004, 07:15 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 486
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Surur
If they really wanted to be fair they could have made a couple of bands e.g Best seller under $10, Best seller under $25, Best seller over $25.
Then the whole thing would still have some meaning.
Its obviously a cheap marketing trick. Maybe if we should loud enough they can still change it?
Surur
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This was announced back in July. Its been discussed before publicly at PocketNow. As said above they did this specifically to "fix" the issues surrounding people who get in their by discounting their sw heavily.
I personally don't like it because it prevents us from competing on price as one of our benefits. I think they could have done it better.
BTW, its NOT on pure revenue. Its weighted with revenue being the most important aspect. At least that's what they told me.
Frankly it matters less because the Handango home page no longer shows the Best Selling right up front - you have to click on it.
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11-18-2004, 07:16 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 194
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Quote:
If they really wanted to be fair they could have made a couple of bands e.g Best seller under $10, Best seller under $25, Best seller over $25.
Then the whole thing would still have some meaning.
Its obviously a cheap marketing trick. Maybe if we should loud enough they can still change it?
Surur
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I think you are right.
This will be fair for both sides and there is no reason a $60 software will have to compete with a $15 software on the amount of sales because this is also impossible.
This will allow users to find good best-selling software that really works and give support according to prices (-$25 for day to day software and +$25 for professional software I would say) and can be easily added on their site with the current tabs design they created.
I hope we could get Handango to comment this post.
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