I currently offer a CD as an optional extra when customers buy my wedding table plan software. I have put stamps on so many CD envelopes that I might instinctively lick the Queen’s face if I ever met her. The graph below shows the % of sales that have included a CD over time.
The overall trend is hard to miss. Some factors have varied over that time:
- I have stopped CD sales for periods of a few weeks at a time, e.g. near a new release.
- I have emphasized CDs less over time on my purchase page.
But I don’t think these have had much effect on the general trend. Download speeds are always increasing and customers are getting used to buying downloads instead of physical media. Anyone with a broadband connection can now download PerfectTablePlan in a minute or two. The demise of CDs is hardly ground breaking news, but I thought it might be worthwhile to show some real data.
I won’t really miss CDs. They are an extra hassle to organize and the profit margins are slim and decreasing. I didn’t want to use the ugly looking CDs in a cardboard mailer that print-on-demand CD companies offer. I didn’t really feel it reflected well on the quality of my software. Particularly in the wedding market, where aesthetics are important. Instead I send a full colour silk screen printed CD, in a DVD box with a professionally designed, full colour wrap and insert.
I order the CDs and packaging in batches of a thousand and burn and post them as required. I have managed to delegate quite a bit of this to a family member. But it is still a fair amount of hassle. CDs go missing in the post or get eaten by dogs. Also the UK post office recently hiked the cost of sending a CD + DVD case in a Jiffy bag by airmail from £2.10 to £3.86. A monstrous overnight price increase of 84%. But I don’t feel I can increase the CD price much above the current £7/$10 when you can buy game and film DVDs for less in the supermarket. The only plus side of CDs is that my data shows that customers that order a CD are 3 times less likely to ask for a refund (my terms stipulate that they have to return the CD). Given that refund requests are low, this isn’t a huge advantage. Also (repeat after me) correlation does not imply causation.
I might run an A/B test to see if removing CDs from the purchase page makes any difference. But, given that only around 3% of customers are now buying a CD, I can’t see it making much difference. If I was starting a new product now, I don’t think I would even bother to offer a CD option, unless the download size was huge.
Am I the only one still sending out CDs?
