Iron Software and FastSpring: A Case Study

Iron Software had already seen 40-50% revenue growth over 3-4 years since switching to FastSpring, but further switching from Popup to Embedded checkout increased conversions up to another 40%!

Key Result

Up to 40% increase in conversions

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Headquarters

Chicago, Illinois, United States

The Company

Iron Software is a company that builds .NET software components for other software developers to use to achieve their goals. Since launching their C# PDF library, IronPDF, in 2015, their offerings have grown to include an entire suite of licensed software libraries that help devs and engineers quickly implement tools for PDFs, spreadsheet and CSV files, QR codes and barcodes, and more. Their products have been downloaded over 20M times by customers worldwide.

“We’re always testing new ways to improve our conversion rate, because even a 1% increase can greatly increase revenue. Comparing FastSpring’s Embedded Storefront to their Popup Storefront showed an impressive 40% increase in conversions with Embedded Storefront. It has played a very important role in helping us achieve our goals.”

Vladislav Guzey, Lead Full-Stack Web Developer and Data Director, Iron Software

The Challenge

Iron Software had switched to using FastSpring as their core distributor a few years prior because they were looking for a better built-in cart solution, instead of the off-site redirected checkout they had been using. They wanted a better user experience on their own checkout page, to support both self-serve and enterprise customers. They saw an immediate growth in sales upon switching to FastSpring, and after a few years of using FastSpring, they were very happy with the 40-50% revenue growth they’d seen in that time.

When Iron Software first started with FastSpring, they opted for FastSpring’s Popup Storefront, meaning customers experience a same-page checkout experience via a popup window displaying in front of the webpage.

While this style of checkout page was serving them very well, they began to notice that the market — and FastSpring — were moving toward also offering an embedded same-page checkout option. 

Iron Software is an engineering-minded organization that puts a major emphasis on testing for optimal results, often running around a dozen simultaneous A/B tests across multiple websites. Since their licensing page is directly responsible for conversions and is at the end of the sales funnel, and since 70-80% of their sales are to self-serve customers on their website, the licensing page is one of the pages they test the most.

The possibility of a newer checkout style made them curious about whether they could increase their conversion rates even more with FastSpring, just by switching checkout types.

The Solution

To keep up with the natural progression of online checkouts and carts, Iron Software chose to run a few A/B tests with FastSpring’s Embedded Storefront to see how it would perform against their existing FastSpring Popup Storefront.

Like the popup checkout, the embedded checkout allows customers to see more upsell and cross-sell opportunities to increase purchase amounts. But the embedded checkout also allows customers to purchase without the on-screen popup, further decreasing disruptions in the buyer journey and increasing completed purchases.

The tests were run for three months each on two of their websites.

The Results

Iron Software was quite surprised to find that the embedded checkout led to an almost 10% increase in conversions on one of their websites, and a 40% increase in conversions on their main site! 

With a result like that, FastSpring’s Embedded Storefront was the clear winner, which they implemented permanently at the conclusion of testing. 

Iron Software is looking forward to seeing how FastSpring further evolves its checkouts, and they work actively and collaboratively with FastSpring on feedback and suggestions for how to even further improve the customer experience — and conversion rates!

 

Interested in switching to FastSpring’s Embedded Storefront? Existing customers can learn how to create an embedded checkout in FastSpring Embedded Storefront documentation

Not yet using FastSpring but want to know more?  Request a demo or check out the platform yourself.

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