For design tools: which showcases and communities bring designers who pay.

01How they sell

• FreemiumA free tier limited by files, exports or a watermark; the upgrade comes with a client project or a team.
• SubscriptionPer-editor plans monthly or yearly, with education pricing for students and teachers.
• One-offSome desktop design apps sell a perpetual licence once, with paid upgrades for major versions.

02Payments it reads

• StripeEditor seats and yearly plans through Checkout, with renewals and refunds read.
• PaddleDesktop design apps sell licences and subscriptions through Paddle as merchant of record; upgrades and refunds are read.
• Lemon SqueezySmaller tools and add-ons for designers sell through Lemon Squeezy checkout links with licence keys.

03Where buyers come from

• Dribbble and BehanceShots and case studies made with your tool send designers curious about the workflow; their revenue sits beside each referrer.
• Design YouTubeSpeed-design and tutorial videos show the tool in use for long stretches, and viewers arrive with a project in mind.
• X and ThreadsDesigners post work-in-progress clips; a burst of visitors follows, and revenue per visitor says whether it bought.
• Technique searchesSearches about one effect or technique bring people in the middle of a project who want it done now.
• Design schoolsStudents arrive through classes and groups, pay little at first, and may move to a full plan after graduating.

04What Tally answers

1. Do Dribbble shots actually sell seats?

   The referrer breakdown puts each showcase site's visitors beside the revenue credited to them, so a site that sends crowds of admirers is told apart from one that sends buyers.

   Sources with revenue

2. What do visitors do with the interactive demo on the home page?

   Click and scroll heatmaps show where visitors press inside the demo and how far down the page they get, so you can see whether they play with it or scroll past.

   Heatmaps

3. Which case studies hold buyers' attention?

   Engaged time and scroll depth per page, buyers against everyone else, pick out the case studies buyers actually read rather than the ones that only get opened.

   What they read

4. Do customers who first came through a design school keep paying?

   Give class materials their own UTM link, and lifetime value by first source shows what those customers have paid since, renewals and upgrades included.

   Lifetime value

5. Did that viral clip sell anything?

   Open the sales from that day and each receipt shows the visits behind it, including the referrer of the clip's post, so credit isn't guessed from timing.

   Receipts

05Numbers worth watching

Engaged time

Engaged time on showcase and feature pages; a page people actually watch beats one they bounce off.

Revenue by source

Revenue behind each showcase site, video channel and social network, rather than their likes.

Conversion

Paying visitors over all visitors, a check on whether a redesign of the home page helped.

Refunds and chargebacks

Refunds by source, which show where buyers came from who expected a different tool.

06An example

07Setting up

1. FramerIf the marketing site is built in Framer, add the tag to the site's custom code head so showcase and pricing pages carry it.
2. PaddleFor the desktop app's licence checkout, pass the visitor's id in customData when Paddle.js opens on the buy page.
3. Count downloads of the desktop app with data-fast-goal on the download button.

08Questions

• Are exports and files made in the editor tracked?

  Only if you send them, with tally('exported', { format }) for example; then they count as goals. The files themselves are never read.

• Students get a discount. Is their revenue counted?

  Yes, at what they paid, without tax. An education plan that costs nothing isn't revenue until it turns into a paid one.

• We sell the iPad version through Apple and the desktop version direct. What is read?

  Only the direct sales, through Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy or Polar. Purchases made through Apple don't reach any of them.