Extensions, plugins and apps
For Windows software: which download sites and searches bring licence buyers.
Windows software sold direct lives on a download page: a trial or a free edition, then a licence per PC or per business, bought through a checkout. Tally ties each licence, upgrade and renewal to the visit behind it, so you can see whether download portals, searches for a fix or tech forums bring the people who pay.
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01How they sell
- One-offA licence per PC or for a household's computers, with paid upgrades when a major version ships.
- SubscriptionYearly plans for updates and support, common for business editions and anything with a cloud part.
- FreemiumA free edition or a feature-limited trial, with the installer downloaded long before anyone pays.
02Payments it reads
- PaddleMerchant of record for desktop software sold worldwide; transactions, upgrades and refunds as adjustments are read.
- StripeCheckout for licences plus invoices for business orders; both are read, with chargebacks.
- Lemon SqueezyLicence keys with orders and renewals for smaller utilities; refunds are read, chargebacks aren't reported.
What Tally can't read
- Microsoft Store purchases are paid out by Microsoft and aren't read.
- Sales through FastSpring or another reseller's checkout aren't read; only the four connected providers are.
- Downloads counted by portals such as Softpedia aren't read; only the visits those portals send to your site are.
03Where buyers come from
- Download portalsSoftware download sites list your trial and link back; their referrers show which portal sends people who later buy.
- Problem searchesSearches for how to fix one Windows annoyance land on help articles; the pages buyers saw show which fixes sell.
- Tech forumsAnswers on tech-support forums and subreddits recommending your tool send readers who have the problem right now.
- YouTube how-tosVideos that solve a problem with your tool send viewers through the description link, often to the download page.
04What Tally answers
Which help articles lead to licences?
What they read sets buyers' engaged time and scroll depth on each article against everyone else's; an article that buyers read to the end is one to link from the download page.
What they readHow many downloads turn into a purchase?
Mark the download button with data-fast-goal and the goals view gives downloads, how many of those visitors paid and their revenue.
Goals and funnelsHow long do people run the trial before buying?
Path to purchase gives the median time from first visit to purchase, which includes the trial, and the visits in between.
Path to purchaseWhich download portal is worth staying listed on?
The referrer breakdown gives each portal its visits and the revenue behind them, so a busy portal that never sells stands out.
Sources with revenueA business bought ten licences. Where did it find us?
The sale's receipt lists the buyer's visits, the credited one, the link method and its confidence, so a business order can be traced to the article or forum that started it.
Receipts
05Numbers worth watching
- Goal conversion
- The share of visitors who download, by source, which comes before every sale of trialware.
- Median time to buy
- Median time from first visit to purchase; for a trial, compare it with the trial's length.
- Visits before buying
- Visits before buying; trial users who return to the site for help articles push it up.
06An example
Reading time
38s
median per pageview
Scroll depth
59%
average depth, of 27,216 views measured
Read to the end
27%
of measured views reached 90% or more
What they read
29,264 pageviews · last 30 days
Open a page to see how far down people read it, and how buyers read it before paying.
- /8,756 views52% scrolled on average21s reading time, median
- /pricing5,526 views78% scrolled on average58s reading time, median
58s
reading time, median per view
78%
scrolled, on average
5,526 views · 5,194 with a measured depth
How far down they read
Share of measured views that scrolled at least this far
- 25% — reached a quarter of the page:95%
- 50% — reached half of the page:84%
- 75% — reached three quarters of the page:69%
- 90%+ — reached the end of the page:48%
Buyers before paying vs didn't buy
- Buyers, before paying149 views · 107 buyers96% scrolled on average,1m 41s reading time, median
- Didn't buy5,342 views · 3,815 visitors61% scrolled on average,44s reading time, median
35 views by buyers after paying are left out of both.
Buyers are visitors whose first sale came after viewing this page; only their views before that payment count.
- /docs2,727 views47% scrolled on average1m 12s reading time, median
- /blog/stripe-fees2,237 views64% scrolled on average2m 34s reading time, median
- /compare1,184 views71% scrolled on average49s reading time, median
- /changelog861 views38% scrolled on average33s reading time, median
Reading time runs only while the tab is visible and the visitor is active; it's the median per view. A view with no engagement report counts as 0s of reading. Its scroll depth is unknown, so it's left out of every scroll figure rather than counted as 0%. 27,216 of 29,264 pageviews have a measured depth.
07Setting up
- Any HTML siteAdd the tag to the head of every page, including help articles, the download page and the buy page.
- PaddlePass tally_visitor_id in customData when the buy page opens Paddle checkout, so licences and upgrades link with high confidence.
- Open your site with a UTM from the program's Buy menu and its uninstall page, so visits started in the program have a source.
08Questions
Does Tally read FastSpring sales?
No. It reads Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy and Polar. Visits to your site are still counted, but sales through FastSpring stay outside Tally.
Can the program itself report launches?
No. The snippet is for web pages. The program can open your site with a UTM, and that visit is what Tally counts.
Are business licences paid by invoice counted?
Yes, when paid as a Stripe invoice or a Paddle transaction. A bank transfer outside those isn't read.