A quick glance at this morning’s BBC news website leaves me less happy than before I arrived. The main stories on the front page include murdered soldiers, a missing woman, falling education standards, a dam burst that killed dozens and the fact that steaming hot tea has been linked to cancer.

Pushing aside my mug of steaming hot tea, I realised that my mood had been affected by simply scanning this one single page. As a UK resident I don’t see advertising on the BBC news site, but if I did, it would be a great spot to push life insurance, health insurance or even holidays, but probably not tea.

If you’re selling software online, you’re selling solutions. People don’t buy software for the sake of it, they buy it to perform a function or solve a problem.

The person who’s fed up of their accounting software crashing isn’t looking for your company’s outlook on life. They’re not interested in pictures of your last team paintballing day, an analysis of what you’re hoping to achieve over the next twelve months or your company mission statement. They are looking for reassurance that your product will solve their problems, and will do everything that they need from it.

That’s it.

A 60 day trial version of your software is a good idea, so that they can start working with it immediately to see if it works for them.

Pointing out that your solution can import their data is a great idea, so as to lessen the pain of moving to a new application.

And offering them a competitive upgrade discount is a fantastic idea.

Throw in a 30-day ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee and they’ll probably reach for their wallets, more or less immediately.

I went to the BBC for news and got exactly what I wanted.

Will I get what I want from your company’s website?