Is it worth using box shots for online product sales?

I am selling professional software B2B online to engineers. Price tag around $1k.

Many online software vendors include an image of their product's packaging, a so-called "box shot". Of course, software delivered over the internet is never physically packaged so often a 3D rendering of a non-existent box is shown. There are free, online services that will render a box shot based on product graphics.

My first reaction is that it's crazy depicting a product manifestation that does not exist. But I can see that it may help to persuade customers that they are buying something real.

What are the pros and cons of making and using box shots for online product sales? Is it worth doing? Are there alternate approaches?

Sometimes the best answer is experimentation (A/B tests for instance):
You could create a page with a package and measure the conversion rate on that page.

Some other sites, e.g. Autodesk 360, may use images that are not boxes but bear resemblance to boxes.

Software that is only downloaded is an intangible item. Numrous studies have shown that you can increase sales of intangible items by making them tangible- for example adding a picture of a product package increases the sales of software, even though you only deliver it via download.

You can also make your software tangible by displaying screen shots of the software, and/or allowing a trial of the software.

Finally, who ever said that the product package has to be imaginary? The very act of creating a product box shot gives you enough artwork to produce a full color insert for a DVD case. Any color inkjet or color laser printer can print that insert. That insert, plus a $.30 DVD case and a CD or DVD is your boxed product.

We use boxed images of our Virtual TimeClock software on our web site even though 99% of our time and attendance software is sold digitally. I don't have empirical data to demonstrate that it is 'better', but it is consistent with the online philosophy built around metaphors.

The entire economy of selling bits and bytes as a software product falls apart if you take a moment and reflect on the cost of goods sold. For software, that number is for all intents and purposes is zero. Looking from this perspective alone, a 'reasonable profit margin' would lead to most software prices being very low.

On the other hand, if you factor in the utility and possession of a useful bit of code, it is absolutely appropriate to think about software as a tangible product. So it makes good sense to reinforce the idea of selling intangible bits and bytes as a product that goes into a box. (As an aside, this disparity between utility and cost of good solds is why software has made men like Larry Ellis and Bill Gates so incredibly wealthy).

The online world has been created largely around building a connection between the digital and real. The concept of an icon is something that represents the function of your code when it runs. We refer to our screen as a desktop. We 'save files' (visually and mentally) when in actuality we're magnetically charging portions of a spinning platter. We delete files by putting them in a trash/recycle bin that doesn't even remotely exist.

Reinforcing the connection between the digital and the real is something you're already doing as a developer. Why not extend that thinking consistently to your marketing?

In addition to the answers already provided, you could also take a picture of your software running on a laptop. Look at how Apple's website sells Macbooks and create the same kind of high-quality pictures with your software on the laptop's screen. Here's another exmaple: http://www.zuora.com/how-it-works/subscription-billing.html