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What Turns You Off About Evaluation Software?
An Anonymous Coward asks: "I work at a mid-tier software company (which shall remain nameless, lest I draw attention to myself). Recently we have started making 30 day evaluation versions of our software available for download after prospects register. An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission. We have been surprised to find that not a few registrants don't actually go on to download the software. We make the file size and system requirements clear up front. I would guess some slashdot readers get involved in evaluations. What process do you go through? Why might you stop short of actually downloading the software?"
If it wants a valid email addy, I forget it and find something else. say no to spam
In the words of Veruka, "but I want it NOW!"...
If the link/password/whatever hasn't hit my inbox in a minute or two, I'm probably moving on looking for another thing to try. Welcome to the short attention span decade.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Unless I really need the software I avoid registration processes such as those that you require. I do not like to give out personal informaiton, including e-mail addresses, just evaluate software. Not only am I concerned about spam, I abhor receiving e-mails from the sales staff of the company, especially if I state that I do not want to receive e-mail from the company if that option is available. If you want people to evaluate the software and purchase it after the evaluation period is through, provide a warning at the end of the eval which links the user to the comany website where they can purchase the software. If they truly want to buy it they will. Also, offer a link in the help menu which directs the user to the web storefront where they can buy the software should they decide to do so before the eval period is up.
Joel's rule: every barrier to implementation reduces your customer base by 50%
http://www.joelonsoftware.com
1) Collect e-mail address then say "will mail username, passwd". If they had said it upfront and if it was immediate, it would be much more friendlier. :-)
2) Install spy-ware without public notice.
3) Infect registry(for M$), store/replace files in strange non-obvious places.
4) Difficult to uninstall.
5) Send info about user without permission.
6) Source not available.
agreed.
I do not like to give my e-mail address to companies, because I do not want spam. If I have to give my address to download software, I will likely not give it, or will give an incorrect address.
The simplest reason is the users have found something else in the mean time. It is particularly true if your product is mainstream (eg virus scanner, compression program, image viewer and the like).
Say, they are looking for jp2 viewer, they will go for shareware first, then evaluation ware. If nothing is found, go for evaluation ware that need registration. As long as they find something okay, they will stop searching. (Of course, if your software is unique, and some customers really need that, then they will wait.... Maybe more common in some sector of the research community. Not so in the commerical world.)
The better approach is to allow the user to download first. When they want to evaluate more advanced function of the software, pop up a window to lure them to register. If you really want to validate their email address in advance, please use automatic mail reply and ensure the avg time taken in within 5 mins rather than a few hours...
Why might you stop short of actually downloading the software?
Why do you think the people gave you their real email address in the first place?
I'd say most of the non-downloaders simply didn't give you their real email address.
I just downloaded a trial-ware app the other day, and the company in question also wanted my email address, physical address, who I worked for, etc. All of the form items were required. I said, "bullshit," and did a Google search for the program - a minute later I was installing it.
So here's a question back: Why are you requiring people to register in the first place? Not knowing you or your business, I'd make two guesses:
- You're hoping to prevent your trialware being "pirated" or cracked, perhaps by keying each copy uniquely so you can identify the source of a cracked version.
- To collect information so you can market to me later, or sell my personal information to some other company.
Frankly, I think they're both stupid reasons. First, you can't prevent a determined person from cracking your software, or getting a cracked copy if he/she wants it. Second, if you'r eethical and up-front about using the information for marketing purposes then most people will just opt-out.Unless you've got a better reason, think hard about why you're making it more difficult for people to get your software - and why you weren't clueful enough to figure out people wouldn't register in the first place.
Lastly - hours?? That's one of the great things about online software distribution - you can have it right now. Unless I were convinced you were truly the only source in the world, I wouldn't even consider waiting that long.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Make it possible to use download accelerators like Gozilla. I have occasionally wanted to download a demo of something, only to find that because of the way the download page is structured, Gozilla can't kick in and take control of the download. When this happens, and if the file is large, I'll just give up rather than take the chance the download will be interrupted.
1.) I'm going to look for an Open Source package that meets my need first.
Commercial software is usually better quality than shitty Open Source software.
2.) I'm going to consider writing my own software or extending an existing OSS package before buying a proprietary software license.
Your time must not be worth very much, then. You're in high school or a community college, aren't you?
4.) I'm not even going to consider your product if your company does not support the free operating systems I use.
You're in that little 2% slice huh? Bummer, they probably don't care for your business anyway since it would not be worth the time or money to port their software to an OS notorious for users who don't want to pay for anything. (Testimony to this fact are your 1) and 2))
5.) I'm not even going to consider your product if your company is run by greedy bastards who treat customers like criminals or never give back to any open source projects they may employ.
Companies are there to make money. If you think otherwise you're delusional. Yes, there are unethical businesses, but I warrant a guess that you're not very hesitant to label a company as "greedy" unless they'll give you their software for free and/or waste their money to work on other software you can get for free.
6.) Even if you stay proprietary, source code would be nice because I inherently don't trust the security of binaries on my networks. Disassembly is a much harder method of security auditing if the need presents itself or clients require.
Yeah, source code would be nice, but then again, 98% of people don't want it, care for it, or would know what to do with it, and in almost all cases opening source would reveal trade secrets and things of the sort. Not to mention the fact another company could take it, change the logo, wrap a different GUI around the algorithms, and sell it as their own.
If you ran a software company, how would YOU make money and put food on the table while fitting your "requirements?" I submit that if you ran a company such that you would be a satisfyable customer, you'd be out of business due to people stealing your work in a few weeks.
I'll admit, there is very few pieces of demo-ware that I've bought. Though, there is one piece that I did. AnyJ has a cool way of doing it. You can download as many times as you want. Every one of the features are there to use. If you try to open a project older than 90 days, it reminds you that you should register, but lets you continue anyway. For those reasons, I bought a personal license. And in fact, my past two companines have switched from their IDE's to AnyJ because of the demo's they tried.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that many other posters out here. Do not require an email address until they buy the software. Do not cripple the program from the start. If you treat your customers like pirates, pirates they will become (see RIAA). If you treat your customers like people you want to please, then some will buy, and some will decide your product isn't worth it. That's the chance you take.
> If you're serious about trying out the software and would seriously consider purchasing it, giving them an e-mail so a representative can contact you for support makes sense.
No, it doesn't. If I'm looking for a solution, I might try a ton of demos until I find the right one. I don't want to be hounded by all of the ones I discounted as crap.
It's like shopping at JC Penney or Sears and the salespeople hound you EVERY 3 MINUTES. Thanks, but I already know how to shop and you just turned me off to your store.
Here's a shocking idea - How about if I need help I'll ask?
Seen your site. The "free download" requires name, address, company name, address, email, blah blah. And I still don't even know what your software *does*
Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
The one thing that stops me from registering any shareware (apps or games) is the price. I don't wanna flame, but I thought the whole fscking point of cutting out the middleman was to lower the price of your software, while keeping a larger amount for yourself.
Case in point: Avernum. They've been going some good advertising for that game, and I'm really interested, but there's no way I'm going to pay 25 bucks for it when I see games RETAILING on store shelves for $10 to $20 all the time. And $40 for Opera? Yeesh. Blah blah I'm a cheap bastard yadda yadda, but I still wanna know where all that purchase price is going if there's no big monolithic publisher involved. Nobody's buying? Try lowering your price to increase volume. I know I'd pay five bucks for either of these programs right now if I could. But no, they have to play hard-to-get. Well fine, two can play at that game.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
Example.
TogetherJ has a 30 day evaluation period. How in the hell do you expect me to learn how to utilize all of it's features, and actually apply them to a "round-trip" development cycle, in 30 days?
total bs
Yes, there are many who enter garbage in all the fields. And yes, there are those who use the obvious throw-away email addresses. But we assume them to be not very serious prospective customers.
I can personally attest to over a dozen peices of software I've purchased after entering a bogus e-mail address.
I don't know what software you sell, but if I was shopping for an application you sell, and your marketing people wanted to know this 'golden' information why I went with a competitor, it's because you wanted to make me jump through hoops I did'nt want to jump through just to see if your stuff was any good.
The Internet is generally stupid
I loathe any evaluation type software, especially that which has some timer/trial date period before it forces you to register/buy the product. And I especially detest it when it embeds itself into the registry (specifically speaking of Windows platforms) and even after uninstalling, it still isn't completely wiped off my HD. It still shows but yet when I try to remove programs/uninstall, I get an error message ...
Some tips for aspiring developers to break free of the not-so-surprising (at least to me) pattern of timid experimenters and reluctant trial end users.
AZspot
You'd think people in the business of writing software would be able to figure out how to generate a key and password and send it to you instantly.
Holy crap! There are a lot of half-assed adminstrators on slashdot. First clue: Don't install evaluation software on productions systems! Evaluate ths software on a lab system. Dumbfuck.
> username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission
If I have an immediate need for software, I'm not going to wait a few hours. I'll have found your competitor's software by that time. If it's not available now, it's not available. Get real!
For business, the reasons are numerous. First, we can only buy from certain vendors easily. I would really like to get Jasc's Image Robot [I hope this isn't accidentally your company] but our vendor doesn't stock it so I'll do without until I can complain in an I-told-you-so manner that I love so much ... oops ... too much information, eh?
Second, I often find that I can't demonstrate the workflow I'm trying to prove with the demo. Sometimes this is a problem with crippleware and sometimes with it being hard to implement. Image Robot, for instance, looks like it'll do what I need but I haven't bothered to implement a full flow because it would be hard.
Third and so on--things other people have already mentioned. Changing priorities and the like, loss of interest, loss of job, etc.
As for software for personal use:
First, the off-the-cuff cost-benefit analysis is very important. Often I'll want a piece of software for just one little thing so even $30 might be too high for that purpose. Similarly I may only need it once.
Second, time and interest change. I may have enough time to download and install some demo, but I might not ever get back to checking it. If I go to run it and it's expired, oh well. Sometimes I just lose interest too.
I've got another specific example--Ultralingua Collegiate Dictionary I want an electronic dictionary to give me all the features I already have in American Heritage but will run on OSX [there, I let the cat out of the bag ... I'm a Mac guy.] I already own American Heritage and really love the Word Hunter [definition searching utility] feature. Ultralingua, while slick, fast, and OSX-aware doesn't do that so I'm just not interested. I'll wait for Houghton Mifflin to pop out another version and buy that. So ... I downloaded the demo and didn't buy the product.
Finally, and in both personal and business, software with bugs will stop me from buying. It's very odd ... if you are kind enough to allow people to try-before-buying, they'll be critical of crashes and bugs that they'd just begrudgingly work around if they just bought the stupid software without trying it. The trick is that you never release a beta as a demo. Betas are betas and should be full-blown and come with a big benefit to the user for being your tester. Demos are bug-free and designed to say that you're a competent company. Nobody likes testing software for nothing ... just ask any Windows user ;-) [ok, ok ... or Mac user or Palm user or anything user]
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
"An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission" [emphasis added]
Unless what you're selling is the one and only tool on the market which does the job it does, in "a few hours" I've found three other products which do what your thing does and I'm busily evaluating them instead. And one of them did the job I need it to. And I've forgotten you even exist.
Unless you really do have a stranglehold on a niche, go have a look around at how your competition deal with evaluation downloads. If some of them are making it even one step eaiser to test their junk, you can bet you're losing sales to them.
Most of the people on this site expecting everything to be free are pathetic. Once you get out of college, stop smoking crack, get a job, or convert from communism and have to support a family, you'll will quickly come to the conclusion that giving your hard work away for free just doesn't put food on the table.
Stop being free-loaders and do some research. The number of companies that actually make money from giving their code and products away for free and living off consulting are few. Take a look around your own town, and notice the droves of consulting groups that are constantly going out of business.
Just because some poeple choose to give it away doesn't give you free license to steal from those who don't. By the same logic, you should be able to fill up a grocery cart with food and not pay because it's possible to grow it yourself and pick it for free.