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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?"
A large factor in my downloading a piece of evaluation is whether there is a crack available for it. If there isn't a crack then if the evaluation isn't hindered in any way for the amount of time it is allowed to be evaluated would be a factor. Of course, usefulness of the software is a large portion as well. Assuming there is a crack, then if the software is used frequently it would get paid for sometime.
By know you may have already realized the long delay to receive username/password is why people don't download. What I have to ask you is WHY, pray tell, it takes so damn long? Do people manually check addresses or something? You have to /usr/lib/sendmail something to the person straightaway!
Might the people be merely requesting a new code to further their 30 day trial? Your software might have precautions against this, but on a Mac I know how easy it is to simply delete a preference file (ircle developers: please pretend you didn't read this).
You could have already thought of this, but that's just the first thing that popped into my mind. They don't download the software because they already have the software. They just need a new code.
I just don't do this anymore. Much easier to get a version with all necessary serial numbers and whatever included from edonkey or usenet.
Don't require registration. Don't ask intrusive questions. It is not good for your company if the legit evaluation copy is harder to obtain than the warez version.
Do you believe in death after life?
I often find that thirty days is simply not long enough to evaluate a product. The world of software development is frequently a turbulent one and priorities can shift from one day to the next.
A good example is something that happened recently. We had a memory leak and I was asked to figure it out. I said that a profiler would be an excellent tool to have so I downloaded evals of a couple of popular products. Before I could get to any evaluation we sorted the problem out using other means.
The tools we used we crude and even though the immediate problem was solved, I still wanted something more sophisticated. I moved on to other more pressing issues and when I finally had a quiet moment to install and play with the profilers, I realized my thirty days was gone.
I think sales departments assume that developers live in a very linear world. That we:
1.) Isolate the need for a product.
2.) Collect relevant information.
3.) Download demos
4.) Conduct a formal evaluation
5.) Based on the merits, make a decision.
This is not the world I live in.
However, our method is the reverse of yours. You can download all the binaries whenever you want, any time, all the time. Transfer interrputed? Go ahead, download again. Downloaded it, but lost it? Download again. Got corrupted? Download again. These are the real things, not crippled evaluation versions.
What we do is liberally give out demo licenses via email, that expires after a short time. Provided you're not an asshole, you can renew your demo licenses.
Of course, the downside to this it could be cracked and warez'd out. I don't know the company stance and don't pretend to speak for it, but I don't care. Piracy is part of doing business in software, and the less you piss off your customers, IMHO, the better. So, while I don't like people pirating our software, I'm still against the recent stupid-ass (c'mon, you all know the words!) laws that seem to have festered recently in this area.
Perhaps this works better, I don't know why. Maybe it's psychological: people download the binary first and then feel they need to try it out to justify the time spent. Or something like that.
I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
"This looks interesting, I'll just try their free evaluation version..."
"Ugh... they want my email address... Yeah, you send your spam to nobody@notme.com"
"Damn it, these spammy bastards mail you the access codes. [sigh] Okay, here's my real address..."
"A FEW MORE HOURS?!"
"Okay, Kazaa, where's the full version?"
1) If you need my email address, I don't need your software. (and if I do need your software, I'll enter support@microsoft.com)
2) Most utilities and apps are more trouble than they're worth. Particularly if we are talking about Windows software, it seems popular for 'programmers' to make a big deal out of their little program, writing all over the registry and putting files who knows where (which should not leave the program's own directory). Most of these save their registry settings "just in case" its reinstalled and don't fully uninstall themselves.
As far as Unix programs, chances are there's a better and free implimentation at Freshmeat. Make it GPL.
3) With Windows shareware/demoware in general, it's just a pain to deal with the cute little "register me" BS like popup windows, program start delays, time limits, "enter your registration number," etc. If I like the program, I'll register it, but annoying me every time I use the program just associates being annoyed with using that program.
Psychology 101 will show companies why that is a bad thing.
Just my $0.02
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
An email containing a username and password is sent to the registrant a few hours after submission.
As so many others have mentionend, a "few hours" is a very long time. Perhaps not only because people have a short attention span, but because people, the potential costumers, are comparison shopping, and the delay meant that they went elsewere.
I don't know what software your company is making, but lets assume it is something for the desktop user, a piece of software that may have advanteges over the competition, but nevertheless may be easely substituted with something from a competing company. Eg. a small photo editing app.
Somewhere, a proud owner of a new digital camera, wants that kind of software; he goes searching on the web, looks at screenshoots, featurelists and prices, and decides that 3 products looks promising: two of the products are instantly downloaded and tried out, but your app, requires not only a long registration formular, but induces a surpricing two hour waiting period, in which your potential costumer, not only have tried your competitions apps, but may have actually bought them.
Think about going down "Main Street", shopping for a pair of shoes; In one shop, when asking for trying out a pair of shoes, the expedient hands you a two page formular, asking among other things, your phone number, age and job status.
After spending 20 minutes filling it out, you are then told to come back in a couple of hours.
You then go elsewhere.
Lets assume, that your software is somewhat more expensive, and not an "impulse" buy. Perhaps an unique app, that will help people design better, and faster "foo". Surely, professionals may be more patient. But no, that work dead afternoon, where you potential costumer is searching the web for tools that may make him more productive, may be followed up by 5 hectic days. So if you don't engage your potential costumer when he has time, you can loose an oppertunity.
Same thing with the trial period; if your software cost serious money, it probably requieres several hours to test. Most professionals have way too little time at their disposal, they may only have some short timeslots availeably during a week, for testing something new. 30 days may pass quickly, so bump the trial period to 60 days (like eg. IBM does).
In short, make your product as easely availably as possible.
[poster1 said:]
1. 90 day or unlimited trial only with the stupid features turned off.
[poster2 replied:]
In other words, pretty much give it away for free. (90 days apart to uninstall/reinstall or in some cases reformat is not much of a pain in the ass.)
Better: In your registration code, encode the start and end dates of the evaluation. Encrypt and obfuscate it to the far-thee-well, and have done.
If someone's willing to keep the dates on they're computer out of sync, you'll not get money out of them anyway (since they're too small of a shop (or home) for you to bother with.
Though I must strongly agree with the poster who suggested sending email warnings about licenses expiring. Veritas NetBackup does the encode the date thing. We had paid for it, and I thought that I had put the keys in correctly. However, it just quit on me. Something one does NOT want to see in their enterprise backup solution...
Zapman
A lot of people seem to be harping about registering to download something.
When I eval stuff for work (software developer), I don't mind at all registering my work info. It's the same way with conferences - I'm happy to give out my info.
Why? In general I find that companies trying to sell to other companies are not nearly as bad about spam as Fred's House 'O Cheap DVD's. Besides, it's my work mail account - who cares what happens to that.
So registration is not the problem as I see it. As others have said, you need to let the users download it whenever they like - look at just about any big chunck of enterprise software, they all have full versions you can DL. Then you need to send out a key, pronto! And make it easy. I've seen plenty of software where I downloaded it by then by the time I got the key I was doing something else and forgot the whole thing, or the key was such a PITA to get I just dropped the whole thing.
If you are worried about someone downloading it and making copies - fold up shop and shut down the company. You're going to be dissapointed if you expect anything less than everyone on earth having a fully enabled copy hours after the first regitsered user fires it up. Learn to live with that, then charge a fair price and people WILL pay you - remember, it's not even thier own money they are using so they are probably included to give you some! Plus, companies like nothing more than paying for support contracts even when they are not needed.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Number 1: It's been said time and again, but registration. There are a million reasons why a company wants to have this, and I see these posts from people saying that I have no position to compain. I have EVERY reason to compain. I am a potential customer. And I don't want you to know anything about me until I buy your software. That's what I would prefer.
If I'm made to type in an e-mail address to download, I type in a bogus address. If I need to get a key or anything else from my e-mail, I've just been sent the message that the software company does'nt want my business. This has happened more then once, and I've gone somewhere else. If I like your software, and I give you my or my companies credit card number, you get to know who I am. Not before.
2. Full featured software. If I bother to download your evaulation, I expect to be able to use it. When I can't save my work, or find that an important feature is turned off, or I have some stupid 10 minut time limit, the software gets deleted.
3. Installation. I can tell right away how much I'd like or not like a peice of software by installation. Paste icons all over my desktop without asking? You've annoyed me. Put yourself in my startup, even though it's not needed? You're gone. Bundle yourself with spyware? You're gone.
4. Remind me, clearly, when the evaulation period is getting to the end. 'You have 5 days left in your evaulation period' when I start the program up. I can think of many times when I've found a peice of software I like, forget to purchase it, forget to get approval for the purchase. I find another way to get something done, and I'll just forget about it. If I were a more orginized person, I'd keep tabs of those things, but I'm not.
The Internet is generally stupid
This was actually very literally proved out at Borland, too. While I was the Web guy there, we watched "attrition" rates for pages. It went something like this: if you have a home page with 1000 people hitting it, only 500 people will hit the subpages, and only 250 people will hit the sub-subpages. Once we realized that, we quickly moved to a very busy homepage with tons of links, trying to keep everything 2 or 3 clicks away at most. Even though I found the design to be ugly ugly ugly, I was amazed at how the numbers improved. Previously buried articles quadrupled their readership -- at the expense of nothing else. Everything benefitted from the rise.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Having to hunt around on the 'net for a crack! Seriously, if it's worth having, I will buy it, as long as doing so is easier than obtaining a cracked version...so make that part as painless as possible and we'll get along just fine.
Filling out those "forms" doesn't really bug me too much (except that bloody CNET wants us to fill out bloody forms now just to download freeware!), as I fill them all out pretty much the same:
Name: Homer Simpson
Address: 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC.
Country: Azerbajan
Zip: 90210
Year of birth: 1900
...and so on. You get the idea.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Ummm....then how is it different then the full version? Evaluation software is supposed to be used for *evaluation*. Not for five-nines critical applications. On a server the popup messages will go unnoticed, and the startup sequence will appear almost never. If you want to use it longer, then maybe it's time you paid for it.
:)).
Should be obvious that for companies paying the $20-200 for a software that's beneficial/useful is _NOTHING_. Besides companies really cant have afford to get busted for piracy in a software audit. Naturally this does not include countries were piracy is as illegal as spitting on the ground (and this inturn does no include Singapore
Nonetheless the point is that a majority of the people at home downloading evaluation versions wouldnt purchase them anyway, where as companies would/could, given that the evaluation version was tolerabel and the prices and the works were layd out upfront.
Some evaluation version sellers tend to use so annoying strategies that I'm really amazed that how on earth will they ever actually sell anything.
Take Real for example. I for one would never ever purchase anything from them...
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
As a shareware author, I can pretty safely assert that most people *are* thieves. I'm sorry that the occasional customer might find the 30 day timeout on my company's software annoying, but if it weren't there, even more people would just keep using the software without ever paying. We fairly often get support requests from people using cracked versions of our software - not directly relevant to the discussion, but an indicator of the kind of depths people will stoop to.
PenguiNet: the (shareware) Windows SSH client
sorry, but at work we have a download that is only available after filling out a contact form.. OVER 50% of the email adresses are fake. so this makes this information collection system worthless and useless.
If you are catering to a technically savvy user, you will never get a useable email address on your download form... let alone any other useful information.. I personally fill things out with all bogus info and u
se a disposable email addy. and It is a practive I reccomend to everyone here at work also..
#1- get rid of any forms to fill out . they are a waset of your time and drives away customers.
#2 - IF you get a real email address. delete ALL customer information when the customer asks to have your sales department to stop harassing them. There are 2 electronic CAD companies I have twice asked to stop emailling me. I had to resort to writing a script that takes every email I recieve from them and send out 10 copies to assorted email addresses in the company with STOP SENDING THIS TO ME auto added to the top. I finally had to contact the CEO with a letter explaining that I wil make sure that noone I know will ever buy their products because of their sales department for the emails to stop.
finally.. Dont you dare sell that contact information. Only the scummiest companies sell their user database... do you want to be a part of that? I made sure my company isnt. and I make sure to tell the boss that his bright idea of forcing contact info to be entered was a dumb idea and is only wasting everyone's time... mentioning this at meetings is a great way to remove such silly things.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
In a windows network broadcast a message to the default domain/workgroup saying "Pay your bill or you are violating your license agreement.". This is a three liner.
Do it periodically. Every 10 mins.
Does the job quite nicely.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Whenever I go to the point of registering as if I were planning on buying or trying a piece of software and yet I don't actually carry through it means that the vendor didn't have all the information I needed available on the website. Quite often I'll register with a fake email address to check and see what the pricing schemes look like, what it will cost to ship a product, or just to see if I can glean any extra information from the website after registering.
The best way to accelerate a windows box is at 9.8 meters per second square.
I've been using the potential_spammer@my.domain trick for years (pretty extensive /etc/aliases file.. don't forget to put in a comment to help remember where the address came from!).
To nuke an address, just delete the alias. The problem is that the spammers still try to send to the address (once on the list seems to mean forever on the list). Even though the mail never gets to your inbox, it's still using your bandwidth.. actually double because of the bounce message.
Anyone out there have a hack for sendmail that will simply blackhole mail bound for a given address? Just drop the connection when the offending RCPT command is received?
Once the RCPT TO: <certain_spammer@my.domain> identifies an inbound-but-unwanted letter, rather than have it drop the connection, have it S...L...O...W - I...T...S...E...L...F - D...O...W...N. Spam works because they can send thousands out easily. They still have to establish thousands of connections. Make any appreciable percent of those difficult, and spam will not work as well.
This might not work so well with true $$MAKE_MONEY_FAST$$ spam, but it should work for those companies who refuse to stop sending you email. They're usually more clueless than you might expect.
John