This could accurately be filed under the category "rant."
Hey software companies: how do you earn money? When people use your products, right? Yeah. That's when you earn money.
Here's a question: why would you ever make it more difficult for people to TRY your product? Never. That would be stupid.
So what's the #1 behavior you want to encourage? Customer interaction with your product. Well, how do they interact with it? Most of the time, they have to download it. So I would imagine that creating a labyrinth of hyperlinks that would lose and confuse users would be the last thing you'd want to do. But you freakin guys do it all the time.
Case in point: Spybot Search and Destroy. You've got users who probably already have a virus. They're already cranky, they're already frustrated, they already have no patience. They're dumb end users who just want their computers to work. So experiment with me: how many clicks does it take you to go from their home page to actually downloading a product? I count 6. And that's WHILE knowing where to go.
You know where your download link should be? On your home page. Front and center. People who visit the page should be asked (via text on your homepage) to download your tool BEFORE they know what they're downloading. What on earth is more important for a homepage than getting your product in your customer's hands?
Hey software companies: how do you earn money? When people use your products, right? Yeah. That's when you earn money.
Here's a question: why would you ever make it more difficult for people to TRY your product? Never. That would be stupid.
So what's the #1 behavior you want to encourage? Customer interaction with your product. Well, how do they interact with it? Most of the time, they have to download it. So I would imagine that creating a labyrinth of hyperlinks that would lose and confuse users would be the last thing you'd want to do. But you freakin guys do it all the time.
Case in point: Spybot Search and Destroy. You've got users who probably already have a virus. They're already cranky, they're already frustrated, they already have no patience. They're dumb end users who just want their computers to work. So experiment with me: how many clicks does it take you to go from their home page to actually downloading a product? I count 6. And that's WHILE knowing where to go.
You know where your download link should be? On your home page. Front and center. People who visit the page should be asked (via text on your homepage) to download your tool BEFORE they know what they're downloading. What on earth is more important for a homepage than getting your product in your customer's hands?
No comments:
Post a Comment