News and Reviews > Best Archive Tool
Review comments from the ALTools Evangelist :)
Renegade:
Thanks - I wasn't actually suggesting that there is anything going on, but you can understand that with a program like ALFTP where internet access is inherently required it can be difficult to judge what is going on for the average user.
I note that phone home ads have been dispensed with (thatnks that's good) - I was waiting for the firewall to pop up ;) - but can I reiterate that I find the animated banner very distracting. As suggested above could you either relegate this to the help menu or incorporate a static image instead. I am not against a company promoting its own products in free to use software at (enough vendors do it in commercial software after all) but whilst any promption has to be visible to satisfy your needs it must be non-distracting to the end user if it isn't going to drive them potty!
I don't know about other people's views on this but I find desktops get overly distracting at times with pop-ups appearing here and there (email / automatic virus updates / IM clients). They can all be helpful, but too often they just distract from the task in hand. It is a bit like a telephone - very hard to ignore.
Can I ask a simple question - what purpose does the animated ad serve? You say commercial customers don't see it - so it won't generate sales, home users have found you and if they like your software they will return to your site for updates etc. anyway.
-CarolHaynes (September 14, 2005, 04:07 AM)
--- End quote ---
Well, that's a bit of a complicated question to answer, but here goes.
ALZip is free for home users - commercial users pay. When they pay, they need to get something for their money, and not just warm fuzzies from doing the right thing and supporting the products they use. They do get personalized license keys, but so what? At some point there needs to be some kind of differentiation for commercial users. All the functionality is the same - there's no difference between paying and not paying - except that registering removes the animated GIF at the top. It's really just about trying to deliver the best product possible and at the same time trying to deliver a good feeling about purchasing the product. We want our commerical users to feel good about their purchases, and this is just one way that we can help do that.
Silly? Perhaps. It's just how people work though.
I think that question kind of leads into another area though - how people feel about a product.
I personally spend a lot of money on software - too much at times probably. One of the major decision factors is support for the product. If a vendor treats me like a person, and gives me real answers to my questions, hey - I'm there and they've got my money. On the otherhand, if I'm having a hard time with the software, and I'm not getting good support - hey, I'm gone in a heartbeat. I think that too often a lot of vendors forget this. Treat people well, and they'll treat you well. And yes - I am a support FANATIC. (I'll skip my rants on support :) )
Now, I'm not always the fastest, but I get people answers as quickly as possible, and always make sure that and problems get addressed. That goes for ALTools and my own software as well. The only real frustration is when users have something misconfigured on their system and there's no way to solve their problem without examining the computer itself. I've had 2 incidents like that for my own software and wasn't able to fix the problem for the users.
But, back to the other half of your question - the home user side... The animated GIF is just a gentle reminder that there are more ALTools available for free. That's all it's supposed to do - gently remind people that they can get more ALTools for free.
I'm going to revisit this issue though and try to come up with something a bit better. I've got a few ideas at the moment, but we'll see...
I hope that I've answered your question satisfactorily.
Cheers,
Ryan
Carol Haynes:
Thanks Ryan,
I know how you feel - I spend far too much on software too ... as my credit card statements testify :down:
mouser:
i'm reallly enjoying this thread - it's great to hear developers and users talking like this.
i'd like to express some opinions about adware that i've been chewing over for a while, and i think it relates to the issues faced by donationcoder.com.
i intuitively find myself in the camp that is very bothered by things like ads in programs (adware).
the thing is if i ask myself "does this really have a negative impact on me?" usually the answer is no.
carol has it right i think, animated banners are very distracting and would i think interfere with using a program that required any level of attention. and the more often you use a program the more minor issues like ads would negatively effect the experience.
but i think its also a psychological isse - like it you put in the about box an ad that no one ever saw unless they opened the about box, i'll bet ya you'd get people who would refuse to use the program just because they were "bothered" by the ad in the about box that they never look at. or for example if you had a pop up ad that came up once per month - is that really going to inconvenience anyone? probably not in any significant way, but the mere fact of it would bother people.
it's not that i don't understand and empathize with this anti-ad sentiment - like i said i am prone to it myself. but its very similar in spirit to the approach here to require people to now sign up at forum to download a freeware license every 6 months. it's an attempt to find an alternative to charging people, whether for business reasons or ethical reasons, or combinations. the trick is finding a balance that people are comfortable with, and also as jibz said, being upfront with people about what they are installing.
one of the ways we are trying to avoid real problems is to have a kind of opt-out for people who are particularly averse to our approach, saying hey if you take the time to personally email us and tell us that you can't handle it and have considered and rejected donating, then we'll just give you the license. this at least separates the impulse objections from the hardcore objections.
Jibz:
ALZip is free for home users - commercial users pay. When they pay, they need to get something for their money, and not just warm fuzzies from doing the right thing and supporting the products they use. They do get personalized license keys, but so what? At some point there needs to be some kind of differentiation for commercial users. All the functionality is the same - there's no difference between paying and not paying - except that registering removes the animated GIF at the top. It's really just about trying to deliver the best product possible and at the same time trying to deliver a good feeling about purchasing the product. We want our commerical users to feel good about their purchases, and this is just one way that we can help do that.-Renegade
--- End quote ---
I know exactly what you mean .. some of my software is also free for non-commercial use, so I face many of the same problems.
How about putting some text in the topic line (or about box) of the program saying it's unregistered but free for non-commercial use, and for your registered users remove that line?
The problem with the current solution seems to be that it's both annoying and relatively easily mistaken for adware.
i'm reallly enjoying this thread - it's great to hear developers and users talking like this.
i'd like to express some opinions about adware that i've been chewing over for a while, and i think it relates to the issues faced by donationcoder.com.-mouser
--- End quote ---
I think there is a big difference between the approach taken on this site and adware. Here, the user is in charge, and downloads and enters the key. With an add supported program, the author (or some advertisement company) is in charge of the code inside the program running on the users computer and connecting to the internet from it.
That's a pretty big trust to put into an application. For instance, on my machine only very few programs have access to the internet, and I wouldn't dream of opening up access for some advertisement mechanism in random programs.
mouser:
i agree that any app that downloads ads is going to really cause concern from users (and i include myself) who don't like the idea of programs connecting out to the internet.
jibz and i have also talked about his idea of putting some "unregistered" text in the titlebar or taskbar - it does seem an intriguing possibility in terms of not being too distracting but being enough of a motivator to get people to purchase who really love the software.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version