I think your points are good czb -- and especially coming from a coder on the site i think should be given great weight.
I should say that I/we agonized over it quite a bit initially. And i think you are right that for non-english speakers, even though we have translation buttons on every page of the website, it has to be more even more confusing and frustration.
On the other hand these negatives have to be balanced against some facts:
- most people download our software from external software sites, and if there is no reason to come to our website they never will.
- it seems we are living in a strange age where most people are perfectly happy to pay for software labeled as "commercial" but would never consider donating for something they don't have to. this presents a huge dilemna for us because we are fighting an uphill battle trying to get people to even consider the remote possibility of donating to our site.
- encouraging people to sign up at the forum allows us to give away the non-expiring lifetime keys because we know someone has been a member for a year and if they haven't donated by then they probably never will, but at least they would have considered it, which is the important thing as far as i'm concerned.
- although requiring people to sign up no doubt frustrates some people, it's hard to argue that it doesn't also have the benefit of bringing new active participants into the forum who actually add a lot to the discussion. having to sign up at a forum is probably what stops most people from ever participating in a forum -- because this provides another reason to sign up, i think it means that significantly more people sign up and then afterwards end up participating than would otherwise.
- having people sign up at the forum give us the opportunity to ask them if they will subscribe to our twice-monthly newsletter. the newsletter is very important to the site -- it gives us an opportunity to keep in touch with people who might otherwise forget about the site; instead they discover that the site is a real, active site that offers continued value, and is something worth supporting.
Recent Posts
