After talking to different software vendors about various issues their potential customers reported and after noticing different trends in multiple analytics data, I found the fugitive criminal guilty for many many abandons in shopping carts: Shopper Trust.

Shopper Trust Wanted. Reward Offered.

How to find it? Easy, or so they say. Check out the following clues.

1. Among Trust’s best friends there’s a guy named “Price”

Showing prices & discounts next to buy buttons

It’s important for your users to pay the “right” price for your products, but more important is to really know how much a product costs. You might say this is obvious (I sure would have said that), but going from one website to another I found many where it was unclear how much a product costs.

It’s not mandatory to  have the price on the right or on the left of the screen. The important thing is that when the user says to himself “I wonder how much this software costs. I’d like to buy it”, he should get the answer before he gets to finish his sentence.

My 2 cents is to always have the price next to the buy button or link. This way you make sure that every time a user gets in the shopping cart he already knows the price of your product. Also, place it next to the product box, something very similar to the offline world where the user is used to always have the price next to the product he is buying.

2. Trust’s worst enemy: intimidation

Let the user know about the security of its transactions

No user is going to place his credit card details on a certain page unless he trusts that page. This issue is related both to websites that use 3rd party eCommerce providers as well as websites who have their own eCommerce platform.

The software vendors who had the best conversion rates had the following things in common:

• the user understood that when clicking the buy button he will be redirected to the 3rd party eCommerce provider
• the vendor explained the reason for which it selected a 3rd party eCommerce provider and gave the user more data about the security of the transaction, the credit card details of the user and the fact that his credit card credentials would not be saved or accessible by no one at any moment.
• no Javascript or design errors were found on their shopping carts
• the price stated on the product page was the same with the price in the shopping cart

3. His mistress, a lady called Consistency

I believe that lately the issue of being consistent throughout your website and the shopping cart is more and more important. I’ve seen websites that most probably updated their design but forgot to update the design of the shopping cart as well, or websites that were using different shopping cart designs for different products. I also noticed sites where the product name was different on the website and in the shopping cart.

Most phishing scams are caught by regular users because they are inconsistent with the website they try to clone, even though they are very similar. So, yes, a regular user will notice if the template of your shopping cart has another font or font size compared to your website, if the name of the product is misspelled or if the menu looks different. This leads to loosing trust as well (check the shopping cart customization examples).

5. Known to hang around a bar called Quality

30 day money back guarantee can make your users more confident on the product quality

During my research I have seen some really sloppy shopping carts with unexplained conversion rates. Don’t get me wrong, when I say sloppy I mean that they had no fancy designs, no web 2.0 elements, but rather ugly graphics. The process didn’t have more than the basic elements needed or any marketing messages.

Their websites were the same - just basic stuff. However, when looking for product reviews over Google, I realized that those products were really good, at least judging from the big amount of positive reviews.

But how do you define quality? Ease of use for one thing, friendliness, to be useful when most expected, never doing what the user doesn’t expect you to do and having the “right price”… this is how I would define quality, at least based on my research.

And as a final word, don’t forget: track & test. Track everything in the shopping process and make sure you have an process improvement strategy based on the analytics data you get. Test different implementations of the shopping cart. If you are already an Avangate client we just launched not long ago the possibility of A/B testing between different templates… so no excuse for not testing :)

Geno Prussakov CEO of AM Navigator LLC

I recently had the pleasure to interview Geno Prussakov, one of the most important voices in affiliate marketing, founder and CEO at AM Navigator LLC. He has been involved in affiliate marketing for over 6 years now, currently helping online businesses succeed with this marketing channel by consulting, speaking and writing on the topic.

Here’s one of the things I like - Geno’s opinion on the issue of affiliate marketing not working:

If it’s the competitors of my clients that are thinking that way, I don’t want to convince them otherwise.

And he’s right – affiliate marketing is really working for those that understood they have to be involved in this channel.

Or his tips on how to recruit quality affiliates:

There are 6 techniques that I use on a continuous basis. All of them start with a letter “S”: (1) software, (2) social media, (3) search engines, (4) second-tier affiliates, (5) summits and symposiums, and (6) symbiotic recruitment.

I better stop here with the teaser - go ahead and read what Geno has to say about motivating affiliates, the ways to recruit good affiliates and the pitfalls to avoid as an Affiliate Manager.

Both for these vendors and for the ones that think their affiliate sales channel could be improved and seeing the positive feedback I got from our software publishers regarding the issue of vendor involvement to motivate affiliates, I’m starting a series of posts with a more hands-on approach. I hope you will find them useful.

Affiliates Info Page

The first thing I’m going to talk about is what you can do in order to help potential affiliates find you and join your affiliate program, thus maximizing the chances to sell more using this channel.

The easiest way to advertise your affiliate plan is to have an affiliate information page on your website, which should explain clearly and concisely what your affiliate program is all about.

Think at it this way: affiliates reach your website when they’re searching for your products or for products from the same category. They are more likely to become affiliates of a vendor who knows to present them this opportunity at the right time, since they don’t have very much time to search how to become one’s affiliate partner. So why not take this chance and enroll them into your affiliate program?

It’s recommended you include on this page details like:

• the commission(s) – base commission, commissioning schemes, etc. “What’s in it for me?” is the first question that pops into an affiliate marketer’s mind when deciding whether to join or not an affiliate program. Usually, base commissions for software start from 20% but, naturally, they are concordant to the price range of the products.
• tracking details – cookie duration time and, generally, the period of time in which the affiliate will be credited for a previously referred customer. These usually start from 30 days upwards and in the software field, the bigger the cookie duration, the better for the affiliates. Geno Prussakov offers some interesting statistics about the customer return rates over a period of time.
• payment frequency – how often will you pay your affiliates? How can they receive their money? (wire transfer, prepaid debit card, PayPal, etc.) The more payment options you have, affiliates are more likely to join your program.
• the affiliate network(s) you are using for your program – some affiliates may be confused when they click the sign up button and find themselves on another website. To avoid this, it’s best you specify your affiliate network provider (such as Avangate).
• the sign-up link (and page) – this is the thing that matters the most and you must not forget about it. If you’re using an affiliate network, it’s best if you can customize the sign up page to resemble your website from the same reasons as stated above.

Also, affiliates will appreciate it if you include other useful info on the dedicated page, such as:

• contact information – it’s best you use a special email address for affiliate matters, like “affiliates@company.com” or the email address of the affiliate manager in your company .
• other advantages they will get by joining – e.g. marketing materials (banners, text descriptions), live support from you / the affiliate network, etc.
• links to PAD files – these are extremely helpful for download portals – will be discussed in the second part of this blog series.

I think it’s not necessary to talk about the advantages you get by implementing an affiliate info page from the search engines’ point of view… Just to be sure - potential affiliates will find you easier :)

How Do Other Software Companies Do It?

But enough with the theory- let’s see and analyze some examples:

1. Iobit has a basic affiliate section included on a more general partners page. The most important elements are present – the commission level and the sign up link.

2. In the case of VSO Software, the affiliate information page is very comprehensive, including all things that may concern affiliates. They work with multiple affiliate networks and they included specific details for each one. Also, marketing materials, PAD files and contact information is included on that page.

3. AVS4YOU has a step-by-step like affiliate information page, in which they make it easy for affiliates to become their affiliates. They also work with multiple affiliate networks and have specific buy links for affiliates.

4. Here’s an interesting approach - nice aired design with benefits outlined and social media contacts on Lavasoft’s affiliate information page.

If you aren’t convinced yet that affiliate marketing does work if you get involved into it, I have 2 more posts to convince you. ;) Stay tuned!

Are your products channel ready?

Channel expert Ken Beam @ The VAR City brought in his 25 years of experience in Strategic Partnership Management and Development. Channel readiness quiz aside (assuming you passed it :)), Ken pointed out you need to really understand resellers and what motivates them, what business model they work on (a reseller on a 70/30 model, where 70% of revenue comes from services will obviously be interested in services opportunities).

In other words, you as a vendor need to strike a balance between partner type, transaction size and the sales cycle.

It’s a business of trust – why is product branding important

The VAR – end-customer relationship is based a lot on trust. Resellers should have some evidence to support their recommendation for your product. A strong product branding increases trust.
Conclusion: it helps your reseller partners if you can provide analysts reviews, best in show awards etc. Keep up the PR actions.

Channel conflict

A big issue and one that concerns many channel managers, as resulted from the Q&A session at the end of the webinar - channel conflict. Any magic rules of thumb to help avoid it? Internal (vendor/partner) and external (partner/partner) conflict can be avoided or at least diminished with proper planning, methodologies such as opportunity registration (an increasingly popular one), organizational buy-in.

Also, you can maximize efforts by creating boundaries (on expertise, geographies), so resellers do not step on each other’s toes. Alternative leads to the “injured party” is another suggestion on how to calm down inflamed spirits.

The 5 Es of channel success

Other matters discussed: people (channel manager, supporting staff) and motivation at different channel life stages, budgets, reseller training and education.

The 5 Es of channel success – Ease (at number one!), Education (sales & technical), Enterprise/ up-selling (sold once to a customer, you want to sell more), Enthusiasm and Execution (as Ken put it, the critical binder) and a Best Channel Practices check list conclude Kens’ presentation - not before pointing out that you need to find a way to get partners on-board and engaged as quickly as possible (first two months are most critical).

Also, first success stories of the You-Partner-Customer trio are key to the success of this long term relationship.

How to manage the channel: Reducing operational requirements and focusing on growth.

Casey Potenzone discussed some of the challenges a software developer is facing when dealing with a reseller network as well as challenges faced by resellers. Linked to this, Casey pin pointed some solutions and stoppers to channel success. For instance, concentrating on your best selling partners brings you the highest ROI, but how can you do that when you don’t have time (you’re caught up in repetitive, daily operational tasks), or you don’t have a clear insight into the channel (lack of information, no centralized reports, lack of visibility over end-customers etc).

Using tools (such as a Partner Relationship Management system), you can eliminate stoppers and focus on solutions – in other words, focus on growing the channel business.

Casey went through the benefits brought by a PRM, amongst which easy partner management, improved channel efficiency, centralized, meaningful reporting and ability to accelerate the on-boarding process.

Hot topic – the one page report

What are you looking at every day? What reports, alerts, statistics, tools help you manage your business, help you make decisions on a daily basis in the right direction?

This “One page report” is important for all aspects of channel management - from tracking day-to-day operations, to building programs for top partners, monitoring partner activity and understanding trigger alerts to avoid problems before it’s too late.

Casey follows with examples of reports and tools that can help a channel manager in his/her daily activity and - most importantly - help focus on growing the channel.

Free webinar recording

Listen to the webinar for more detailed information, insights into channel management, tips & tricks from Ken and Casey:

Affiliates Sales Channel Tips

I finally got some time to study in detail the new AffStat Report 2009. It offers a comprehensive overview of the affiliate business and, from my point of view, it’s something every affiliate manager should read.

Starting from the affiliate responses, I put together a list of tips for the vendors that want to use the affiliate sales channel at its upper capacity. Having also put my experience so far in this list, it’s especially aimed at software affiliate managers; however, the principles can be used for other verticals too.

Here are the most important things one must take into account when dealing with affiliates selling software:

1. Get involved with your affiliates and help them with everything that is up to you: marketing materials, discounts etc. Show them how it’s best to sell your product - you may be in the best position for this regarding some of your affiliates. About one quarter of them has been in this business for less than 2 years.
2. Use an affiliate network for your affiliate sales channel. The advantages of a network are obvious: larger affiliate pool, bigger exposure and less technical and financial hassles. This goes for affiliates too, since over half of them prefer affiliate networks over independent affiliate programs.
3. Pay your affiliates commission at regular dates and avoid “fine print” payment policies. One thing is for sure: the shorter the payment intervals, the better. Most of the affiliates become sensible (”annoyed”, “stressed”) with complex payment policies that introduce lots of limitations and possible penalties for them; some will just quit on you.
4. Constantly incentivize your affiliates and give them reasons to perform better. You can do this right from the affiliate recruiting phase, but it’s most important you incentivize your current affiliates. Try to give your best performing affiliates the things they ask for, even if it’s a commission increase. Also take into account rewarding options such as the possibility to generate their own discounts or to be credited for software renewals.
5. Communicate with your affiliates, but don’t over do it! Share your latest developments and promotions with your affiliates and give them what ever information they might like. Most of affiliates prefer the email as their way of communication with affiliate managers. In the software business, it’s best you send newsletters / direct messages to your affiliates 2 times per month at most. You could also consider posting this info on a blog or on Twitter.
6. Watch the pay-per-click (PPC) affiliate campaigns; if you also do that, they may be doing it better. You must establish a policy regarding this, since an important percentage of the affiliates use PPC to promote their links.
7. Don’t expect an affiliate to promote just your products. Affiliates usually work with multiple affiliate programs and it’s highly probable they also promote your competition’s products on their website. Instead of cutting them out of your program, you can try and give them reasons to outline your products. This doesn’t just mean giving them a higher commission - affiliates are also sensible to the brand awareness of your products and the way you, as the affiliate manager, interact with them.

There are also some other interesting findings in this report, but I will comment on these in a future post. One more thing – the report contains a comprehensive section of Affiliate Marketing Resources, including a glossary, list of message boards, blogs and industry VIPs to follow on Twitter.

I look forward to hearing your opinions and suggestions about the subject. Feel free to comment / write me a message on Twitter.

Software Channel Survey Results - download now!

As you know, we’ve done a survey on how the crisis is impacting the channel distribution in the software industry. We’ve looked at the results and - although not statistically representative (survey conducted on the internet on a self-selected sample)-, they make an interesting reading, showing some trends and providing tips & solutions for channel challenges.

Frankly, I was (pleasantly) surprised to see how much weight both ISVs and resellers give to joint marketing programs, measuring, efficiency, communication…  obviously no one can afford to pay lip service to these actions, they are for real.

Encouragingly enough, vendors and resellers acknowledge the same top channel challenges and consider similar solutions for tackling problems.

Top of the list solution: increase and improve communication (discuss problems and show stoppers).

There are, inevitably, differences further “down the list”… some for instance relate to margins: 80% of resellers mentioned they decreased, while 78% of ISVs mentioned they stayed the same.

Here are other challenges worth mentioning:

ISVs

• Lack of/ little visibility over final customers
• Lack of interest from reseller partners to push products

Resellers:

• Clients demanding faster delivery and fulfillment
• End-of-month/ quarterly sales reports difficult to collect and aggregate
• Competition with vendor’s online shop/ affiliate sales
• Vendors pushing products, not solutions - difficult to match client needs

Another finding I wanted to share was that while channel challenges for small and big companies follow the average trend, solutions show a clear focus amongst small companies towards the online channel, while large companies concentrate on ways of increasing sales via the reseller channel.

Well, download the full report to find out more.

There are three camps about asking for contact info before a trial starts:

A.  Ask for nothing - Maximize number of downloads; minimize barriers.
B.  Show 1 - 4 fields - Make them optional. Get what you can, then get out of the way.
C.  Show 14 fields - Get their street address. Only serious people will download so you don’t waste your time with crap trials.

Allow me to convince you that B is the way to go.

Let’s first dispense with C.

If the world of free social media has taught us anything, it’s that “invasion without permission” is dead. You haven’t earned people’s contact information so they won’t give it.

Most people will give you crap data. No, scratch that, most people will roll their eyes at your marathon form and close their browser, moving on to your competitor’s website they have on hot standby in the adjacent tab. Besides, what do you need with all that data? Mailing address? Really? You’re going to send them a holiday card?

Oh, you need lead-routing info for your sales reps? Fair enough, but consider this: If you just ask for postal code and country, you can fill in city, state/province, and all that other stuff. Why accost your potential customer with something you can do yourself?

Don’t make your trial a chore; you’ll just fulfill your misguided goal of having as few downloads as possible while simultaneously starting the trial experience on a sour note.

Now let’s consider option A.

The idea of “remove all barriers to trial“ makes sense, and certainly this extreme is better than C. I used to believe A was the only way to go, but let me tell you the story of trial downloads at my company, Smart Bear. For years, downloads were freely available with no form to fill out. Life was good; no one complained.

Why B (1 - 4 optional fields before a trial starts) is the way to go?

We did a little experiment. What would happen if we introduced just a few, optional fields? Who cares if people skip them, who cares if people fill in crap - as long as we get some good data from people who want to share it and there’s no drop in the number of downloads, it’s a win.

While we’re at it, let’s make it easy for existing customers to skip the form completely. To further err on the side of convenience, let’s not even care if trial customers skip the form too!

Here’s what we built:

Click on the image to enlarge

The result? There was no change in the number of downloads! In fact, every month since starting this in Jan 2008 we’ve seen a steady increase in number of downloads. (Of course the subsequent increase is attributable to marketing efforts; the point is that the presence of the fields has never been a deterrent.)

The “optional” nature of the fields is crucial. If people don’t want to tell you - and most won’t – that’s OK and you don’t want to stop a download. Better to download in silence than to not download! But you’ll be surprised how many do want to talk to you.

But this is just half the story. The other half is the hidden fields that we include in that form. All automatic, nothing evil, nothing that would bother a user, but really useful stuff.

1. The first trick helps us with marketing.

When a user first comes to our site - on any page - we give them a cookie that stores the referring link. We don’t change that cookie as the user navigates the site or even closes the browser and returns later. Then in the download form we stuff that “initial referring page” into a hidden field. Now for every download you know which website originally lead this user to your website!

2. The second trick helps us with sales.

Remember those sales reps that needed routing info? You can (more or less) do that with IP address geo-coding.

Now before you protest, yes I agree that you can’t always determine someone’s location from IP address. There are firewalls, proxies, corporate networks, and other reasons why IP address isn’t enough to pin someone’s physical location. But for general information, for an initial attempt at lead-routing, it’s good enough.

And most importantly, it’s free to collect it without bothering the user.

I don’t want to endorse any particular service, but some ways to do it are the Google API and various commercial offerings. In any case, you would query the info using Javascript/AJAX and populate hidden fields with city, state, and country.

3. The third trick is to appreciate returning customers and help them out.

Sure they might notice the “returning customers click here” section, but they might not (or you might not like the idea of having the choice).

To help them, give each user a cookie containing the field values they typed in last time, and pre-populate the form with that cookie when they visit the page again. This also makes it easy to see when someone downloads multiple times, especially if you also generate a GUID in a hidden field and repeat that as well.

So the bottom line is:

Collect some data, in a way that doesn’t disrupt the user, and collect as much data automatically as you can. You won’t stop downloads and you’ll get a ton of useful information.

You’re doing what you’ve done, you’re all nice and cozy in your daily routine. The problem you have is that while you’ve been sleepwalking along, the rest of the world has been very much awake. And unless you wake up and stop drifting you’re going to be like someone falling asleep while driving: fine, until you hit the oncoming truck in the other lane.

Let’s take a little test, shall we? Maybe you don’t need a wake up call and can skip the rest of this post.

• When’s the last time you updated your business plan? Do you even have a plan for your business? You may associate business plans with angel and VC funding where documents by that name are commonly used. The kind of business plan I’m talking about is one where you do the research, thinking and devise a plan to take your company to the next milestone that makes sense. Maybe that’s the next major release - or a new product. Or a major writeup at blog or news site. Real business plans are about the having in place a plan for your business that you - not your competitors’ - define.

• Speaking of competitors, when’s the last time you looked at their sites? Are they mentioning your product by name? Have they added “your” features? Have they come up with something new, different, remarkable? Do you have new competitors you’re not even aware of?

• Everything is the same for your customers in their day-to-day lives as it was six months ago. If that’s the case, please email me - I’d like to find a group of people not affected one way or another by the Global Recession in the past six months. If their cages have been rattled, your cage has been rattled too. Attitudes about spending, buying, purchasing, value are all in a state of flux out there. What are you doing to better align your company to these new realities?

• You’re the same age as you were six months ago. Neat trick! Sorry to break the news to you, but you’re six months closer to checking out, pushing up daisies, leaping into the Great Beyond. That means you have six months less time to do the really big things you wanted to do when you started your company. Maybe that means finally hiring some real or virtual assistant help so you have more time for other matters, or maybe it means it’s time to sell your company altogether. Above and beyond business planning is planning - as best you can - your life. Have you reached the goals you set out for yourself when you started your company? Then maybe it’s time you got some new goals.

So how do you get out of your business rut? Here’s five simple, free or low cost means to get a new point of view on your business:

• Meetup.com. Informally meeting with other people building companies is a great way to get back into the business game. For example, there’s no less than 2,868 entrepreneurial Meetup groups with 331,731 members in 34 countries: good odds that there’s one near you. Why not pick a group and go their next meetup?

• Find a mentor. If you’re stuck when it comes time to figure out where you need to take your company next, why not ask someone whose run a company? In the United States, SCORE, a nonprofit association dedicated to educating entrepreneurs and the formation, growth and success of small business nationwide has 370 chapters and 11,200 working and retired executives helping people like you for free.

• Join an online forum. Two great resources is the Joel on Software Business of Software forum and the community forums at Startup Nation. Putting in a bit of time helping and being helped by your peers is a great way to get some perspective on your own company.

• Ask your customers. When’s the last time you asked your customers what they like and dislike about your software? Sure, you may have done that back in the day when you launched, but what about now? Finding out what your customers think of your software is fundamental to your success, and is something that needs to be done of a regular basis. You can make it happen as easily as firing off a quick email or as in depth as creating an online survey or questionnaire.

• See your product or site with new eyes. Usability testing - a fancy way of saying getting someone new to you try out your service and tell you what’s working or not - used to cost several thousand dollars and take huge amounts of time. Not no more. $29 USD and about an hour, thanks to a new startup called UserTesting.com.

The bottom line here is you can’t afford to pretend you and your software company live in a world where everything stays the same. In fact, given the industry you’re in you have far fewer excuses than most to think this. If you’re not periodically shaking yourself awake, seeing what’s new out there, deciding what’s next for your company, someone else will.

In April 2009 we did our annual Avangate Affiliate Survey and we got interesting feedback from our affiliates. Here are the main conclusions that stand out from the survey from the publishers’ point of view:

• The affiliates think that more discount coupons from the software vendors would help them sell more;
• They find it rather difficult to cope with the fact that some of the software vendors aren’t more helpful – offering unattractive affiliate commissions, lack of marketing materials, no commissioning schemes to stimulate competition.

Some of you software vendors will probably think – Well, that’s no surprise at all… who wouldn’t want to earn more without moving a finger? And that’s true for some affiliates. But, from my experience so far, I can tell you there are also affiliate marketers that really want to build a successful business online and actually act to accomplish this.

So why not help them as much as you can from your position? Here’s a thought: if affiliates see you are involved in this channel and you offer them the things they need which are up to you, not only they will be able to sell and promote your products better, buy they will also have a stronger motivation to do that.

I’m not just blabbing here – I saw a real example of this: one of the vendors I contacted in order to optimize his affiliate channel added a sign-up page for affiliates on his website, with details about the affiliate program. After just a couple of weeks, the number of click through generated by affiliates increased dramatically, bringing more exposure to his products, thus, generating more sales.

Some time ago I wrote a post in which I advised software vendors to help the affiliates help them. Things changed for the better in these few months that have passed and I’m really glad I can say this. But let me re-iterate it: get more involved with your affiliates and you will benefit from this. You can see some best practices on how to be efficient about your affiliate channel and you can also check out the free whitepaper on this matter.

If you feel like talking to somebody about your affiliate strategy, don’t hesitate to drop me a message. After all, two brains are better than one:).

I was the second software developer at Photodex in the ’90s.  We made CompuPic, the fastest thumbnailing image browser (before Microsoft built it into Explorer). We kept getting tech support calls like this:

Customer:  Where’s CompuPic?
Us:  I’m sorry?  What do you mean?
Customer:  I got CompuPic but I don’t know where it is.
Us: Did you download the installer?
Customer: Yes.
Us: Did you run the installer?
Customer: I don’t think so.  I don’t know where the installer is.
Us: Can you check your desktop for something called “CompuPic Installer”?
Customer: Ohhhhh, yes I found it.  Should I run it?

Don’t laugh, and don’t think this doesn’t happen to you.

For every potential customer who bothered to call tech support, how many tens or hundreds of times did we silently lose a sale?  All because the person couldn’t find the installer he just downloaded.

It doesn’t end there.  After the installer runs, guess what?  Same problem: customer has installed the software but can’t find it… or gets distracted with something else and never tries it.

Unfortunately there’s nothing you can do about getting people to run an installer; either the browser prompts the person to run it or not.  But what comes next is up to you.

You can cause your program to run after the installer finishes.  Why lose a customer just because they don’t know where you are, or because TweetDeck popped up with a critical update on Lindsay Lohan’s rehab status?

If you think you might piss some people off, put a check box on the last page of your installer controlling whether to launch your program after the installation completes.  Default the check box to “true”.  Most people will leave it and click “Next”.  Good!

A related problem is when the installer can’t handle the case where your software is already running.

Upgrades aren’t just for existing customers who are willing to work through funny dialogs that say “Shut down all components of SuperSoftware before continuing“.  It’s also for the new user who aborted an install or had trouble because of a virus scanner or who didn’t realize the first installation succeeded.

These potential customers don’t yet understand your terminology or architecture.  They don’t know that there’s a taskbar icon to close and a main screen to shut down.  They don’t know what the “Notifier” looks like or how it’s different from the “Management Console”.

Always give the user the option to nuke running instances of your software, right there in the installer.

As a professional software developer, it’s easy to lose sight of just how clueless people are about how their computer works, where files go when they’re downloaded or installed, or what to do next.  Every seam between one screen and the next is a chasm where you could be losing a significant percentage of your potential users.

Nothing’s too trivial, nothing’s too stupid.

Don’t forget about the invitation in my previous post - comment with your download link and stay tuned for my honest opinion:).

This is a guest post by Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software, the makers of the peer code review tool Code Collaborator.  Jason blogs regularly about startups and marketing.