Narrowed Down Demo Limitations
Posted January 14th, 2011 @ 09:21am by Erik J. Barzeski
Since this post - the comments on which were tremendously helpful, both public and private, so thank you to those who helped - Dave and I have narrowed down the ideas we like for Analyzr's demo mode.
Regardless of the option we choose, we'll have a watermark across the screen. It's fairly annoying, and looks like this:
We may adjust the opacity somewhat - I might have gone a bit light with this version (25%) but not by much.
At any rate, the watermark is the first line of defense, and for the Pro version of our software, the best if a pro is considering buying it. We also have to be careful not to harm sales of our Home version by potential Home customers saying "the watermark isn't too bad, so I'll just use the Pro demo."
So, we're currently at these three options (there's a poll in the extended entry). Note: in the case of 1 and 3, these options "reset" when you re-launch the application.
Option 1: Stop Drawing after Ten Minutes
Just that. The software is fully functional, but after ten minutes, you're unable to draw anything with the drawing tools. People could still import, organize their library, view videos, export (watermarked) screenshots, etc. They just can't draw anything else. We might also consider five minutes.
Option 2: Two Drawing Objects per Viewer
In this option, the software would be watermarked but fully functional, except that on each viewer (the B and A viewers where a picture appears in the screenshot above) you'd only be able to have two objects: a line and an oval, two rectangles, a pair of lines, etc. You could delete objects to create more but you're limited to two in each viewer.
Option 3: Load One Video per Viewer
This option provides the user with a fully functioning (but again watermarked) application, but limits the number of videos they can load into each viewer to one. Once the user loads a video into each viewer, that viewer will refuse to load videos again.
So there you have it: which option do you think is best? We want to do right by people and let them fairly and thoroughly test the software, but we want to push interested customers to buy it at some point too! That's the delicate balance.
I think that all of the options above are good, but I'd obviously like to choose the best. If you vote and can explain your reasons below, I'd appreciate it.
Donate Life
Posted 16 Jan 2011 at 5:20pm #
Such an annoying watermark would be enough to prevent me from even trying the app.
Posted 18 Jan 2011 at 4:39pm #
[quote comment="66137"]Such an annoying watermark would be enough to prevent me from even trying the app.[/quote]
As I said in the response to you via email, you're not in the market for this type of application. Users don't have much choice, and I think you're in a small minority anyway.
I suppose we'll see, but none of our testers have said anything, so I'm cautiously confident about our decision(s).
Posted 24 Jan 2011 at 8:03pm #
The point of the trial is to be able to evaluate (and for most pros, compare against v1) the capabilities of Analyzr, and that includes the drawing. If you are always working against the clock to draw stuff, then you can't "enjoy" discovering the software, in my opinion.
It doesn't matter what (or how few) videos are (or can be) loaded as long as you can really toy around with the drawing tools, see angles, etc. That is why I believe limiting the number of videos is the best option.