Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
A British shareware author did an experiment to try to settle the matter. He released a disk utility which was either fully functional, or which displayed "nag screens" and had various other registration "incentives", depending on whether the PC's hard disk serial number was odd or even - ie, a completely random 50:50 probability. The program automatically included on the registration form a code which indicated which state it was in for that user.
The results: he had 7 times more registrations from the version that "nagged" than from the version which didn't.
That is, I think, proof positive of the not terribly surprising fact that most people will take "something for nothing" if they are able to do so.
|
I go back to the shareware days, and used to moderate a conference on the topic on one of the then prominent BBS networks. There was a lot of discussion on the topic of how to best encourage registrations. Some authors went the "freeware but registration desired if you like it" route. Some offered free "lite" versions, and pro versions you had to pay for (with the tricky question of what to leave out of the "lite" version). Many used nag screens, and some used time limited versions that simply ceased working after X days or X uses.
The biggest hurdle most faced, frankly, was product quality. There were an awful lot of "me too" products out there, that all did fundamentally the same thing. (And the freeware ones were often superior to the ones that wanted money.)
Nag screens and similar incentives were all every well, if the product was compelling enough and useful enough in the first place. Otherwise, the annoyance factor was likely to make the user
less likely to buy it.
______
Dennis