Tracking is a king in mISV business.
When somebody downloads a file from your website you must log the event. Therefore, you must invoke a script (e.g. download.php) on your server that will write the info about the event in a file or database and then will redirect the visitor to the actual binary file.
In the same time, using script as a download link is not practical because many software archives do not allow links to php/pl/cgi pages, only to the exe or zip.
To overcome this you may use .htaccess file for redirection.
If you use http://www.site.com/download/abcmaker.zip as a public download link then the sample string for .htaccess can be:
Redirect /download/abcmaker.zip http://www.site.com/download/download.php?product=abcmaker
and the download.php must contain something like:
<?
...
//logging info to file or db
...
header("Location: /download/abcmaker_1421.zip"); //link to real file
?>
As you see this approach allows also to change the actual file name on the server while all incoming links may still point to http://www.site.com/download/abcmaker.zip
There are many software products that have a project-oriented concept. In other words they allow creating, editing, and managing projects or documents. The examples of the project-oriented programs are various text and media editors, database systems, spreadsheets, programming tools, setup builders, knowledge bases, and a lot of other applications. I’d like to gift you an idea about how to make project-oriented programs more user friendly and easier for getting started.
If you are an experienced developer and if your product has a long history then likely you have been using the approach I’d like to tell about. As for me, I came to this feature only in the second year of the Dr.Explain’s life. So, I think there are ISVs who also might be interested in my suggestion.
The idea is quite simple. Create a sample project or a sample document in your program and install it together with your program on the user computer. On the first launch of your application, suggest a user to open this sample project. For most people it’s easier to modify an existing thing to see how it works rather than to create it from the scratch themselves. Having a sample document in your software will help new users learn you product and get started quickly.
Try to include all the key features in the sample project to immediately show the wonders your application works. If your application is too complex and may be used in different ways then it’s better to create several sample projects or documents for most typical practices.
We started distributing the sample project with a new version of Dr.Explain 2.5.93 released in March 2007. Before we did this we periodically received user messages with requests to send them the project from which we had compiled the Dr.Explain’s own help file. People wanted to know how it’s done. With the sample, they could reproduce some of our techniques in their own projects. Now, new users see the sample project in recent document list when they launch Dr.Explain for the first time and they can play with it to evaluate the program. This works great for us.
Is there a place for sample projects in your software?
This post is inspired by a recent discussion in the ASP groups.
It was noticed that most of software don’t offer users an option to immediately launch the program in the end of setup process. After installation, users have to locate the application shortcut manually in Start menu among dozens of other software groups.
You made your potential customer download and install your program why do you make it hard to locate it? Users hardly know what’s your application name among 50 similar ones they just installed until they realize what they need.
There is a simple and inexpensive solution.
After your application is installed, make one more step and offer the user to immediately launch the application. You may add the ‘Run ABC…’ check box in the last screen of setup wizard and make it checked by default. Many setup builders do support this feature.
Another way is to automatically open Start menu folder where your application placed its shortcuts. So user can run your software immediately, check out help file or whatever is there.
Don’t make users think. Help them start using your software as early as possible.
