Over the past couple of weeks I've had the opportunity to try out a number of third-party components for a variety of tasks (source control, bug databases, assorted Web controls for an ASP.NET site, and so on). The goal was to evaluate a number of different products and make purchasing decisions. This last week of experience hardly makes me an expert in this area, but here's some free advice to all ISVs, regardless:
Please, for the love of all that is sacred, make it as easy as possible for me to take your product and try it out.
Here are some things that make it hard for me to try out your product:
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I have to create an account on your site in order to download a trial version.
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I have to create some sort of temporary license key through your site before my trial version will work.
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For third-party Web controls:
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I have to muck around with Global.asax, copy over directories or support files, or basically have to do other things to try out the functionality on a sample site.
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The example or quickstart application either is non-existent, requires some manual setup (like me creating a virtual directory), or lacks any English description or comments in the source code.
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Lack of support forums/FAQs/Knowledgebase available on your website.
The company that I had the best “trial” experience with was, hands down, SourceGear. No need to create an account; no license keys needed. In fact, their products come with a free single-user license, and getting started was just as simple as downloading an MSI file.
For third-party ASP.NET controls, I understand such a licensing scheme might not be possible, but I would strongly recommend making it as easy as possible to try out your software. Perhaps a trial version could not require any sort of license - temporary or otherwise - but instead just periodically emit a copyright notice. Telerik, makers of a number of ASP.NET controls, gets close to this ideal - you can download a license-free version that periodically renders a copyright notice instead of the actual Web control. However, you still have to create an account to download the trial version and their documentation and on-site support material is lacking in many cases.