This post originally appeared on the old site on February 5, 2005.
Eric Sink's latest MSDN article is out and Eric has outdone himself. This is a truly marvelous article.
Read it: Tenets of Transparency (link fixed - see comments).
Summary: Eric claims that if ISVs are unwilling to trust their customers, then they won't have any.
This article should be read by all shareware developers. Eric's point is that when you are selling software, your customers have to be able to trust you. Software isn't tangible. People have to trust that it works and will continue to work. But if you want people to trust you, you have to trust them.
Transparency is an ISV's way of trusting your customers. By letting your customers see behind the corporate veil, you extend them your trust, making it easier for them to trust you in return.
Here in the Midwest there is a restaurant chain called Steak-n-Shake that seems to understand transparency. Their slogan is "In Sight It Must Be Right". The idea is that if you let your customers watch you prepare their food, you can't slip anything funny into the burger.
My favorite restaurant! They don't use that slogan much anymore, but back in the day it was important. People didn't trust restaurants because they didn't know how well the food was prepared. Steak-n-Shake dealt with this by making the kitchen open to view for the customers.
Too many software developers don't trust their customers. They spend a whole lot of time trying to figure out how to make their applications secure from people being able to cheat them by using them without paying.
The problem is, 95% plus of people are honest. If you spend most of your time dealing with trying to stop the remaining people, you are just wasting your time. You should spend 95% or more of your time dealing with the honest customers. I generally spend only a few hours a year on working on the system that deals with the cheaters. I spend the overwhelming majority of my time on the honest majority.
Eric gives 8 ways to make your software company more transparent.
1. Have a Weblog
Good idea, obviously I'm doing it.
2. Offer Web-based Discussion Forums
Another good idea. It lets your customers interact with each other. My forums have not really taken off as a community, but there is still a nice amount of activity, especially in the area of players helping each other out trying win the harder games in Pretty Good Solitaire.
3. Don't Hide Your Product's Problems
As I mentioned above, software customers usually want to know that a product will be steadily improved in the future.
There are exceptions to this rule of course. Last week I purchased a computer Scrabble game for about $20. In this case, future upgrades are not very important for me. I just want to play the game in its current form. Unless I find some horrendous bug, I don't really expect this vendor to ever provide me with an upgrade.
Actually, a lot of people expect free upgrades for a $20 game, and I give free upgrades for several years. That is becoming a rarity in the indie game business these days. Most games seem to be one shots, they are put out and then never improved. This applies even to top companies such as PopCap, which apparently just puts out a game and that's it. If they improve a game, such as Bejeweled, they make it Bejeweled 2. I don't know whether Bejeweled 1 users get Bejeweled 2 for a reduced price, there's no indication of it on the PopCap site that I can find.
We continually improve our games. I find that it takes several versions before a game really reaches it's potential.
4. Don't Annoy Honest People
Very important, you have to make your license enforcement procedure as easy as possible. Over the years we have continually improved ours. Note that Eric's SourceGear stopped using product activation.
5. Offer a Painless Demo Download
In shareware, this is a given. But Eric has good advice about making your demo high-trust.
6. Offer a Money-Back Guarantee
Again, basic advice, but a lot of people don't do it. But if you are accepting credit cards over the internet, essentially you have a money back guarantee since it is a card not present transaction. You might as well get some marketing gain out of it.
7. Share a Little About Your Financial Standing
When I buy software from a small ISV, I usually wish I could know all kinds of things about the company's financials:
* Is the company profitable?
* How much cash does it have? How much debt?
* What kind of corporation is it? Who are the owners?
* Do they have outside investors?
* Is the founder still involved? Does she still have a decent equity stake?
This is interesting. Very few companies talk about this stuff. We do make a lot of this stuff known. Yes, we are profitable. I like the company to have a lot of cash available in case something goes wrong. If something did happen, I could cut expenses down to a minimum and the company could run for several years with no revenue. This is a tremendous competitive advantage. If a big economic downturn were to happen, we'd be in a position to ride it out for a long time. The company has absolutely no debt. My wife and I are the only owners, no outside investors. Obviously, the founder is still involved.
8. Talk About Your Future Plans
World domination.
Just remember to always under-promise and over-deliver.
Oops.
Hey Thomas,
FYI, the link to the MSDN version of that article is busted now. It looks like they moved everything around when they changed the naming from Longhorn to Windows Vista.
You can link to the same article on my blog if you want:
http://software.ericsink.com/bos/Transparency.html
Thanks!
Posted by: Eric Sink | January 30, 2006 at 03:37 PM