How Software Reviewing Should Really Be Done

Over the years I have reviewed thousands upon thousands of applications while at Tucows. Back in the day reviewing was done on personal opinion. When dealing with literally hundreds of thousands of applications, creating a rating criterion was the easiest and only way to review software. This method allowed us to convey to the author in an easy to understand way on what was either right or wrong with their application.

Going from Tucows to CoffeeCup Software gave me a unique perspective on software development. Things that I thought were important when reviewing software at Tucows is not really as important in the real world. Users do not really care that there is a repair feature for example or if there is a short-cut in a certain place. They just want easy to use software; at a reasonable price with top-notch customer support, period…

I still review a lot of software for people but what do I look for now when reviewing software? Below are some of the key items that I consider the most important and are so easily overlooked by aspiring developers.

1. Exclusive features: This is determined by the features and functions of your application. If your application has more features than a standard application, this can work to your advantage. An application that offers the user the ability to accomplish more than one task such as creating a Web site and also functions as a Web server is just one example.

2. Application size: Look at the size of your application. Comparing yours to others that are in the same class as yours, the byte size should generally remain close. A 45mb Telnet application for example is too large !

3. Help and customer support: Help is a very important aspect of the users experience with your application. If the user cannot figure out how to use it or know where to go to get help, the likelihood of the user buying your product is very slim. Some things that I look at are readme files, tutorials, and extensive help embedded within the interface. It is also good practice to offer customer support if the user cannot access online help. Providing contact information such as phone and e-mail support will help you to keep your customers happy.

4. Install/Uninstall/Repair: This item adds value to your application. By providing this you are providing the user of your application the ability to save time and making the task effortless. What I am looking for here is the installer mechanism used, the uninstall capabilities and the repair feature as an added bonus to the user. I am not a big fan of the repair feature but I do know that Tucows offers extra review points for is, so just add it

5. Tips and shortcuts: How usable is your application? Tips on startup, and the ability to use general keyboard shortcuts that follow the standards of other product trends. This is beneficial to your user. Control-F opens the File Menu for example.

6. Configuration: I look at this area to see how customizable your application is in terms of functionality in allowing the user to add or remove options they need to use most.

7. Third-party applications: These are applications within your application that must be installed to complete installation. In certain situation this is unavoidable, but from a user perspective these are annoying. I look at how these are included in your application . A popular thing right now is including toolbars. Tread very carefully here.

8. Functionality: Consider the overall features of your application in terms of functionality and ease of use. Do not over complicate things.

9. Value: This is an item that is considered very crucial to the sale of your application. Take into consideration the cost and overall function of your application compared to other applications of its nature.

10. Interface: A smooth and well designed interface can help your users use your application more efficiently; therefore take into consideration the usability of the tools and customization options within the application. Also it is 2006 so if you are not using XP style icons by now, you are way behind!

11. Author Web site: Your Web site is a reflection of your company and the quality of your application you have in distribution. Keeping business-like image with your site will let your customers know that you are providing the best services possible. Many times users will visit your site for more information about the application or to contact you regarding issues with the application. Keeping a contact us page will all information is beneficial to your company and sales.

Other important things to reflect on your Website:

* Money back guarantee
* Upgrade Policy Site (updates for life, limited time, none)
* Online Help Files
* Tech Support Phone number, Live Chat, or E-mail, forums
* Make it easy to find each product.
* Ease of ordering
* About us or mission page that describes your company

Website Optimization Tips: Common Mistakes

Over the past few weeks there have been lots of discussions in the forums regarding proper website creation and some of the issues every webmaster should be concerned about. We are always eager to get our website online as fast as possible, and of course we want to generate as much traffic as we can. In doing so, we sometimes take shortcuts that seem perfectly reasonable at the time… but in the long run, these shortcuts can do more harm than good. While this is not a complete list of all the common mistakes, these are definitely the top ones we should all be considering when developing a website.

Mirror Sites:

What is a mirror? The term “mirror” refers to an identical website hosted on another domain / website address. Large websites often provide mirror sites in different continents so their users can download from a closer server in hopes of achieving faster download speeds. While this is a perfectly legitimate practice, many search engines consider it “spam” because the number of pages is doubled, yet the content is identical. Most search engines use “Duplicate Content Filters” which can prevent mirror sites from distorting the search engine results pages. Unfortunately, in some cases one or all mirrors may be removed from the index of a search engine without any prior notice.

Multiple Title Tags:

Given that search engines place a great degree of emphasis on the tags. A well-constructed page should contain ONLY one tags and have been known to ban websites which employ such spamming methods!

Cloaking:

Cloaking is the practice of delivering keyword-enriched content to the search engine spiders, while providing different content to the actual website visitors. The rationale behind this approach is to deliver “optimized” content to search engines while delivering regular, un-optimized content to surfers / visitors. An example of this would be a website that has chosen to use Flash media, yet does not wish to suffer the lack of content from a spiders perspective (given that search engines cannot read Flash media)… so they choose to deliver the Flash media to their human visitors, while the spiders see a different page full of text and keywords. While this sounds like a logical and worthwhile approach, it is considered “spam” because the search engine is being “fooled” by being shown content which will never been seen by human users. Most search engines have devised methods to detect cloaking, and many search engines have implemented a “Zero Tolerance” approach to such activity. Google, Lycos, and Hotbot are among the many engines that will either ban a website entirely from their index, or drastically reduce the rankings of any website found to be engaging is such spamming practices.

For these reasons, I highly recommend that you refrain from cloaking your website in any form. Properly optimized content is a much more effective long term approach to better rankings!!

Keyword Stuffing:

“Keyword Stuffing” is the practice of inserting blocks of keywords in the webpage text, for the sole purpose of increasing search engines rankings. Stuffed keywords are generally of poor grammatical structure, and would make little or no sense to human visitors. Given that search engines rank websites based on the text contained in the website pages, the theory behind stuffed keywords is that the density for targeted keywords will increase. While using stuffed keywords will indeed increase the density for the targeted keywords, this practice is also considered spamming by search engines. Stuffed keywords are sometimes disguised as “hidden text” (see below).

Can Stuffing Be Detected? Search engines can easily detect keyword stuffing and most search engines will place a complete ban on the offending website. Given that our goal is to increase your rankings, rather than getting you banned, we encourage you to refrain from using stuffed keywords!

Here is an example of keyword stuffing:

keyword keyword keyword2 keyword3 keyword
keyword keyword keyword2 keyword3 keyword
keyword keyword keyword2 keyword3 keyword
keyword keyword keyword2 keyword3 keyword

Hidden Keywords:

One of the most common instances of spam on websites is the use of “hidden text”, which is also referred to as “invisible text”. Hidden text is text which cannot be seen by regular human visitors, but can be seen by robots and spiders. The theory behind hidden text is that search engines will index the text, even though they are invisible to human readers, thus making the page more keyword dense. There are two forms of hidden text, through regular HTML and through CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Hidden keywords in regular HTML can be achieved by specifying a font color for a block of text (which is usually ’stuffed’ with keywords) which is the same as the background color, thereby making it seem to “disappear” into the background. This form of invisible text is easily detectable by search engines. Hidden text though CSS is more complicated in that the color of the text is defined in an external file, which is not crawlable by search engines.

While almost all forms of hidden text will produce good results in the SHORT term, all major engines have implemented filters which are capable of detecting this type of spam. Websites found to be using hidden text will almost certainly be permanently removed from the index of all search engines. For this reason we encourage you to refrain from using hidden text on any of your web pages.

Flash Content:

Flash movies are a popular way to make websites more compelling. They are useful if you want to impress your visitors, and especially if you offer web design services. Unfortunately, if you use Flash movies, or if you design your complete web site based on Flash technology, your odds of getting listed in the search engines are greatly reduced. Search engines can only “see” pure text. They are not able to recognize text that is contained in an image file, or text that appears as a graphic within a Flash movie. Google includes the following advice in their webmaster guidelines: “If fancy features such as Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.”

The following tips can help in getting your Flash content indexed by the search engines:

Provide links to alternate pages that contain a lot of text and some keywords that the search engines can index,
Place some text above and below your Flash movie which contains your keywords. Along with your title and meta tags, this gives the search engines some text content to index,
If you embed the Flash movie in your HTML code, use your most important keywords in the movie filename, using the HTML tags and ,
You can use the attribute to include some text that will be displayed while the Flash movie is being loaded. In addition, you can use the attribute to include a keyword-rich movie title,
Use the tag to provide text for web browsers which don’t support the Flash plug-in. Use it to describe the contents of the Flash movie so the search engines can index that description,
Link to your Flash page from other pages of your web site, using keyword-rich link texts.
Hopefully, by pointing out a few of these more common mistakes in Website Optimization, we can help you to avoid some problems in the future. Search engines are changing their methodology all the time, so adapting to the ever changing list is a must.

Choosing your Keywords

“Better to be a big fish in a small pond, than to be a small fish in a big pond.”That proverb can be especially true in the “big pond” that is the Internet, and more specifically, in regard to search engines on the Internet.

When choosing your keywords, knowing how to limit your competition is essential. Time and time again, I see people construct their keywords using just one common word, such as “Bike”, and then they question why they aren’t getting ranked highly in the various search engines.

When you choose common words such as “Bike”, you are typically giving yourself a great amount of unnecessary competition.

For instance, at the time this article was written, a search on Google for “Bike” returned over 10 million results. Trying to get a high ranking with a search term as broad as that is indeed achievable, but why burden yourself by competing with 10 million other results when you could avoid it?

What I also find common is that a site will try to target a search term such as “Bike” while they really don’t need to, because their site is related to something much more specific, such as “Bike Safety Equipment”. The search term “Bike Safety Equipment” at the time of this article was written returned around 400,000 Google results. 400,000 results is still a lot of competition, but obviously far less than 10 million. In the case of your own search terms, the difference could be significantly more dramatic.

The point being, if your web site is related to something specific, try targeting that specific keyword search term, instead of opening yourself up to a ton of competition by being too broad. The more specific you are, and the less competition you have, the easier it will be for you to get a higher ranking for your search terms.

Searches vs. Results:

One technique you can use to find an excellent keyword search term is to determine how many searches there have been for a given keyword, and compare that to how many search engine results there are for that keyword.

One way of doing this is to use a tool such as the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/. Enter your desired keyword search term, and the tool will tell you the number of people that have searched for it during the last month. Note that the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool only shows the statistics from their database, so these results should only be used as an estimate.

For example, according to the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool, the word “Bicycle” was searched for 111,000 times during a given month in Overture, and returns over 4.5 million results in Google. Alternately, the phrase “Bicycle Tour” was searched for 120,000 times during that same month in Overture, and returns over 1.4 million results in Google. What this example shows is that the keyword search term “Bicycle Tour” was searched for more often than “Bicycle”, yet has less than one-third of the results.

If you targeted the keyword search term “Bicycle” you would have fewer people searching for your keyword, while also having three times the competition.

Using these same techniques in regards to your web site, you can determine which search terms have the stiffest competition and which search terms are, in a sense, “untapped”.

Localizing your Keywords:

If your website offers products and/or services locally, you can take advantage of that fact and optimize accordingly.

For the following examples, lets use a made-up web site for a store called “Eddie’s Mountain Bikes”, which sells mountain bikes in Dallas, Texas.

When choosing a keyword search term for this site, the first keyword that probably comes to mind would be “Mountain Bike”, and clearly that phrase should be plentiful in your web site. We shouldn’t stop there, but let’s say we did, and we target “Mountain Bike” as our primary keyword search term for this site.

First, let’s find out what our competition looks like. At the time of this writing, the keyword “Mountain Bike” returned over 2,000,000 results, which is a lot of competition.

Second, let’s say that we do end up getting in the top 10 results for “Mountain Bike” on Google. Now, what are the chances that the people who were looking to buy a mountain bike are going to be in the Dallas area? At the time of this article, there were around 300 million people in the United States and just over 3 million in Dallas. So in theory, you’ve got a 1 in 100 probability that the person who just found your site is from the Dallas area.

Instead of being so broad and only using “Mountain Bike”, what if we became more specific? Let’s use the keyword search term “Mountain Bike Dallas”. By making that change, we have now dropped from 2,000,000 results to just over 50,000 results. Also, anyone searching for “Mountain Bike Dallas” is most likely to be from the Dallas area. You could also include other surrounding areas in your keyword search terms.

Also, take note that you haven’t taken yourself out of the running for the keyword search term “Mountain Bike”, because that is still part of “Mountain Bike Dallas”. So you can be ranked high in both search terms. But if you had only targeted “Mountain Bike” with no mention of Dallas, you wouldn’t be a contender for the Dallas market any longer.

Things to avoid:

When becoming more specific in your keyword search terms, you do want to avoid becoming too specific. For example, in the case of the Eddie’s Mountain Bikes web site, you wouldn’t want to get as specific as “Mountain Bike Dallas Maple Street” because that is not going to be searched for very often, if ever. I’d suggest finding a good middle ground, somewhere between a really broad search term such as “Bike”, and an overly specific one such as “Mountain Bike Dallas Maple Street”.

Make sure you are optimizing your web site for what it is really about. You may find a good keyword search term that has minimal competition, but don’t be tempted to use it just because of that. Visitors are good, but only if they find what they are looking for on your site.

If your site offers products and/or services locally as well as nationally or internationally, make sure you optimize your web site for all of them. The area you want to target more particularly should be what you focus on, but make certain that your visitors will be able to easily determine that you sell products and/or services nationally or internationally. It would be great to optimize your site locally and increase sales and traffic, but not at the expense of eliminating your other target audiences.

If you are optimizing for a site that would use an extremely broad search term such as “Games”, then the above steps may not benefit you. In that case, I would recommend researching and implementing other search engine optimization methods for your web site.

No More Freeware

If you are a software developer, you are all too familiar with the term… dare I say it… freeware.  Yes, that’s right, the license type that has caused most of us a loss of revenue at one point or another.  Now, I’m not talking about GPL or the Open Source stuff associated with Linux (I don’t wish to start a war with that group)… I’m talking about “no cost” freeware products associated with Windows or Macintosh applications.

Some authors create freeware applications just for the fun of it, while others create them in order to up-sell to another product or to another version of their product.  In the early days of the Internet, software was created with very little thought to the future.  It was a brand new area, and most of us were just having fun with it.  Heck, who among us actually thought we could make any money doing this?  Very few of us believed that there was any significant money to be made this way.

But as we moved forward, we began to see many possibilities for generating revenue from our products.  And we then began to revise our business models accordingly.  However, what we did not see was the beginning of a trend that we started ourselves — users now spend far more time looking for things that are free, and far less time looking for things they have to pay for.

Recently, I ran across a poll being run on a top-rated Internet download site.  In 2 days time, over 10,000 (ten thousand) people voted on the question “How much are you willing to pay for shareware?”  Here are the poll results…

Poll: How much are you willing to pay for shareware?

Nothing:	77.4%
$10-$20:	11.4%
$20-$30:	06.2%
$30-$40:	02.1%
$40-$50:	01.6%
More than $50:	01.3%

The results are quite amazing and quite sad… but did we really expect them to be anything else?

Freeware applications have started to take control of the download sites. In researching the top 5 download sites, we found that an average of 14 of the top 20 products were freeware.  According to a sampling of the major categories on these top download sites, freeware applications made up about 65% of the overall content. That is an extremely large market share to compete against, and means that only 35% of the titles found on these sites are products that can be purchased by users… and generate revenues for their authors.

Recently a top download site sent out an email to software authors, explaining that products with low download counts will be deleted, unless their authors are participants in the extra-cost subscription features of the site.  However, if you are a freeware author who spends nothing, but your freeware products get high download counts (which is normal, since they’re free!), your titles are safe from being deleted.  In a time when software sales are declining globally, and advertising dollars are being stretched thinner and thinner, download sites need to start rejecting more freeware applications, or at least put a damper on accepting so many of them.  Developers who are paying for advertising are competing with those who don’t pay for anything. And while I can sympathize with the download sites as to why they keep the freeware titles online (i.e. to generate traffic), they need to realize that in the long run they are ultimately only doing themselves in because freeware applications do not purchase advertising.

Some download sites have actually found ways to cash in on freeware. Sites like NoNags, FreewareWeb and FreewareFiles have all found a nice market share that relies either on user subscriptions or advertising banners to support them. But there is a little hypocrisy:  they shout that they only allow freeware on their site, but they sell CDs and user subscriptions in order to make money from the freeware titles. Even they realize that they can’t make money off of the freeware products themselves, so they are forced to find alternate ways of earning a profit.

There is probably not an author out there who wouldn’t spend one dollar to earn two.  But in a freeware market, we just can’t always afford to do that. The more we provide freeware titles to the users, the more we are taking funds from ourselves.  My suggestion: lets all stop perpetuating the problem, work together, and limit the amount of freeware applications we release, thus somewhat forcing the download sites to work with us.  We would then all be able to afford advertising on these sites if we were actually competing for sales from one another instead of competing against freeware products.

Software Development Tips – Part 2

Improving the quality of your software with a few simple steps

Last month, I talked about simple methods that you can use to greatly enhance your application. This month, I want to discuss a few other items that are just as important to your application — your website, and your product price.

First, we need to look at your website. This is where your potential customer will most likely get their first impression of you, your company, and your product. I have seen many sites out there that seem to go out of their way to make it difficult for users to find a download link or a purchase link, while seeming to instead concentrate more on flashy graphics. While a flashy website with java effects and animated banners may look appealing, they can actually have a negative effect for users, and especially if they prevent the user from finding what they really need. Don’t fall into the trap of using too many images, buttons, and graphics. I have seen far too many sites, with far too many broken images, which made the sites very unattractive and even un-usable. Using standard HTML for all your links can provide many benefits:

1. There are no images to go missing, so the visitor can always see the information,

2. Adds more contextual text, which search engines use to rank your site,

3. Decreases your page size, resulting in faster loading,

4. Helps the visually impaired read and understand your site much easier.

Your website should be clean and simple. You can still have all the bells and whistles — just make sure that the two most important options, Download and Buy Now, are easily found. All too often, we see people add more and more fluff to their websites, in hopes of making the site more visually appealing. Unfortunately, they often sacrifice the very items that they most want their visitors to click on – the Download or Buy Now options.

This brings us to your Download page. Make sure to place all the relevant information on this page. Some people like to have their download link launch the download directly. This, however, gives the user no information beforehand, and might actually cause them to cancel the download. I like to see a “pre-download” webpage, which contains information such as the product version number, release date information, download links, download size, and any other relevant information… prior to actually beginning the download process.

For your Buy Now page, make this quick and easy. Don’t have a 5-step order process, or your customer may loose interest. It should be 1-2 steps at most, and the first page should contain the most relevant information. Remember: you want them to willingly give you their money, so make it as quick and painless as possible. If you are using a 3^rd party payment service, link directly to their purchase page. Don’t slow the process down by trying to collect additional information until after they’ve given you their money.

If designing a website is not your best asset, there are many companies out there who excel at this, and many have extremely reasonable prices. A simple search on Google for “website design” will yield countless results. However, I have personally dealt with a few such companies, and I find them worthy of mentioning here a starting point:

• First Logo Design Jesus Moreno mail@1stlogodesign.com

• LionShare Jamie Grant jamie@jamiegrant,com

The next issue to look at is pricing. If you have not yet researched what your competitors are doing, you need to do that now. Knowing what everyone else is doing and selling will help you determine what you should (or shouldn’t) be doing or selling. If you have a product that you are charging $59 for, while the rest of the industry is charging only $49, then you have a potential problem. Unless you are the #1 application in your category, you shouldn’t charge more then everyone else. Charging more than other competing applications can work, and has for some, but you need to objectively look at your program and decide if your customers will find enough extra value to justify spending the extra money. Are people willing to pay a premium for your application? If your sales are in a slump, and you are not sure why, this might be a good time to re-evaluate this.

My best suggestion to everyone is to be competitive and offer something to users at a fair price. Go for the volume. If you can get 100 times more sales at a lower price, that could still be a good thing. We always tend to shy away from lowering our prices because it does look like it will harm our end result.

Another no-no I have seen lately is the concept of instant rebates. Don’t offer a product for $300 and then offer an instant rebate of $275. Yes, this may sound strange to some of you, but I see it all the time. And even though the instant rebate will reduce the actual price to just $25, your customer may subconsciously only notice or remember that initial $300 price tag, and may then decide to look for something cheaper elsewhere.

Creating a program used to be all about compiling and then placing it online via your website. But now we have to examine many additional aspects of the marketing process. We can no longer afford to just place a link on our site; we need to go out and generate the customer traffic, and make the users want to buy our programs. Examining this information, and deciding whether or not it is right for you, is just another step in making yourself a successful shareware developer.

Software Development Tips – Part 1

Improving the quality of your software with a few simple steps

I’ve been reviewing software for many years now, and I have seen many good products as well as many bad ones. But what amazes me are the simple things that an author will forget about – things that really can make the difference in their application. I’m not talking about new fancy features, just simple, every-day items that can greatly improve the product.

The first and easiest issue is to have an installer/uninstaller. Yes, this will add a megabyte to your download, but it provides a way for your users to actually find your application at a later time. Applications that are packaged inside a .ZIP file, and that provide no installer, will tend to confuse many users. Also, you are requiring that the user have a zip/unzip utility available, and that they understand how to properly use it. So to make it easy for the user, try using a self-installing executable .EXE package instead. And speaking of installers… at the end of the install process, ask the user if they would like to put an icon on their desktop and/or their icon tray. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for the user to find your application. Always ask yourself, “Will my mother be able to install and launch my product?”

The second item is to create a program group and place as much information in there as you can. Users have been trained since the early days of Windows to go to that area and find all their applications. In your program group, be sure to include links to your help file, release notes, your product website, a “Buy Now” link, and of course your application. You would be amazed at the number of authors who overlook this item.

The ultimate goal in all of this is to entice the user to buy your product. So here’s a third item — every time your application is closed, put up a back splash screen with information about purchasing the full version. Make that entire window clickable to your order form page. Any place you can put in a “Buy Now” link, or inform the user how to buy, or why to buy, don’t hesitate to do it.

Now let’s look over some features that will really make your application stand out. When a user loads your application, be sure to up sell, via splash screen information, and explain why they should upgrade to the full version. This lets them know right away what usage or feature limitations they have with the version they are currently using, and all the wonderful things they will gain from having the full version.

Once the application is running, here are some key tips that your software should do:

1. F1 should always launch the help file. Two out of ten applications I look at forget to include this simple function.
2. Have a help “menu” with links to your Help File, your Buy Now order form, your “About Us” information, and your “Contact Us” information in the program group.
3. If you have quite a few features in your program, make it easier for the end user by offering keyboard shortcuts for the most commonly-used features and functions. Having Ctrl-A or Ctrl-B perform certain functions can save quite a bit of mouse time.

Your application is not the only place a potential customer will find your product. So lets talk about a few things we can do to improve your Website. Yes, many people think that the website has nothing to do with your application, but it does. This is typically the first place that a user sees your application, so you definitely need to put your best foot forward. When I am reviewing an application, there are 6 items that I look for that help me rate your program:

1. Money back guarantee. If I am unhappy with the product, will you refund my money?
2. Upgrade policy. When you have a new version of the application, how do you handle the updates?
3. Tech support. Do you provide it via phone, forums, e-mail or live chat?
4. Can I easily find the information on the specific product on your website?
5. How easy is it to Order your software? Many people bury the Buy Now links, when they should be one of the easiest things to find.
6. An “About Us” or company “Mission Statement”. I want to know who you are and what you do. Describe how long you have been in the business, awards you have received, and more.

None of the suggestions here will ever harm your application — they can only improve it. Your goal is to make your application invaluable to the end user, and of course get them to purchase and these simple steps are a great start.