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I see some assumptions here that need to be challenged. - Click through six screens that no one in the history of man has ever read. You don't have to have an

I see some assumptions here that need to be challenged. - Click through six screens that no one in the history of man has ever read. You don't have to have any screens. This is your fault for using a wizard based installer. The app could just display "loading" while it installs and prepares to start. - Potentially weeks pass. Find your way back to the shareware site. Check out price. Why doesn't your app prompt the user to buy the full version and open a url to your payment page? I agree that desktop software has more opportunities to exit the funnel, but it also has more opportunities for retention and upsell. You can install a desktop shortcut, a system tray icon ... Andrew Chen recently blogged on this same topic: http://bit.ly/pTJsE http://bit.ly/pTJsE Some more suggestions on how to improve a desktop app: - Lost registration keys Don't use registration keys. Sell a machine specific license with free upgrades. Vend the license from the app. Each license will be tied to a machine and can't be used on other machines (use the NIC as a machine id). - bugs present in old versions of the software that are still floating around download sites Have your software automatically update itself as soon as it is installed. - Piracy It is much harder for to pirate your app if you use machine specific licenses. It is still possible, but doubtful that someone is going to use a hex editor to try to patch your bingo creator app. They might as well exploit your web app, steal your source and put up a free version. - Analytics Mixpanel has a REST api. You can use it from your desktop app. - Split Testing Why can't you do this on the desktop? -Long Cycles IMVU redeployed their desktop app 50 times a day on the way to over 10M in annual revenue (http://bit.ly/CwJN4 http://bit.ly/CwJN4). They also heavily split tested. I'm not saying that a desktop app is appropriate for his business. Just that there are more things to consider before writing them off.

patio11 17y ago
You don't have to have any screens. This is your fault for using a wizard based installer. I've stripped as many as I'm comfortable stripping -- it is three. Give me a bit of dramatic license -- unless you've installed a piece of OSS recently, in which case six is perhaps excessively nice. ;) Why doesn't your app prompt the user to buy the full version and open a url to your payment page? It does. Believe me, I've optimized that interaction to within an inch of my life. Regardless, it is hard to break users of their habits, and one of those habits is "When I want to go somewhere online, I go to Google." (Or, recently, "I type stuff into my search box" which is replacing the URL bar in modern browsers.) IMVU redeployed their desktop app 50 times a day on the way to over 10M in annual revenue IMVU has a hybrid desktop/web app. The continuous integration stuff affects the web portion. The desktop portion has a development cycle measured in weeks. http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/cd-for-client-software/ http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/cd-for-client-so...
- richcollins 17y ago
  from the post: "We ship a pre-release per day" "Despite the challenges Continuous Deployment for client software is both possible, and has the same return of Continuous Deployment elsewhere: better feedback, faster iteration times and the ability to make a product better, faster."
gruseom 17y ago
You make some good points. On this, though: Andrew Chen recently blogged on this same topic ...I just read it. He gives tables of numbers and equations that as far as I can tell are completely made up. He also recommends practices that I think are pernicious, including: Install itself on the system tray Start up automatically when the OS loads Run nicely in the background to pop up when appropriate ...and many other retention-happy features ("Happy" for whom? Certainly not the poor naive users I know whose computers are bogged down with programs that do these things.) His post is intellectually dodgy in exactly the way that a lot of this kind of software is dodgy. Which makes me notice something I never thought of before: web apps feel cleaner. As a user, I control when I go to the website and use the product; there is less opportunity for semi-scrupulous vendors to mess with me.
- hernan7 17y ago
  Agreed 100%. Also, for enterprise/vertical app's that usually seem to be released half cooked, releasing them as web apps gives the developers fewer ways to foul up the user experience.

patio11 17y ago

You don't have to have any screens. This is your fault for using a wizard based installer. I've stripped as many as I'm comfortable stripping -- it is three. Give me a bit of dramatic license -- unless you've installed a piece of OSS recently, in which case six is perhaps excessively nice. ;) Why doesn't your app prompt the user to buy the full version and open a url to your payment page? It does. Believe me, I've optimized that interaction to within an inch of my life. Regardless, it is hard to break users of their habits, and one of those habits is "When I want to go somewhere online, I go to Google." (Or, recently, "I type stuff into my search box" which is replacing the URL bar in modern browsers.) IMVU redeployed their desktop app 50 times a day on the way to over 10M in annual revenue IMVU has a hybrid desktop/web app. The continuous integration stuff affects the web portion. The desktop portion has a development cycle measured in weeks. http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/cd-for-client-software/ http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/cd-for-client-so...

richcollins 17y ago
from the post: "We ship a pre-release per day" "Despite the challenges Continuous Deployment for client software is both possible, and has the same return of Continuous Deployment elsewhere: better feedback, faster iteration times and the ability to make a product better, faster."

gruseom 17y ago

You make some good points. On this, though: Andrew Chen recently blogged on this same topic ...I just read it. He gives tables of numbers and equations that as far as I can tell are completely made up. He also recommends practices that I think are pernicious, including: Install itself on the system tray Start up automatically when the OS loads Run nicely in the background to pop up when appropriate ...and many other retention-happy features ("Happy" for whom? Certainly not the poor naive users I know whose computers are bogged down with programs that do these things.) His post is intellectually dodgy in exactly the way that a lot of this kind of software is dodgy. Which makes me notice something I never thought of before: web apps feel cleaner. As a user, I control when I go to the website and use the product; there is less opportunity for semi-scrupulous vendors to mess with me.

hernan7 17y ago
Agreed 100%. Also, for enterprise/vertical app's that usually seem to be released half cooked, releasing them as web apps gives the developers fewer ways to foul up the user experience.