Ewan's been trying to review software, but keeps getting stymied by appalling design or implementation. Here he shares five gems of wisdom that would-be successful developers would do well to take onboard.
Read on in the full article.
Five Steps To Successful Shareware/Trialware
Good advice, which I would confirm, being a shareware author myself. But let me comment about the title: Five Steps to Successful Shareware/Trialware. Well, yes, five steps in the right direction, but unfortunately there are a lot more steps needed to be really successful, and a lot of them less clear.
I mean, by avoiding the worst mistakes, you are only even, but not yet in the black, meaning working towards real success...
rbrunner, you're right that quality control alone doesn't give you a successful product, but obvious mistakes can really make a user regret paying for a piece of software. Things like spelling your own application's name wrong on the title screen say "rip off" very loudly. At the very least, the consumer should feel that the developer has put a reasonable amount of effort into the product.
I did a comment piece on a similar subject a while ago:
"Unless you have a very (very) good reason for breaking the style of a user interface… don’t!"
Interesting point, a good app may be one that seems to be extending your phone's abilities.