How do you decide if a product is worth evaluating ?

This is very important. Managing to get people to your site is not easy. But once they get there, you don't want them to leave immediately. You want to make sure you keep as many people as possible. Because if they go away, so do your sales. :-(

You managed to attract people to your home page. You'll have to drive them to your download page (if you have a demo version. If you're selling shrinkwrap software, you have a downloadable demo version, right ? No kidding! A couple of days ago, I found what looked a great little tool. And guess what! No demo! Just a money back guarantee. Come on!)

Getting people from your home page to your demo

How do you get people to download your demo version ? Obviously, you have to convince them that your product is very probably what they are looking for. Which brings us back to the question in this post's title: How do people decide if a product is what they are looking for ?

Personally,

• I read the overall description.
• Then I probably browse through a features list if there is one.
• I may give a look at screenshots, just to see how professional it looks.
• And of course, I look at the price ! No need to spend time evaluating something that I can't afford.

That's why the pages in my site's menu are ordered that way.

And that's why it's been some time now that I spend every morning telling myself that I must absolutely rewrite my appTranslator overview page because it's way too wordy and not appealing enough.

How do people think ?

And I of course do a big mistake: I figure people think the way I think.

Earlier today, I gave an in-depth look at my site's log. Big surprise ! The average visitor goes exactly the other way around :

1. Home page. (OK, that's where they enter the site)
2. Screenshots.
3. Price list.
4. Download.
5. Features.
6. Overview.

Wait, even the short page with the differences between editions gets more hits than the overview !

People don't read

Steve Krug's excellent book (Don't Make Me Think) explains that users don't read, they actually scan (or was it Joel Spolsky ?).

You know what ? He's damn right ! Not only people don't read, but they perfectly know where to click to avoid reading... Pages 2 to 6 above are ordered ascendingly by number of words !

Conclusions

• What you think is probably not what people think.
• Visitors don't read.
• Don't ask Jeeves, ask Urchin !
• Do screenshots.

Oh! BTW, there's something else I don't quite get: Why do so many people rush to the download page but don't actually download the program ? What do they expect to find there that they don't find ? Freebies ? I don't know...