How to Win A Sale
on 08.16.05, 12:44pm in art of software • comments (18)
A few hours ago, I was lamenting over TopDesk. While I loved the app, the nagware approach to remind users to register drove me nuts enough to uninstall it.
Fast forward a few hours: I’m going to buy a copy of TopDesk today.
Why?
I never contacted Otaku Software, yet James Stewart found my blog post and responded with his thoughts on the reasoning behind they implemented their registration reminder system in that way. He even went the extra mile and offered me a free version of the software because I was disappointed in it.
James: You’ve made me a customer just offering kick ass support. While I really appreciate the offer to get it for free, I’m going to go ahead and buy TopDesk. Feel free to donate my free copy or the $10 to someplace 
Deg (August 16, 2005 @ 6:22 pm)
That is awesome! I wish more companies had support as good as this! Now I’ll have to check out TopDesk.
Abstract Penguin (August 16, 2005 @ 6:38 pm)
The way customer service should be
Lately I’ve been spending more time on the phone with customer service than I am using the products of Gateway, Braun, and Verizon. That’s why I’m so excited when I see a blog post like this…
James Stewart (August 16, 2005 @ 7:05 pm)
Steve: Glad to hear I could be of assistance, and I hope you enjoy using TopDesk.
On another note, I think in a couple of posts we’ve demonstrated just how useful blogs are. The next time some old-schooler argues that a blog is just an online diary for vain, self-important people, I’m going to use this experience as ammunition :).
Steve (August 16, 2005 @ 8:19 pm)
Totally agree with you James. In fact, Scoble has linked to it already (http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/08/16.html#a10884), and just as an FYI, I’ve been showing off TopDesk to collegues all day (think I know of a few who bought it too).
You definately made a passionate customer out of me.
smallbusinessbranding - Small Business Branding Strategies and Ideas for Savvy Solopreneurs (August 17, 2005 @ 5:52 am)
Minding the Conversation
I wrote yesterday about how Feedster CEO Scott Rafer contacted me just 3 hours after I wrote about their Top 500 Blogs list. Steve Mafosky (The Furry Goat Experience) shares a similar experience he had with Otaku Software. Seems he complained about Ota…
microISV (August 17, 2005 @ 6:00 am)
Negative into a positive
Steve, from The Furrygoat Experience, posted that he really liked TopDesk from Otaku Software but was uninstalling it because of the nag balloons that prompt for purchase. James from Otaku found the post and, within hours, offered an explanation for t…
Larry (August 17, 2005 @ 7:45 am)
So, on the strength of this, I downloaded the trial, and went immediately to buy…and got hung up in some kind of very strange PayPal loop. I tried paying via my PayPal account using American Express and get a message “this card is already registered with PayPal”. When you remove the card information, the verification service comes back and says…’you have to enter credit card information”. I don’t know if this is a PayPal problem, or a site problem…but it is an issue. On the other hand, the trial seems to work fine with my dual monitor setup which also uses UltraMon to manage the windows, while concurrently running several Konfabulator applications. Best wishes, — Larry
James Stewart (August 17, 2005 @ 9:38 am)
Larry: Our store just hands over what you’d like to order to PayPal and they deal with it from there, so it’s definitely a PayPal issue. I’m not entirely happy with PayPal end of the store (we don’t have many problems with it, but there’s a lot of steps customers have to go through to complete the order), so we’re searching around for another store implementation at the moment, but it’s tough going. To set up a merchant account in this part of the world you need to provide your last two years of business accounts (we’ve been around for just over a year), and most software registration services (Digital River and friends) charge a minimum $3 commission, which is a hefty chunk of change when you’re software costs $10. We’ve got a couple of avenues that look promising though, so hopefully we’ll have a new PayPal-less store up and running soon.
If you’re still having problems with the store, contact us through one of the email forms on our site and we’ll work something out for you.
James Stewart (August 17, 2005 @ 10:04 am)
Steve: Great to hear. Sorry we got off on the wrong foot, but hopefully I can make up for that in the future :).
Based on your posts and the response on my own blog, the trial’s been modified to only nag every 10th time a hotkey’s activated. I know it’s not the daily or weekly nag you were after, but I think it provides a fair number of nag-free uses for users to get an idea of what the software does, and it’s at least a good starting point for further discussion on what kind of restrictions the trial should have.
If you’ve got any ideas on how we can make the trial better (or if anyone else reading this has an opinion), drop me a line through my blog or the Otaku Software website.
John (August 17, 2005 @ 12:10 pm)
I’ve been TopDesk it for a couple months now and really like it. They are very responsive to user suggestions as you can see if you browse their forums. I switched from Winplosion. It had a bug that would slow my current machine to a crawl after using it a short while. I could never get them to acknowledge the bug let alone fix it. (That is truly how to kill any repeat sales). After many months of waiting around I discovered TopDesk and dropped my $10 down.
Steve (August 17, 2005 @ 1:39 pm)
James - Sounds great. I think that solution is much better than what was previously there.
andrew (August 18, 2005 @ 8:12 pm)
Hi there,
I was just browsing and I noticed the mention of Topdesk - I just bought it yesterday! I tried it for about 10mins before I decided - what the hey, I’ll buy it!
I have to say I am a huge fan - and at only $10us (a little more for us Aussie’s) - I was won over and have now been showing it off to everyone that I can!
Anyways - just my 2c, Keep up the great work Otaku!
One question though… Why is an Australian Company (with an obviously displayed ACN) charge for their product in USD?
James Stewart (August 21, 2005 @ 10:39 am)
andrew: We’re Australian, but most of our customers aren’t, so we went with a currency that’d suit the majority of customers.
Shawn's Thoughts (August 24, 2005 @ 10:59 am)
iPodderX team are officially Dorkfish
Update: This product has been uninstalled from my powerbook, my laptop, and my home machine. I can’t remember the last time I felt so completely ignored by a company. I was really hoping for the kind of treatment the Goat…
Shawn's Thoughts (August 24, 2005 @ 11:03 am)
iPodderX team are officially Dorkfish
Update: This product has been uninstalled from my powerbook, my laptop, and my home machine. I can’t remember the last time I felt so completely ignored by a company. I was really hoping for the kind of treatment the Goat…
Shawn's Thoughts (August 24, 2005 @ 11:07 am)
iPodderX team are officially Dorkfish
Update: This product has been uninstalled from my powerbook, my laptop, and my home machine. I can’t remember the last time I felt so completely ignored by a company. I was really hoping for the kind of treatment the Goat…
Rafael (August 25, 2005 @ 10:12 am)
I’m glad to see that the lastest version doesn’t seem to hammer you with popups. Been about 10 mins and only 3 popups which are reasonable.
Erik (March 23, 2006 @ 1:09 pm)
I hate popups. I would delete anything to get rid of those.