Litmus

I'd say thats very fair for trial purposes -- just to get an understanding of what is being offered. Once they see its capabilities, they'll be hooked. That being said, maybe only showing the results from a msn or slashdot test may be enough. Im sure they'll be quite a few people who have an existing / static site and just want to check it out once - after that you may have lost a potential customer.

Brad, thanks for your feedback. I hope that's the case (that they'll be hooked!).

Just to clarify, because someone I spoke to had missed this, when the trial user performs their test they'll only see results from Internet Explorer 6.

Yes, I did miss that. Sounds like a good balance then. And possibly have "(c)sitevista - trial" on the screenshots. Since your concerned about resources, unlimited re-test may be overkill. In all, the trial is probably a good idea.

I like the way that billingorchard does their sales. They offer a free trial, then a price for signing up. They also make an area for web designers to access their billing that is custom to the designer, no branding of billingorchard. Also they created growth orchard as a means to bring in more sales, somewhat of a affiliate network, where the affiliate would get a percentage of the revenue as long as the referral is a client.

Free trial is important, so that people can get the idea of the product. Also basecamp and their other products have a trial version.

Maybe you offer a free version with very little functionality and the paid ones layer the features.

Here's a marketing idea for you. ;)

Send personal invites to established web people like Jeffrey Zeldman and the likes to take SiteVista on a trial. Then in running with that, organize a miniature draw of either winning account(s) for say 2-3 months free full usage of the service.

This method to me generates a surefire response becase you're approaching the 'already there' people and you're also using a form of viral marketing via a draw. ;)

What do you think?

A free trial should be full featured. The whole point of a service like this is to be able to show results across multiple browsers.

As far as PC resources, if I was paying for this service, and I knew my results were being held up by free trial accounts, I'd be a little choked. paying and non-paying accounts should be on seperate servers.

Danny: that's great! David and I have discussed some kind of giveaway. Do you think a handful of 3 month accounts to just the winners, or free week accounts to everyone would be better?

Dave: Yep, usually you'd expect a free trial to be fully featured, but at present the only way we could do this would be to take credit card details at the start of the trial. My problem with having two seperate setups (one for trials, one for paying customers) is that then the trial won't be a realistic experience of the full product - it's going to be much slower to get your results back because it'll be overloaded.

Leading on from that - what's better...
- A restricted free trial where no credit card details are requested, or
- An unrestricted free trial but credit card required?

Paul,
Given those two choices, I would opt for a restricted trial where no credit card details are required.

Following up from your last comment regarding member/non-member servers, take a look at www.fileplanet.com - it is a good example of how to seperate server load depending on the user. Yes, it will take longer for a non-member to receive their results, but more incentive to sign-up and use the 'express lane' once they see the value of your service. ;)

In regards to full-featured trials consider this scenario.

I'm a developer with the ability to set up unlimited email addresses on my domain. What is to stop me from registering a trial with a new email address every time I need to run a test on a client's site(s)?

If you go with full-featured you could consider a cross-reference between email and IP address. This could get sticky with non-static IPs, but it has been my experience, past and present, that ISPs register a few (2 or 3) IPs per account, so this limits someone else from using the same IP. Don't know if this holds true worldwide though.

I don't see a problem offering limited trials, that are still mostly useful. In the end it comes down to the all mighty dollar( or pound, lira, dinar, yen, whatever). If I, as a participant, feel your full featured service could be of use to me, I will most likely pay your price.

Credit Card? You hopefully will also use an additional service like paypal?

Instead of a trial, I would provide enough screenshots (perhpas updated on a regular basis), make a screencast etc.

What do I want to see as a potential customer?
What it looks and feels like.

So, if I can see my choices, see how results look like and see how it is handled, I don't see a need for a free trial.

If they sign up for the monthly newsletter, there is a chance to win a free month. ;)

Credit Card? You hopefully will also use an additional service like paypal?
Do you?

Yes we're going to have both a credit card option (via 2Checkout) and PayPal. When PayPal launch their Website Payments Pro service here in the UK we'll probably use that entirely and ditch 2Checkout (unless this Google payment service turns out to be good :-)

Nicole, I've spent a little while today looking into screencasting and I think it's a fantastic way of presenting software. I've just been watching some of John Udell's screencasts and I'm sold!

We may, to begin with, offer a screencast tour instead of a trial.

I get the logic behind a limited trial, but why limit it to IE? Why not allow the user to select one platform/browser, so your generic PC/IE user can get a taste of Mac/Safari? I think you'd generate a lot more interest this way.

The risk, should you only request name and email, then offer a fully fledged test suite to demo users is that people will continually sign up with new email addresses to get their one free test over and over again. Anyone with a domain name and a catch all account has an unlimited number of email addresses they can sign up with.

I think a restricted demo as suggested, in addition to an extremely detailed 'tour' with neat stuff like videos showing the full test options in action would be a good route to take.

I would suggest using the previews in firefox. Not because I love it or because people think I'm a firefox evangelist(which I'm not). I think showing the results in a W3C Compliant browser would be nice for the people who are not familiar with web standards. This would, hopefully, encourage people to be more aware of web standards in the future

it's fair. give more for free only if it doesn't hurt your paying customers.

I would be interested in seeing how it works, screencast was very cool btw