Do not underestimate the value of help and support related features in your application or service. Properly supporting your users can be a key differentiator in today’s market. It can help ease the learning curve users must traverse when adopting your service and facilitate continued product-usage. To not support or clumsily support your users is like dropping someone in the middle of a jungle without a survival kit. If you don’t give your users the tools and education needed to survive: they won’t, plain and simple. Here are three guidelines I’ve followed in products I’ve managed that provide a common sense approach for properly supporting your users:

1. Help should be Accessible: Access to a Help/FAQ section should be in the same “physical” spot throughout the application or service experience. Users should always know where to access Help or an FAQ. Don’t confuse them by moving it around or making it accessible in some areas and not others. These sections should be neatly indexed and searchable.
2. Avoid Technical or Industry Jargon: Speak your user’s language. Don’t confuse them by using jargon that’s over-technical or industry-speak. Just because you understand it doesn’t mean your users will.
3. Provide Multiple Support Methods: Hopefully your support documents are so brilliant that no user needs to contact you. But let’s face it, some do want to contact you, and that’s OK. There is no better way to build relationships and gather invaluable user feedback than providing human support via multiple contact methods. A support email address and online support form are musts. Make them easy to find. Hiding them or making them difficult to access means you don’t want to talk to your users and, for this; your users will repay you by not using your service. Phone and chat support are great ways to engage your users and provide them exceptional customer service – consider these methods as well.

One more thing; your Customer Support Team is critical to developing strong user relationships. Do not underestimate the value they bring to your product.

Following these three common sense guidelines to providing world-class support will ensure your users have the tools they need to succeed when using your application or service. Do not send your users into the jungle without giving them the tools to survive, hoping they’ll find their way through on their own.

Eric Montag, Product Manager, W3i Holdings, LLC
Eric uses his experience in graphic design, mobile, and internet marketing to lead the charge in product research, planning, and execution, from both a consumer and business standpoint.

It is always great when you can talk to Internet marketers face-to-face and learn some of their insights first hand.  I attended ad:tech San Francisco this week,  meeting with a handful of top marketers in charge of various types of Windows applications.

Their Windows applications include:  a cutting edge Outlook plug-in, security applications primarily geared for consumer use, various types of utility applications for helping users to get their PC to operate at the best possible level, and a top video player application. Each of the marketers talked to me about their various marketing campaigns, and all of them stressed how important it is to meet ROI goals, especially in light of the current economic condition.

• Paid search is working for many… The marketer from the cutting edge Outlook plug-in stated that since their app is so new to the world, most users haven’t discovered a need for the product category yet and, therefore, there isn’t much search traffic available to market this new application.
• Radio is not worth it… The marketer at the utility application company stated that if he had to do it all over again, he would have never invested into getting a radio advertising campaign off the ground. He said measuring the ROI has proven challenging, and way too much effort for what he gets out of it.
• Co-promotion has some legs… The security application company was working to white label their technology to a handful of very large security companies to ramp up their growth.
• Social marketing is helpful, but too unpredictable… The utility application company has a Windows application with a social marketing strategy, and was in the process of winding down the product because it never got any traction. The cutting edge Outlook plug-in company was quite pleased with the social traction he was getting, but wanted to ramp up faster, and in a more controlled manner. Even successful social marketing campaigns need a spark to light the fire.
• Bundling works… All four of the marketers at these Windows application companies stated that bundling was an area they were going to invest more energy and budget into because the ROI was very measurable and the volume of distribution was very meaningful.

If you have a Windows application, and haven’t figured out how to generate a meaningful ROI by participating in bundling, we should talk.  Contact W3i to learn more. 

About the Author:
Rob Weber is the VP of Business Development and Co-Founder of W3i Holdings.  Rob has over nine years experience developing innovative ways to increase revenue and distribution for Windows applications.

St. Cloud, Minnesota, April 9, 2009-W3i, LLC today announced a global partnership with Yahoo!, under which W3i will continue to offer the Yahoo! Toolbar, as well as sponsored search and contextual advertising services, to over 16.5 million visitors monthly.

As a leader in desktop and browser marketing solutions, W3i provides its users with useful, safe, free software and utilities to improve their Internet experience.  W3i’s goal is to connect users with downloads that add utility to their desktop and make their time on the Internet more productive.

“Our partnership with Yahoo! allows us to offer world-class search capabilities to our users. Yahoo! has made impressive strides with its search marketing system, and continues to innovate to drive the most compelling user and advertiser experience,” said Andy Johnson, CEO of W3i. “As a leader in delivering quality, downloadable content, W3i is excited to continue our partnership and looks forward to growing our relationship with Yahoo! even more over time.”

About W3i:
W3i delivers proven, integrated desktop and browser marketing solutions.  With solutions tested and optimized on over 200 million installs–currently 4.2 million installs monthly, W3i can increase revenue and traffic for downloadable software, applications and digital content or provide a receptive consumer base for customized, targeted distribution programs while the user is in the download mode.  W3i’s solutions utilize Install IQ, a proprietary Windows installation system and download manager developed by W3i.  Install IQ is the first installation system to be certified in the TRUSTe Trusted Download Program.  To learn more about W3i, visit www.w3i.com.  For premium quality, free consumer content, visit freeze.com (screensavers, wallpaper and clip art), wallpapers.com (animated, static and Wallery wallpapers), screensaver.com (3D and flash screensavers), and my.freeze.com (latest news, home page).

Contact:
Deborah Manthei
Director of Marketing Communications
320-257-7571
deborah.manthei@W3i.com

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One of the weaknesses of desktop software installers is usability.  They interrupt what should be a consistent, user-friendly web-site or application design.  Software installation is also a great place to recommend other valued software to your users while users are in the download mode allowing you to make additional money.  Learn about challenges, opportunities, and tools so that you can get the most out of your Windows installer.

Most Windows installers add nothing to the user experience.  The boring design doesn’t match the web-site of the provider and has no resemblance to the software that is being installed.  When testing, W3i sees double-digit increases in conversions when keeping an integrated design look between the landing page and the Windows installer.   

For Windows installers, success is measured solely by the technical utility of whether or not the install can complete the software installation process.  User abandonment, user satisfaction, and user discovery (if tracked at all) are not a priority.  Other than a possible “Read Me” file, users are not offered any way to customize their settings or review recommendations for additional software, both common practices for web applications. 

Working with Windows installers for over nine years, I have experience getting users to install software, as W3i has installed over 200 million desktop software applications from hundreds of software providers.  I hope to provide you insight into challenges, opportunities, and tools available so that you have the knowledge to make your installer more productive.

Installer Challenges

Windows desktop installation is typically a specialized skill that few developers have experience with, other than configuring one of the big installation packages.

Developers can face a great deal of complexity with their installer in areas such as packaging, deployment, testing, and management.  These are very important aspects of the installer and have become the dominant focus of available software tools.  This, however, ignores the very important user experience as well. 

As desktop software distribution is increasingly moving from the CD to the Internet, most software tools are retrofitting their solutions instead of building web-based capabilities for optimizing installer design and interacting with the user.  Installers built with the standard tools have the same stale look and feel as software installed on your first Windows 95 computer from CD.

Installer Opportunities

A big shift from CD to Web-based installation is where the user abandons the process.  With a CD, once the user makes the purchase and opens the package, the installation process will not deter her.  In contrast, if the Web installation looks confusing, daunting, guilty of delivering malware, or even not that cool, a user simply clicks out. 

Designers frequently help design the website and software interface, but the installation is usually off limits, making this non-integration feel even more pronounced.  Building an installer that mimics the look and feel of your website can provide a significant boost in completed installations.  See the article W3i posted called, “Creating Consistency To Increase Conversions” (http://blog.w3i.com/index.php/2009/03/06/creating-consistency-to-increase-conversions/).

Utilizing the installation to recommend other software has also become big business.  Apple, Sun, Adobe, McAfee, Symantec, Google, Yahoo, W3i, and many others are all participating.  The simplest example is recommending a toolbar that matches your user interests.  The key is making it relevant to the user.  It is estimated that toolbars generate more than $1 billion of annual revenue, a nice piece of additional business. 

Questions To Ask About Recommending Software Within Your Installer

1. What if the user already has the software you are recommending? 
2. What if you have a variety of software which you’d like to recommend?  How do you pick the right software? 
3. How will adding additional software recommendations in the installer impact the funnel? 
4. How can you track the activity that occurs during or after installation to understand the results of these recommendations? 
5. How can you ensure your software is following industry best practices? 
6. How can multiple software applications be downloaded and installed with a consistent, understandable, process flow for the user?

Installer Tools

There are numerous open source and commercial tools for creating Windows installers (MSI packages) including: InstallShield (http://www.acresso.com/), NSIS (http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Main_Page), and Wise (http://www.symantec.com/business/package-studio).  Tools range in cost from nothing to thousands of dollars.  The commercial solutions are typically sold on a paid-license model.

You can easily spend hours researching software tools available for creating your installer, but it only takes a quick visit to their websites to know how big a business it has become and how complicated it is to license their software tools just for installing–not improving on the user experience.

Most of the simpler tools provide almost no configuration of the navigation, look and feel, or ability to capture response input from the installation experience; and focus on simply solving the technical task of creating an MSI package with appropriate system integration.

The more sophisticated tools typically provide access to an editor which allows you some control over the background image, navigation, and inputs; but not at the level required to reach the optimal level of performance.

W3i used Wise extensively in its past, so prior to writing this article, I spent considerable time researching the most popular tools.  My hope was to uncover some great solutions to enhance design and advertising within the installer.  I really struggled and found my quest led to more questions than answers.  I began to appreciate the value that these tools provide for the technical aspects of building your installer, but they still fall short on providing for those interested in design or advertising. 

W3i built a proprietary Windows installer, InstallIQ, after the frustration we had using Wise, to implement our installers need for design and advertising.  Wise, I believe, is characteristic of all the software tools currently available.  They do not cater to those with a significant appetite for design and advertising.  Only through extensive investment in tweaking their code can you develop something that is functional.

With InstallIQ, our installation is as sophisticated as many websites.  We have total creative control and also a rich set of decision-making data that you would expect from a website.  The software tools typically allow you to turn them silent, which essentially means you can disable any dialogues/messages to the end user and rely instead on something else to manage this.  At W3i, we found it very effective for our system to manage the user experience, including advertising through software recommendations, and continue to leverage the best available software tools to manage the other aspects of the software installation. 

InstallIQ is available to software publishers.  Because of the ad-supported focus, W3i’s clients are paid based on the performance of the software recommendations made through their distribution.  This focus on performance is what aligns W3i’s interest with its clients.  For more information, contact W3i.

Ryan Weber, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Co-Founder, W3i, LLC
Entrepreneur and pioneer of Internet marketing focusing on increasing revenue and distribution for digital downloads.

Attending the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco last week, I was able to pick up on the Web 2.0 buzz.  Web 2.0 is a conference that centers on opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies.  Big names in the industry were there:  Facebook, eBay, Google, Amazon and a vast number of startups, as well.  Through walking the show floor and attending a variety of educational seminars, I picked up on quite a few hot topics currently buzzing through the industry.  There were three that stood out for me in particular because of their implication on the future of the web and impact to users:  crowd-sourcing content, social objects and interest measurement.

Crowd-sourced content is not a new idea, but is one that is being perfected by the likes of Threadless.com and Etsy.com.  In this community model, users are in full control of the content that is available on a site.  What’s interesting is how these companies built a passionate community; they did so by adopting a bottom-up notion of brand-building – this involves little control of the brand itself.  The users are in full control; submitting, voting on and consuming their content with little brand interaction.  By effectively running a crowd-sourced site and truly allowing the users to have control, a passionate, vibrant community can be formed.

Social objects are the concepts that bind a social network.  For a social network to be successful, it first has to be useful.  Without the correct social object to bind the network, users will not coalesce into a stable community.  Take, for example, LinkedIn — for a time, the central object on LinkedIn was the user’s connections.  This wasn’t particularly useful as it didn’t serve the true purpose of the site, which was to create a community centered on the user’s job.  LinkedIn realized this and made changes to their site that focused on the job rather than the connections.   When a social networking site is built, it’s important to understand its social object and how users interact with it.

Interest measurement is based on the idea that it is important to find what is most interesting to users.  Recommender systems look at explicit and implicit user data to find commonalities in neighborhoods of users to show content that a user might like.  But a question remains: how do you know what is highly interesting within a network?  The answer is straightforward:  by using a Page-Rank-like algorithm and applying it to, say, Twitter, value is given to content that is shared with the network.  The more the content is proliferated through the network, the higher the interest score that content gets.  Using this data could have broad implications as one could create a Digg-like site that would automatically sort stories based on user interest with no manual digging required.

Overall, the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco was a great place to meet people, learn about new products and pick up on the Web 2.0 buzz.  I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to achieve these things.  The web was built by the people and should continue to serve the people in exciting and innovative ways as we move forward.  There are many ways that the web is growing and maturing.  But even by looking at the Web 2.0 topics I mentioned: perfecting social networks through use of social objects and crowd-sourced content and providing more insight into what is users truly find interesting, the web should become an even more personal and compelling place.  And that’s what the Web 2.0 Expo buzz was all about. 

Eric Montag, Product Manager, W3i Holdings, LLC
Eric uses his experience in graphic design, mobile, and internet marketing to lead the charge in product research, planning, and execution, from both a consumer and business standpoint.

For years, as part of my job, I’ve scoured the web for innovative browser and Windows software applications.  In the spirit of the Final Four tournament, I broke down the apps that make up my Elite 8 for innovation and let them battle it out for the one I crown as national champ.

The Final Four (http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/tournament/bracket) plays out this Saturday in Detroit with Michigan State facing off against Connecticut and Villanova facing off against North Carolina in this year’s semifinals.  The finalists will be played on Monday for the national championship.

I was compelled to take this opportunity to respond to a common question I receive.  What browser and desktop software applications do I find interesting?

W3i is a leading provider of distribution, revenue generation, and user engagement solutions utilized for more than 200 million downloads by a wide range of browser and desktop software publishers.  It is my job to understand browser and desktop software trends.  I am also an enthusiast who believes software done right creates a compelling user experience that web-sites alone cannot compete with.

I will begin with an overview of the apps which make up my Elite 8.  My only criteria was what I found to be the most interesting and innovative apps.  These are not necessarily my most often used nor the most complex applications.  The apps include browser (toolbars or other add-ons) and Windows desktop software applications.

1. Xobni - http://www.xobni.com/- Xobni is an Outlook plug-in that has even captured Bill Gate’s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr5zOxG7wbU) attention. I have found this application helpful in understanding the relationship I have with people I frequently exchange emails. Such as the fastest responder or the most frequent people I interact with. There are also various methods they use to organize your emails in a way that creates a new and valuable experience.



2. Digsby - http://www.digsby.com - Digsby is my preferred software interface for aggregating my many social networks, instant messengers, and email services.
3. Recipe Feeder - http://www.recipefeeder.com - My wife loves pasta but I have a particular taste for it. Using Recipe Feeder, I inputted my preferences within a few seconds. After a few minutes, Recipe Feeder scoured the web and found the recipes that met my criteria. I have taken an interest in pulling recipes, but as of yet haven’t mastered my own kitchen!



4. TurboSaver  by Upromise – http://www.upromise.com/partner/origin.do?partnerName=turbosaver&ax=turbosaver&cm_mmc=Other-_-Toolbar-_-Menu-_-toolbar – I have had a Upromise account for a few  years but found it a bit painful to always navigate back to their web-site when shopping online to look for opportunities to earn cash for my 5 year old nephew’s college fund.  Since they have released TurboSaver, a browser plug-in to help aid in your discovering participating merchants, I have found it much easier to purchase from their participating merchants.



5. Skype Phone Number Recognition – http://www.browserhighlighter.com/ – Dialing a phone number seems so old fashioned.  Why not leverage Skype’s browser plug-in to dial a phone number directly from a web-page?  Skype recognizes the phone numbers found on a web-page and allows you to easily click on them to dial.



6. Wakoopa - http://www.wakoopa.com – A desktop application which tracks your Windows and web software usage.  You will see an overview of the types of software you use, usage, reviews you have written, and can share this information with friends.
7. MashLogic - http://www.mashlogic.com  – A Firefox application which modifies the web-page to enable keywords matched on the web-page to source additional information retrieved from sources you configure.  The matching and speed are of high quality.  With the right information this tool can be quite handy.  I use it to save time when looking up information on other web-sites or companies.



8. Youlicit Search Enhancement - http://www.youlicit.com/download/ – Youlicit mines the social web to find out which web-sites are being recommended by real people.  The Firefox application highlights web-sites (see green highlights in below screenshot) which Youlicit has found to be recommended as well it provides additional recommendations on the right side of the search results.

The Most Innovative Apps Tournament Bracket

And the National Champion is… Xobni!

These are all very innovative apps.  So what’s so special about Xobni?  Besides being a really cool application, it stands out because I love seeing something interesting in what otherwise tends to be a boring application experience with my basic business applications.  We all spend so much time on the desktop and so providers like Xobni deserve a lot of credit.

Looking to step up your game with downloads?  Check out our website to learn more about how we can help you improve distribution, revenue generation, and user engagement with your downloads.

Ryan Weber, Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Co-Founder, W3i Holdings, LLC
Entrepreneur and pioneer of Internet marketing focusing on increasing revenue and distribution for digital downloads.