One of the best sales guys I know told me that a large part of the sales process is removing objections on the part of the buyer. I guess one of the best ways of removing objections is by gettting rid of hurdles before they become objections.
MyMicroISV has an interesting post on 13 Fewer hurdles = more micro-ISV sales. I whole heartedly agree witht he items he lists. It amazes me (not just online, but in the real world) just how hard businesses sometimes make it to buy thier products. A case in point would be when I bought my current Tablet PC. It took (seemingly) forever to find a way to buy, mostly because the vendor seemed only to want to sell as part of vertical solutions. A consumer wanting to buy a tablet just did not seem to fit thier model (I think that this is a problem with the whole Tablet PC marketing scheme, but that’s another story).
When thinking about removing these hurdles, it occured to me that the same philosophy cold be applied to software design. How many of the programs do we continue to use which annoy the heck out of us, only because they are the only option, or the least annoying option? How many opportunities exist for just, plain good software, that does what it is supposed to do, without annoying the user? This goes back to what we all used to be taught as part of our first-year programming courses: Keep It Simple, Stupid! (I wonder, do they still teach this?).
There is a very great focus now on adding features, making things prettier, going for the latest whiz-bang bells and whistles, when in reality, what is most needed is software that just works, and does so without being annoying. This seems to be a great opportunity for the Micro ISV model.
How hard can it be?
FredSpace 