How not to sell your product on the internet
Today I’ve decided to write one of those long-winded Joel Spolsky type posts. Complete with analogies and plenty of links. I doubt it will as entertaining as one of his…. but here it goes.
It is said that in 1915 the revolutionary Leon Trotzki visited a family friend in Chicago. That family friend persuaded Trotzki – the ardent Communist – to attend a session of Sunday school with him. Trotzki agreed. Alas the scheduled Sunday school teacher did not show up and the class dispersed. To this day some people wonder what might have happened if Trotzki who by all accounts did not attend any church at all would have heard something in that Sunday school that might have given him a reason to think differently about his life and the world he lived in. Perhaps he might not have participated in the Russian Revolution that gave rise to the Soviet Empire. If that one Sunday school teacher showed up, perhaps it might have made a big difference in the history of Communism. We will never know because the teacher missed an opportunity to connect with a person who had come to hear him.
Fast forward almost 100 years and I am faced with another missed opportunity. Granted it is rather mundane and not as spectacular as Trotzki’s but for the participants in my story it carries an impact nonetheless.
I don’t mention it very often because I try to keep my business life set apart from this hobby-blog but I in my “day job” I am the VP of Server Development of a software company that employs almost 100 people (not counting recently acquired companies and other divisions) . A couple of weeks ago I was evaluating several development productivity tools – Resharper, CodeRush and CodeSmart. Part of my job is to look for tools that makes my teams work easier and more productive. Tools like LightSpeed, CodeSmith, Sharepoint and Fogbugz. Without bragging I think that our 80 licenses for Fogbugz have to be one of the larger installations in the country. And we are still growing and hiring and adding licenses.
In a sense I am very much a consumer when it comes to these tools. And I am sensitive to the same quirky odd stuff that would annoy the heck out of any internet consumer. With that in mind I would like to recount my experience of wanting to purchase a copy of CodeRush.
Having looked over several videos posted on the DevExpress site, I proceeded to the product page to fill out the necessary information for the purchase. Somewhere toward the bottom of the screen I was asked for an email address. Frequently when evaluating products I use my own private gmail address for convenience ( a lot of this work takes place in my home office). 
I completed the forms, submitted my credit card info and promptly received a confirmation email. The email alluded to the fact that it should take 24 hours to process my credit card payment and I will receive another email when thats done with the necessary license keys. At first 24 hours turnaround seemed a bit steep in this day and age where I can get a pair of dirty socks on eBay in seconds (not that I would 
)
A day went by without a word from the CodeRush people. I read the email again. It said in part “ Once your credit card order is approved, we will send to you via Email notification of where to obtain the appropriate files after approximately 1 business day of your order. If you do not receive such notification, please write to mailto:clientservices@devexpress.com”
Sounds good. Maybe something went wrong. I sent my email as instructed. Another day passed and I received an answer,
As you may recall from the illustration above, there is no such indication on DevExpress’ order form. I decided that this is fishy and called the person sending an email. Nobody answered so I left a voice mail. “ Hi yes hrrmmm this is Thomas Wagner in Los Angeles… ummm I order your product and received the following email “ etc etc etc. You know the drill. Did they call me back? Nope. Not a word.
I am a very patient person and really would like to give my money to this company – no matter how difficult they are making it. So I sent an email mentioning that I had called and would like a return call. When I did not hear back I called again still persistently interested in giving my money to someone who really doesn’t seem to want it. I actually got a hold of the person who had signed the email listed above. I gave her my corporate email address – after how many attempts to get this transaction handled? She assured me the order would be processed and I should get an email within 24 hours. (I didn’t bother to ask why I would need to wait yet another day).
A couple of days have passed since that call and I have yet to receive the license key. My credit card was finally charged but at this point I am really not sure I want to continue to do business with these fellows. Here you can see in a very first hand manner why some companies that may not be technically brilliant succeed on the basis of the non technical aspects of their business – sales, customer support, transaction processing etc etc, All the while some MicroISV’s, that are for all intent and purpose very brilliant, fall flat in those very same areas and as a result suffer. I would like to think that I am a very desirable customer demographic for any company that produces software development and related tools. And just as the teacher who didn’t get an opportunity to influence Leon Trotzki – a company that doesn’t show up for the less glamorous parts of the tech business, and as a result make interacting downright inconvenient and expensive may not get an opportunity to do business with me.
If you are a developer who cares about his work and if you happen to be employed by a company that earns its revenue from software, then this post should be of interest to you. It’s not always just about the code. What good is the most wonderful code when your company doesn’t put processes in place that get your work to the market as efficiently as easily as possible. You never know how many licenses one single dropped opportunity could cost you.
UPDATE: MikeG1 pointed out that the notice to customers warning them not to use public emails actually happens on the page before the one asking for details like email addresses. Go figure.
Comments
Comment from Thomas Wagner
Time June 25, 2006 at 7:41 pm
You could be right. But that leaves us with the rest of the CS interaction that fell apart.
Comment from Julian M Bucknall
Time June 27, 2006 at 7:42 am
Thomas
Thanks for an informative blog post. You are right: our current ordering system is not optimal, be it the information on the web page or the speed at which we sometimes respond. I won’t belabor any excuses or reasons (in essence, we’re trying hard to control piracy as much as we can, but that effort shouldn’t impact legitimate customers like yourself), but I am forwarding the URL of this blog post to the team that’s in charge of rewriting our online store to ensure that the same problems don’t reappear when we launch the new website in a couple or so weeks’ time.
If you have any other comments about your ordering experience on our site, please either send me an email describing them so that I can do something about it, or add another blog post to your site here (and email me asking me to read it). Thanks for your help in helping us make your and other customers’ relationships with Developer Express the best, all the way from the ordering experience, through the use of our products, to their support.
Cheers, Julian
Comment from Haacked
Time June 27, 2006 at 8:09 am
One thing I like about JetBrains (makers of Resharper) is their level of service. I once reported trouble I was having and their Chief Scientist commented on my blog with a fix. I’ve also had quick responses to any emails.
I wonder if this is an issue of scale? Jetbrains struck me as really caring about their image so they scan blogs etc… Can they keep that up as they grow? How big are the makers of Code Rush?
Comment from Thomas Wagner
Time June 27, 2006 at 9:02 am
Phil – I received a comment from CodeRush (see above) – of course one wonders if the response might have been there if the post had not been “Larkwared” … ha there is new term for you. Larkwared. Sort of like Slashdotted.
Comment from Mark Miller
Time June 27, 2006 at 10:14 am
Hey Thomas,
Just to clarify, CodeRush and Refactor! Pro, as well as the freely available DXCore extensibility engine for Visual Studio, are all products that are managed by the IDE Tools team at Developer Express. In addition to IDE Tools, Developer Express crafts powerful and easy to use component sets, reporting tools, and frameworks for .NET developers. With regard to the question of team size, I consider that information a competitive advantage and so I won’t be publishing that, however I can say for the three products I manage, we have over 11,000 test cases, and that Refactor! Pro has more refactorings than any other refactoring tool (for any platform). Take a look at our momentum and you’ll get a sense of the real force behind these products.
Best regards,
Mark Miller
Chief Scientist, IDE Tools Division
Developer Express
Comment from Radi
Time June 28, 2006 at 4:31 am
Thomas,
when I read this your post, it so much reminded me of my own experiences with that company. I tried to buy their Refactor!Pro v1 product, and had to wait days and days (and write emails) to receive my license. When I tried the product and used it for a week, it was so full of bugs that I angrily deleted it from my PC and wrote them to send my money back. Actually, they were much faster sending my money back than they had been sending my license key.
I had read about their product here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/downloads/tools/refactor/
and after reading a very positive review by “MikeG1″ (on his otherwise really great larkware site) I decided to have a look at the software. But since there was no trial download for VS.NET 2003 (which I used at the time last summer) available on their web site, I had to buy it. And I did buy it, but soon wished I hadn’t. After a week or so using Refactor!Pro v1.0, I sent in a list with maybe 5 or 8 bugs (only a few, because I didn’t want to spend too much time documenting bugs) along with a note that this product was not “v 1.0″ but should be labeled “beta”. But I got my money back within days, so there is at least *something* that worked. And I got a very nice email from support, very much like their comments here.
Now, one year later, they have released v2 of Refactor!Pro, which I decided not even to try out. Reading this your post I see that my decision was right. Thank you!
Radi
Comment from Steve s.
Time June 28, 2006 at 2:54 pm
“With regard to the question of team size, I consider that information a competitive advantage…”
You know, I think that one statement really says a lot about the culture and philosophies at Developer Express. I’m not sure who they’re afraid of, but my software dollars will be spent with a company that treats me with respect and trust, delivers customer service in “internet time”, and doesn’t try and tell me what email service I should be using (fer pete’s sake!)
Comment from Mark Miller
Time June 28, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Steve s: The truth is, I do consider my team count to be a competitive advantage so I’m not going to make that number publicly available. I prefer to keep our competition guessing on that one.
With regard to company culture, I can assure you Developer Express has one of the most professional and disciplined group of developers of any business I’ve had the opportunity of working with in my 20+ years of writing software. This company is filled with hard working coders and team leaders who have flat-out earned my respect. Say what you want about me, but if creating the highest quality software is your goal, then there’s a lot that can be learned from the developers in this company.
Finally, with regard to the customer trust issue, I would encourage you to check out the “Refactor Multiple Users” thread in the “devexpress.public.dotnet.refactor.pro” newsgroup (at news.devexpress.com) for an honest assessment of how much we trust our customers compared with the competition. Any company with the will to stay in business must strike a balance between customer trust and loss prevention, and while it’s clear we can improve order processing speed and do a better job at setting new customer expectations, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of striking that balance overall.
Best regards,
Mark Miller
Chief Scientist, IDE Tools Division
Developer Express
Comment from Valentin Kipiatkov
Time August 5, 2006 at 4:16 am
Hi Mark,
> Refactor! Pro has more refactorings than any
> other refactoring tool (for any platform)
Really? Could you, please, list them for us to count them?
Valentin Kipiatkov
CTO and Chief Scientist
JetBrains, Inc
http://www.jetbrains.com
“Develop with pleasure!”
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Comment from Mike Gunderloy
Time June 25, 2006 at 6:16 pm
I dunno, maybe they’ve got more than one order form or maybe they recently changed it, but I was just looking at this yesterday to place an order for our company, and there in big bold print on https://www.devexpress.com/Order/Online/index.xmls?tid=2 it says “Developer Express Inc does not ship any products via Email to individuals with anonymous email addresses from organizations such as HOTMAIL, YAHOO, BIGFOOT, etc.”