Simplified Compatibility Checking
Fever, a new RSS feed reading application, just launched recently. Many of you might be familiar with the developer Shaun Inman from his popular stats tracking app Mint. I haven’t personally used Mint but I’m a huge fan of RSS feeds so when I heard about Fever I had to give it a shot. I will probably talk about the application a little later after I’ve had a chance to play with it. But, in this post I wanted to talk briefly about the unique checkout process Shaun uses to help make sure his users are installing the program on a compatable system before they even enter their credit card number.
One of the difficulties when selling software that needs to be installed is making sure the software is compatible with the users computer/system. I know this is supposed to be a responsibility of the user, but if they make a mistake they will be contacting you for support. Fever takes a unique approach to confirming users are installing the software on compatible machines. Shaun has created a process that links a compatibility check with his checkout/licensing process so that users can only purchase a license if they are installing the program on a compatible machine.
Before you can purchase a license you first download a small package that you upload to the location where you intend on installing the program. From there the package checks your systems compatibility and asks for database information (shown in the image above). Once entered, and after privileges have been checked, you are provided with a link back to the Fever site that populates the purchase form with a unique ID. This ID, I assume, matches your site with the compatibility check performed and then you continue with purchasing the license.
This process is genius! It allows the developer to prove the user is going to be installing the software on a compatible machine before selling them a license. I can image this process greatly reduces, if not eliminates, the support requests having to do with system compatibility and installation issues. Very cool idea!
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What’s also interesting about Fever as compared to mint or other web apps is that fever has been designed to (or is capable of) receive(ing) files from his server. While installation, fever downloads the required additional app files from the server, this negating any need of user intervention. Also, fever by default will automatically update itself when updates are released by him (Can be turned off in the Preferences)
Preshit, yeah I just realized that. Install was super simple… I didn’t even realize it was going on. This whole purchase and install process is very well done!