[stormideas]

Thanks. The reason for using Silverlight for the video is to encourage people to get over the Silverlight installation hurdle as soon as possible.

I've been back and forward on whether that's a good idea, and whether we should replace the demo video with a flash version. Will definetely think it over again.

We're currently redeveloping the sign up process as a more standard html form, clearly this was me getting a bit too swept up in my Silverlight development efforts!

I'm also working on a "Try it now, in a demo workspace" feature to allow people to try it without submitting any information at all. Maybe I should also change the email confirmation step to be something that needs to be completed in time, rather than something that needs to be completed before you can log in.

Do you think 8 minutes is too long for the intro video? Should we make a shorter / snappier version?

Thanks for all the feedback, very useful.

[gb]

I think you're more likely to lose people immediately with that hurdle - I certainly wouldn't install Silverlight just to view a video to see if I was interested in a service, but if the video made the service look interesting enough I might well download a plugin to try it.

[stormideas]

Seems obvious to me now! Will sort it out.

[tower10]

I was more than happy to download the Silverlight plugin (I didn't have it installed). After an apparent successful install (latest OSX) and restarting Firefox, I'm told the plugin's not installed. I don't know how typical this is but perhaps Silverlight's not ready for the prime time yet?

[ovi256]

> I've been back and forward on whether that's a good idea, and whether we should replace the demo video with a flash version. Will definetely think it over again.

Do an A/B test for a month using Google Analytics. That should settle it. Anything else is pure speculation.

This is simple but very, very important : any testable hypothesis should be tested. Long live popperianism.

[stormideas]

A/B testing is definetely the way to go, my only excuse is that up until now I've had my head so deep in the development to even begin to think about much else!

[pclark]

I dont think 8 minutes is too long, but make sure you have a bullet list that says what your app is, what it does, who its for. Make it simple, make it exceptionally clear what you're doing and why your customer NEEDS your service. Re-iterate how bad collaboration is without your software.