-- Joe Devon <[email protected]> wrote (on Tuesday, 15 September 2009, 08:43 PM -0700): > > If you do not want to register, if you scroll down further on the page, > > you'll find direct links. > > I bet if Zend did some clickstream analysis, you guys would be shocked > how many people never see the links on the bottom of the page. I > remember the first time I wanted to find out more about Zend > Framework, I thought you had to register and even had the feeling that > it might cost money. It's only because it was part of a project I was > hired for that I eventually learned it. > > I thought it was only me, but as co-organizer of the PHP Meetup in > L.A., more than one person told me it cost money to download. > > As an experiment, I just now tried to pretend I know nothing about > Zend Framework and Googled it, went to the download page, and indeed > it's confusing for newbies if they click "Full package". > > This might be affecting adoption rate more than you'd think. I'd > suggest more prominent direct links at every stage including the > registration page...see if the download numbers are affected.
I've argued back and forth over this decision with our marketing team. For them, the leads they get from dowloaders of Zend Framework off of zend.com are *very* qualified leads, and, as such, having the initial link point to the zend.com CDN provides huge benefit to the company. My argument is along your lines -- and, as somebody who has to answer the question of, "why do I need to register to download?" constantly, you can guess my inclination. But I also have to think about the health of the company I work for. That said, our adoption rate is phenomenal, and while moving the CDN link further down the page may change it, I have to wonder how noticeable that change would be. > Just my take. > > (One of the biggest changes of my thinking as a web developer came > after speaking to a few marketing pros who analyze the hell out of > clickstreams, I learned that the littlest thing on a page can have a > drastic effect on success of a site.) -- Matthew Weier O'Phinney Project Lead | [email protected] Zend Framework | http://framework.zend.com/
