Ask HN: Should users be made to fill a form before downloading?
I have a dilemma related to the free download version of the my startup's software (www.graphitecharts.com/download). We are a silverlight based charting library with an aim to support WPF and Windows Phone 7 in the near future. I know most people here hate plug-ins but our aim is to focus on intranet and extranet applications and sites, and eventually support sharepoint and possibly excel.
We launched on 22nd march 2011, that's the date I officially announced it on twitter and posted it to the visual studio gallery. We haven't had any sales yet, but we do get around 5-10 unique visitors a day from the visual studio gallery and google. 2 out of every 5 people who visit the site do download the free version. We have had around 50 downloads so far. The problem is I have no way to contact these people. I do not force them to fill any forms and but there is an optional comment form below. This setup stems from the fact that I personally get annoyed when I have to fill a form to try something out. I also hoped people who are genuinely interested will email us back on their own.
Problem is its not working. No one has filled the form and no has emailed us back. Its still early days but charting is hard (the first version has taken 1 year to build) and I would love feedback from users before I start working on the next version. So do you think I should force users to fill a form ? I will explicitly state there that we might contact you to ask for suggestions etc. in the future.
Any thoughts on this would be really helpful.
ps: I know the site needs a lot of work, so be gentle, but any feedback is welcome.
thanks, Anuj.