Product Materials

The following is a guide to materials that are suitable for our Web site. Many of these may be included during the evaluation or retail installations.

Adobe Acrobat ReaderAcrobat Files (PDF) - Showing online documentation or manuals presenting a large amount of detailed technical information. We provide a free Acrobat Reader on our Web site.

Adobe Acrobat ReaderCase Studies - Customer success stories are a good idea - as they show practical applications for your product in the field. It is important to have Case Studies from as many market sectors as possible. e.g. Banking, Pharmaceutical, Retail, Telecoms, etc...

DemosDemonstrations - Ideally these should be capable of running directly from the Web site without running a setup or installation program. They should show the main benefits of the product as fast as possible to a prospective customer.

Word DocsDocuments - These can present any details you like about your product: Data Specification Sheets; a Technical White Paper or a Customer Case Study, Press Releases related to a specific product, Return On Investment (ROI) justification, Installation instructions, Documentation & Reference Guides.

Evals & TrialsEvaluations - Often the best way to present your software, however, please make sure they are "limited" or well protected. For example, an evaluation for a product that works for 30 days may mean the customer can use your product for his current project and then discard it without purchasing a full copy. Limit your evaluation to 5 or 10 days or make sure it cannot be distributed within an application.

Note: The evaluation or trial should ideally not need any additional keys or serial numbers to make it work. If the evaluation has to have an additional key or serial number - that additional key or serial number should be the same for all ComponentSource users or evaluators. The reason for this is that 10,000's of files and evaluations are downloaded every month from our Web site we therefore cannot afford to spend large amounts of time keeping "evaluation serial number or key inventory data" up to date. As the keys are used up - we would have to be continually re-stocking them; this would involve both of us in a very large maintenance task. It is therefore much better if the trials or evaluations can be uploaded to our FTP servers and left there without the need for additional maintenance from either of us. Please try and consider this when you are creating your evaluation or trial copies for download from ComponentSource. (We are happy to put our maintenance efforts into this type of serial number maintenance task for "full product license sales", but we cannot do it for free evaluations).

Evaluation Process:

  • Customer registers with ComponentSource, for evaluations only the customer need only register their email address and country in which the live
  • Once registered they may download any evaluation software from our Web site that is available in the "evals & demos" area. Most software within this section has some kind of limited functionality or time bomb that is detonated at the point of installation
  • ComponentSource follows up with all evaluators to encourage the purchase of the software evaluated
  • When the customer comes to purchase they must complete a full registration and make payment or arranged payment method before the software is dispatched to them. The full registration includes details of license address, billing address, user name, company etc

FAQsFAQs - These help a customer to understand a lot more details about your product. You can provide these Frequently Asked Questions and answers in HTML, Word or any other file format.

FlashFlash - Flash based presentations and videos are a great way to visually present the product benefits and features to a customer. These should provide an overview of the product and quickly show the user with workflow, architecture diagrams and screen-shots how the product will help the user solve his/her problems.

Help files & docsHelp Files - Showing the customer the functionality and the potential quality of the software they are intending to buy in great detail. Your Help File should contain an "Introduction" or "Overview" of the product, as well as the standard "Reference Guide" and "FAQ" sections. Where possibly appropriate screenshots and examples should be used to add to the overall value of the Help File.

HTML pagesHTML Pages - Showing a great deal of information about your product, including screenshots, sample output, etc. Please be careful to check all your links when submitting selected Web pages from your Web site and that they correctly link to the pages for inclusion on our Web site.

OrderingOrdering Details - Where you have a description of "How to Order" your product in all your materials, we would ask that this be customizable by us or changed by you to mention ComponentSource as the only Reseller. (Remember - we do not charge large advertising fees to appear on our Web site - so we can only make our business model work when we sell your product).

PowerPoint or PresentationsPresentations - Presenting an overview of the product benefits and features. These should provide an overview of the product and quickly show the user with workflow, architecture diagrams and screen-shots how the product will help the user solve his/her problems.

Product ToursProduct Tours - Videos, product overviews and "screencam" presentations are a good way to present the product benefits and features to a customer. These again should provide an overview of the product and quickly show the user with workflow, architecture diagrams and screen-shots how the product will help the user solve his/her problems.

ScreenshotsScreenshots or Diagrams - Probably the best way to get the concept of what your product is about across to a user quickly. For a user interface component a good set of screenshots is essential. For a non-visual product - a diagram that shows how the product fits into an architecture or process flow is a good idea.

Specifications & UML modelsSpecifications - Outlining the detailed technical functionality of the product. If need be you can provide UML or MDL model diagrams or product architecture, system, process or workflow diagrams. These are very popular with our system design and architecture user audience.

XLS & SpreadsheetsSpreadsheets - Presenting component, tool or add-in functionality is not the only important message, showing our users the potential Return On Investment (ROI) when they buy your product is also very useful, particularly for higher priced products.

Wordpad, Notepad, Text & WriteText or Write Files - Text files with latest information on versions or revisions to keep the developer up-to-date with your "patch" releases. These are also very useful for ReadMe.txt files that you typically download with evaluations and/or demos of your products.

Adobe Acrobat ReaderWhite Papers - Helping to position your product in your specific target market area. White Papers are always popular with developers and give them added value when they look at your products.

WebinarsWebinar Recordings - Downloadable presentations or recordings of presentations and Webinars are useful for our users, particularly for more detailed overviews and training on product functionality and the differences between different product offerings or editions.