Good and Bad Installers

Posted on September 19, 2006, under Development.

Software installation is both a blessing and a curse for software developers. Like you, I have installed many applications over the years. I have tried to learn from the mistakes and annoyances I see in software I install. Here’s the break down.

Be Independent

There are a lot of install systems out there; Inno Setup, NSIS, are some of the better free alternatives in my opinion. Do not choose an installer that has a lot of dependencies like the Windows Installer. Installation should be short and sweet, and the last thing you want is Windows Installer telling your customer it needs to update to the latest version of Windows Installer in order to install your product.

Don’t Extract

This comes in two form: 1) Don’t package your installer in a zip file. Your installer should be able to compress itself down, and a Zip file is only going to add one more thing your end user has to do in order to install your product. 2) In addition, do not have your installer extract files into another folder, and then install itself from those extracted files. Recently I installed a trial version of Diskeeper. The setup file I downloaded first extracted itself to a directory of my choice, and then installed itself. Not only was this annoying, but it left the setup files behind for me to manually delete.

Keep It Short and Honest

Don’t ask too many questions on the install, and make your default options honest. Don’t check items by default if they are not necessary to run the basic functionality of your application. This list includes: Adobe Acrobat, System Menus, Auto Start, Toolbars, Flash, Spyware, or other “add-ons” that some installers throw in for no reason. No body wants to have to answer a ton of questions or hunt to make sure that you are not doing anything bad, just to try out your application.

Wait to Register

Don’t ask for registration information during the install. In most cases this is not a necessary step to try your product, and people may think they need registration information in order to try the program out and exit the installer cold.

Don’t Be Personal

This is really before the installation, but a customer should not have to create an account in order to download your application. Changes are people who sign up aren’t giving you correct information, because they know you are going to sign them up for a company newsletters that they do not want to have to worry about getting off of. If a user is interested in your company and your products, they are probably capable of getting the required information from your website.

Conclusion

Yes, as always there are some instances where one or more of these can/should/and will be broken. However, every step you make your customer go through, is one more exit point for a percentage of your customers. Don’t make it difficult for a customer to be a customer!

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