The idea of offering a reduced version of the software for trial has been discussed quite a bit within these forums. Also, some have suggested that a shorter trial is better than a longer one.

We want to give users a good understanding of our software before they buy. It is technical modeling software in the $500 range. Our target is engineers, and technicians in small to medium businesses.

Our options so far for a 30 day trial are:

* Reduce the size of the models and feature capabilities to a few elements so that you can't build very commercially viable solutions with the trial version.

* Give the full software, but don't let users save models. This would limit the ability to test the software on more sophisticated problems - and to learn its use over a few days.

* Full functionality and printing results of the model with a background that says: "Trial version -- Company Name -- URL"

* Other ideas?

What do you think will work best?

I'd love to hear creative ideas on how to make the trial a great experience for users, but they walk away with hunger to buy it. Do you have any stats sales improvement for a particular trial strategy?

Thanks.