Want a Live Demo? You Got It.

One of the factors behind the success of software is the ability for the user to test out what they are buying – before they buy it.

I’m not insinuating in any way that Soliloquy is or will become a huge success (although I hope it does!), but these companies that provide that type of benefit to their potential customers are doing it right – and here’s why:

1. It promotes complete transparency. You can’t hide behind claims when a user has full access to demoing your product. Say all the stuff you want, but they are going to have a tough time believing your marketing jargon until they have witnessed and tasted it for themselves.
2. It builds a sense of understanding around your product. Customers that have tested your product at least know in some part your product. They no longer only know what you tell them – they know themselves what they have experienced when interacting with your product.
3. It reduces pre-sales questions. What better way to answer pre-sales questions than to have the user test it out and answer it themselves?
4. It builds trust around your product. Trust is huge. It’s hard to refer people to buy/use something that you yourself cannot reliably guarantee. Providing access to a full demo of your product lets both the referrer and the referred rest easy because they know exactly what they are purchasing.

All of that to say this – Soliloquy now has a fully featured demo site.

Today I am announcing the Soliloquy demo site. This site gives you full access to test out Soliloquy and all of its features. You can upload images, sort/modify/delete them, alter the slider settings even see what it will look like by viewing the home page! I’ve set it up to where the sliders are automatically displayed on the front page so you can get an idea of how they will look in real life.

Since this is a demo site, I’ve had to restrict some things on it – but nothing in regards to the plugin itself. I’ve placed a limit of 5 slider instances at any given time, and all slider data and associated images are completely wiped every 3 hours. I’ve also registered some additional image sizes to choose from that do not come with the plugin (simply for testing purposes). Otherwise, the plugin functions exactly the same as on a real install.

And that’s not all. I will release the code I use to the public so that you too can benefit from having fully featured demos for your premium plugins.

It will be in the form of a tutorial. I’ll explain how it is accomplished, how you can lock down security and stay away from privilege escalation and how you can setup a cron job on your server to wipe test data out every so often. I’ve learned a lot from the WordPress community, so the least I can do is continue to give back by way of teaching you how to do it, but more importantly, how to do it right.

So let’s get started, shall we?

Login Access and Creds

URL: http://demo.soliloquywp.com/wp-admin/
Username: demo
Password: demo

Go ahead and have a try – upload some images and give Soliloquy a spin. I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Published by Thomas Griffin