UPDATE: Office, its slightly worse than cheating

I have just discovered that one of the points I made in my previous post is partially incorrect. I stated in the third dot-point,

Why do I want the new Office? What's wrong with the old (or pirated) one that I'm using right now? What's included in Ultimate? Hell, there isn't even a link to the Office site on it at all (not that I could find, and I looked unlike most other visitors)! The only somewhat helpful page is the one is the 'don't believe its real' link, and that's the boring-est page ever. Looks exactly like one of those licence agreement pages, and everyone knows noone reads them. Doesn't tell me what the lesser-known components of Office do either - wtf is InfoPath or Groove? Geez, do you expect us to go spend our precious non-drinking time researching your product too before we part with our limited cash supply? Only those who intended to buy it anyway will benefit atm (i.e. geeks who researched it, or those with new computers without Office on it at all). Sell your product (not overly, but smartly and in context with uni students) - the new UI is a good starting point because we're superficial creatures (admit it); if it looks good we're more likely to take a second look.

I obviously didn't look hard enough - the link to the official Office site and the list of what's included is there after you click on the following button on the site:
That is better but still not good enough if you ask me - the button looks like something I'd click if I was ready to make the purchase, not something I'd click to find out more (doesn't help that the button links to the digitalriver domain, but the typical person won't see that).

Anyway, assuming I stayed long enough to click on that, I get a page that gives me a quick 5 second somewhat-relevant spiel and a list of what's included (still, no explanation as to what each does). To find out more, I get redirected to the official Office site, where the site is primarily oriented towards the business customer, and offers no more information than I got before. I have to click further for that. Someone has to tell Microsoft that the more clicks a user has to click, the greater the cognitive load and the less interested they become. Anyway, assuming I click on to say the Overview page, everything there is so general you actually have to think about what's written before knowing whether you need it or not - increasing the cognitive load.

I still stand by the point I made in the above post (except the bits that are wrong, i.e. no link to Office site, no list of what's included). Too much research is required; sure some might go to the lengths of actually looking it up, but that number will be small compared to the potential hundreds of thousands of students out there wanting/needing Office.

A much better way would be to add an overview (complete with nice screenshots) on to the actual itsnotcheating site itself (with a big link on the front page), and write an overview for a student audience. Then, link that to the official site when the visitor is sucked in and wants to know more. The cognitive load is reduced substantially, and you can get a much stronger feeling of 'I need it' in the visitor, rather than 'I think I need it because I think that's what it can do for me'. Maybe Microsoft expects magazines and bloggers to write relevant pieces to provide this - wake up Microsoft, there are no student mags I know of that talk about productivity software, and the student population who'll write about this on their myspace is miniscule. You need to do the hard yards yourself, make yourself needed, make yourself look cool, make yourself desirable enough for a student to forgo a decent night out.

I posted a quick update to the post in the comments too, which I'll repeat (elaborated on and edited for clarity) here for those who missed it:

Quick update:

My mates just told me about how outragously expensive Office and Vista is, especially if they wanted at least Home Premium and needed Publisher and Access (therefore have to buy Ultimate). I directed them to the www.itsnotcheating.com.au site, but alas, it took me over 15 minutes just to try and convince them that its legit and real, and I'm still not convinced that they're convinced (don't think I could add 'convince' into that sentence again ). They're right to be skeptical - Office never sells this cheap here, especially the one with the lot.

This is real-life research showing you the site's not working.

This site isn't getting much love from Long Zheng either, though he's attacking it from a completely different angle, saying that the price is ridiculous for piracy, those who bought Home & Student, retail partners, and the true value of Office. He compares it with the full version of Office Ultimate, even though its likely the copy obtained via this promo will be an Academic/non-commercial licence. Still, his points are valid ones.

Seems like Microsoft's luck is continuing to deterioriate...