Ways to enhance a trial user's first time experience

Question

I am looking for some ideas on enhancing a trial-user's user experience when he uses a product for the first time. The product is aimed at a particular domain and has various features/workflows. Experienced users of the product naturally find interesting ways to combine features to get the results they want (somewhat like using an IDE from a programmer's perspective).Trial users get to use all features of the product in a limited fashion (For ex: If there is a search functionality, the trial-user might see only the top 20 results, or he may be allowed to search only a 100 times). My question is: What are the best ways to help a trial-user explore/understand the possibilities of the product in the trial period, especially in the first 20 - 60 mins before the user gives up on the product?

Edit 1: The product is a desktop app (served via JNLP, so no install required) and as pointed out in the comments, the expectations can be different in this case. That said, many webapps do take a virtual desktop form and so, all suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

Check out how blinksale.com handles this. It's an invoicing app, but to prevent it from looking too empty for a new account, they show static images in places where you'd actually have content if you used the app. Makes it look less barren at first until you get your own data in.

Answer 2

if you can, avoid feature limiting a trial. it stops the user from experiencing what the product is ACTUALLY like. It also prevents a user from finding out if a feature actually works like they want/expect/need it to.

if you have a trial version, and you can, optimise it for first time use. focus on / highlight the features that allow the user to quickly and easily get benefits for useful output from the system.

allow users to export any data they enter into a trial system - and indicate that this is possible/easy. you don't want them to be put off from trying something because of a potential for wasted effort.

avoid users being required to do lots of configuration before using a trial. prepopulate settings based on typical/common/popular settings. you may also want to consider having default settings for different types of usage. e.g. "If you want to see what the system is like for scenario X, use configuration J. If you want to see what the system is like for use case Y, use configuration K." where J & K are collections of settings best suited to a particular type of usage.