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Has ever happened to you? You were surfing the web or watching TV or driving or listening to the radio and you saw or heard something that caused you to grab your trusty computer and type in a URL. Fabulous! Guess what, us marketers love to hear you have done that because most of the time, it was some sort of marketing or advertising which grabbed your attention enough that you literally went to where we wanted you to go. Great news!
Now tell me if this has happened to you. When you got to the URL, before you can do what you went to do on the web page, you need to register and the registration form was longer than the Magna Carta? Yup, this has happened to me a number of times as well and I have been wondering just how many people stop right there and do not continue with the web site because either the web site was forcing a registration or that the registration page was just too long.
I understand the rationale involved with registration pages. Web site owners want to capture as much information as possible about their users and hopefully be able to use that information to market to their users better. Though I have been thinking that for a great many of these sites there is another reason. Many of these web sites are not offering enough for a user to come back a second time, so this is the first and ONLY time they have to get as much information out of their users as possible.
Here’s an experiment I would like to do. Develop a web site that the initial registration is three questions; first name, email address and zip code. That’s it. With that information, I can contact this person again, I can personalize that next communication with his or her first name and I know what part of the country they live in. Now if I created a site that offers people something of value they will want to come back time and time again and as they come back again and again, I can ask them further questions about themselves. And I bet if they see the value in my web site as well as the reasons why I am asking, they will be that much more willing to share their information with me.
What are your thoughts? Do long registration pages turn you off and stop you from registering?
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If someone wants me to register for their site, they better have something I really really really really really really really really want.
And they better give me a taste of what’s inside. They better have a good lead paragraph and have me salivating more than I would for a huge greasy slice of NY style of pepperoni pizza.
And also, blogs - do not make me register to comment. So annoying!
Absolutely yes, it is a turn-off. I immediately do a quick scan and if it looks like I’m filling out closing papers for a house, I just skip it.
Yeah, I agree. Personally, the example that infuriates me most is registering for my local newspapers’ sites. I just refuse to do it. To have to register for my local paper, and then log in to read a specific article about local news drives me nuts.
Definitely a turn off.
Usually I say this about email subscription forms, but it works for registration pages as well: Your registration page is like a first date, because essentially you are building a relationship with these people. And like a first date - if you ask too many personal questions, you’ll scare the person off. Of course as the relationship continues, you’ll have ample opportunity to find out everything you need to know anyway.
It’s that simple, yet so many still have a hard time grasping it.
I like phone number instead of zip code. Just don’t make it a mandatory. You can get geo information from the area code.
A turn-off.
I love the idea of gathering more information with each future visit.
It’s as if each piece of information you gain from a customer is currency. If you want to play, you’ve got to pay. Asking people 3 questions up front seems to be a small price to pay to gain access.
You are on point about this one Cord but you missed 1 huge point.
Most of the information they end up collecting won’t ever, in any way contribute to my improved user experience. Only their ability to show demographic information to prospective advertisers and make them feel like they know their audience.
At the end of the day, a site that this doesn’t have the foresight to realize how large the barrier and great the cost of alienating even one user is, wouldn’t know what to do with that much data anyway. They only see users for their eyeballs that are to be sold or manipulated and not as the critical thinking, feedback giving, conversation having, hyper linking, content creating, intelligence mining resources that they really are.
On another note, if you really want to add value to user experience, look at all the great data that is available without ever having to ask question one. Browser type/version, os, referring source, network location and geo location are all available at the moment a user hits your site.
If they really cared, they could start by letting me get to the info i was seeking as quickly as possible and using the available intel to enhance my experience.
Its always funny when you have to fill out more information to get a free dove sample then to get a credit card.
Yeah man, you’re right on the money here. The deal is that these sites, they want to get all your info right away because they fear that you’ll never be back. Well, that’s probably the truth! If all you’re offering the consumer is this one time freebie - what reason would I have to return?
Here’s an idea. Why don’t you create a positive experience to begin with - one where I can’t help but return again and again to your site. If I can get useful information or have a positive experience with a site, you bet I’m coming back… and as that relationship grows, eventually I’ll get to the place where I’ll want to give you my information so that you can offer me more products and services… because at this point I trust you!
Create a reason to have a relationship first - don’t try to force the relationship onto your consumers!
-Matt
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http://www.musicnuvo.com
musicnuvo.wordpress.com
It depends how badly I want what they’ve got to offer, but usually I’m irritated enough to calm my desire a bit.
Another thing, I’ll probably never go to that website again . . . even if they’ve stopped asking for information from me. They’ll never get a chance to let me know they’ve stopped.
Been there, seen that. And my feeling is that this happens when lazy marketers rely on the ‘Interweb’… like the virtual Yellow Pages it really is…to find ‘customers’.
Remember when real marketing success was understanding your customer and targeting them in order to engage them in a mutually beneficial dialogue?
Today, for too many, it’s not about the customer, it’s about the channel. Ask them who they are targeting, and they will tell you ‘those interested in what we sell’…and the scary part is that that description is about all they ‘know’ about the target audience.
Ask me lots of questions, chase me away.
Talk to me. Engage me in conversation. Show me that you have something I will value. I will talk and talk and talk…and eventually, I will buy.
If my experience matches the expectations you helped me establish, I continue to buy and I refer.
But that’s too much work for most today. Instead, it’s 100 Questions followed by another 50 that prove you didn’t read or analyze the first 100. And then, as the frosting on the cake, you try to force me to buy something I don’t need or want..typically by slashing the price because, as we all know, cheaper useless shit is what we all want!!
Yet it is all about the lead. It’s all about the quantity. Forget quality. Hell, forget sales. It’s all about driving traffic…preferably through a MySpace or Facebook page or Youtube video.
“Look, we have more than 10,000 friends on MySpace!”
“Look, we haven’t hit our sales goals! You’re fired.”
Most of the time I want to satisfy the need to pass a short comment. If I need an account, have to jump through hoops or whatever then I’m gone. blogspot sites are the worst - sometimes you have to sign in and the only thing that people will see if they happen to want to talk to you more is a really limited profile page, then they have to find a blog set up just to say “go here” then they have to go… unsurprisingly I never hear back from such comments and so I never leave them anymore.
nice one my friend, leave he shit to the mugs who create it. Content rues every time.
The Baldchemist
Cord, one marketing team I worked on did exactly what you’d wish for - to only ask for the data that was relevant for that ‘transaction’. If you wanted to sign up for an online newsletter, you only needed the email address, etc. It was our responsibility to add value to the relationship, to earn more information about our audience. One term for the practice was ‘progressive profiling’ (which sounds a bit creepy), but the idea was not to make our data need become our customers problem. Unfortunately, it wasn’t popular with the rest of Marketing because the view was that a record was ‘incomplete’ and if we only captured all the data up front, we would be able to use the contacts for more marketing activities. So long progressive profiling, hello mortgage form.
This is an excellent fact man, presented in a very simple manner.What you are explaining is certainly one of the most important reason why an user hate to visit a website which takes unnecessary information from her.
Good post … should be obvious, but unfortunately it’s not … that’s why sites like dodgit.com exist. [In fact, it would be interesting to see a study done on how reliable the info provided for these bogus registrations is … I’ll bet it’s not that great.]
However, I have to respectfully disagree with Jeremy in re asking for telephone nos. instead of zip codes … I know that personally I’m much more willing to give a zip code than my phone … don’t want to accidentally take it *off* the “do not call” list … and I suspect that I’m not alone in this.