Saturday, February 12, 2005
Opinion: On-line Registration
Everyone has had to put up with on-line registration at one time or another, and almost everyone resents it. Not only is it inconvenient and irritating, but it is potentially a risk to your privacy depending on the site's policies for managing personal data.
Perhaps most frustrating of all are sites that restrict information -- brochures, white papers, product spec sheets and the like -- from users who prefer not to register. It is in the site's best interest to allow prospects to easily obtain company information. Forced registration puts an arbitrary obstacle between you products and services and your prospects. It is simply bad for business.
Even though designers, developers, and customers all recognize that forcing registration is controversial at best, registration is still enforced all too frequently and even worse, the data captured often times extends well beyond the reasonable core contact information.
In my experience working as a Web and Graphic designer in a variety of industries over the years, it appears that this problem is consistently perpetuated by Marketers hell bent on lead generation. (Note that the term isn't valid lead generation.) By putting registration in between your customer and their goal, you are likely to receive invalid data. So now, not only have you irritated your customer, but you have gathered no valuable data and have compromised the integrity of the data you do have.
If you absolutely must force user registration in an effort to obtain hot leads for sales, I recommend you adhere to the following guidelines:
1. Give customers something valuable for their trouble: Rebates, discounted pricing, chances to win prizes -- all of these are reasonable offerings that can justify a registration request.
2. Ask for a minimal amount of personal information: Don't force registrants to give up too much personal data or they will enter bogus information. Your inside sales force should qualify the leads. All that should be captured during registration is the bare minimum: Name, Company, and e-mail. Questions about job function, ability to purchase and make recommendations, annual revenue, etc. have no place on a user registration form.
3. Always have a contact opt-in check box, unchecked: Do not pre-check and opt-in box. Yes, this practice has become ubiquitous. But it is devious and underhanded and says only bad things about your organization.
4. Link to your privacy policy from the registration form: If you are going to ask for personal information, make sure it is easy for customers to learn what you are going to do with it.
Perhaps most frustrating of all are sites that restrict information -- brochures, white papers, product spec sheets and the like -- from users who prefer not to register. It is in the site's best interest to allow prospects to easily obtain company information. Forced registration puts an arbitrary obstacle between you products and services and your prospects. It is simply bad for business.
Even though designers, developers, and customers all recognize that forcing registration is controversial at best, registration is still enforced all too frequently and even worse, the data captured often times extends well beyond the reasonable core contact information.
In my experience working as a Web and Graphic designer in a variety of industries over the years, it appears that this problem is consistently perpetuated by Marketers hell bent on lead generation. (Note that the term isn't valid lead generation.) By putting registration in between your customer and their goal, you are likely to receive invalid data. So now, not only have you irritated your customer, but you have gathered no valuable data and have compromised the integrity of the data you do have.
If you absolutely must force user registration in an effort to obtain hot leads for sales, I recommend you adhere to the following guidelines:
1. Give customers something valuable for their trouble: Rebates, discounted pricing, chances to win prizes -- all of these are reasonable offerings that can justify a registration request.
2. Ask for a minimal amount of personal information: Don't force registrants to give up too much personal data or they will enter bogus information. Your inside sales force should qualify the leads. All that should be captured during registration is the bare minimum: Name, Company, and e-mail. Questions about job function, ability to purchase and make recommendations, annual revenue, etc. have no place on a user registration form.
3. Always have a contact opt-in check box, unchecked: Do not pre-check and opt-in box. Yes, this practice has become ubiquitous. But it is devious and underhanded and says only bad things about your organization.
4. Link to your privacy policy from the registration form: If you are going to ask for personal information, make sure it is easy for customers to learn what you are going to do with it.
