Realizing the Cons of Over Contextualizing Stickiness
Please spend 2 Minutes to Register: I guess every website starts with this slogan now a days if you want to access their ‘proprietary’ content, however, unknown, incognizant to the context or irrelevant the information is to what they do vs. what you need. The question is: why do I need to register to a website that gives information to links to another websites? Or how about this: does a ‘Dog walking’ magazine really need my email, tel., etc to access their content. And then you have their infamous ‘disclaimer’, which I would like to have a show of hands of those who read it. And sometimes, you fill out a page with your personal information, and then get directed to another page to fill out a survey and then by the time you think you have reached your destination, the page times out. Wonderful! They got all they wanted and you got nothing but frustration. Then you want to wait for a confirmation email and click on the link and re-enter your password and login and create yet another complexity in life of remembering inane meaningless numbers. So you register and qualify your login but you are now clueless about where and who stores your information and who may just be eyeing you and what they plan to use your information for.The problem is, I DON’T WANT TO REGISTER TO YOUR WEBSITE. I AM NOT INTERESTED TO “REGISTER” TO ANYTHING. I AM NOT INTERESTED TO HAVE A LOGIN AND PASSWORD FOR ANY MORE WEBSITES. In fact, by now, I may have over 400 passwords and logins and off course I don’t remember them. I now tend to hit the ‘FORGOT PASSWORD’ button for websites that say I register sometime in the past. And if I visit a website that asks me to ‘register’, I simply leave the site.
In all the above examples, companies loose potential readership, clients and even stickiness. However, seamless and easy the process, the “create your login & password’ saga yet undeniably continues to haunt even the biggest most reputable companies. Content sensitivity is an extension of a user interface in today’s world – to put it in better words, contexual relevance and usability goes hand in hand with navigation and adaptability on website. If you are the SEC or the NSA or the FBI or a hospital, etc. off course you want to monitor use. But sites that offer free content only if you register appear to be ironic. Why do I need to register into Boston.com to view their stories? Why do I need to create a login for a theater down the street to view their seating chart? What am I going to do . . . steal their seating arrangement? Or why do I need to register at McKinsey.com to view their articles? So they can spam me to buy their ivy-league jargon crap every 30 days? Companies, under the impression of offering personalizable information are actually driving away traffic, not only that, are putting more onus on their systems to protect information that they shouldn’t collect in the 1st place.
I spoke to a few executives at companies whose websites, as I failed to understand, were collecting personal information. The general response could be summarized as: “I think we make the people visiting our website feel that the content is important and valuable and by registering users, we push content the way we want it”. So lets think for a minute here. There is really no tangible value for these companies to gather personal information. It’s essentially a market perception play. There is no value for the customer to give out his information. So I asked these executives to do a survey of people who are registered and are frequent visitors to see how many of them would want to register to their website if they were indeed first time visitors. The answer was: ZERO. No one wanted to register and they all (about 1,200 of them) thought it was annoying, frustrating and a pain to remember yet another login name. There’s your evidence, off course and although not conducted on a mass scale and in the most sophisticated manner, I can guess most people share my opinion. And mind you, these are non-subscribtion based models that don’t even offer daily content or unique content relevant to the registered users business/personal profile.
It is marketing 101 to understand that in today’s world, I am already overloaded with information and essentials that I need to remember while accessing systems (emails, your company’s ERP, HRIS systems, your credit card website, your bank website, your investment fund website, your . . . ) and having yet another login & password is probably the last thing I would want to do. I don’t even want to “opt-in” your crap. I want my information fast and I want it quickly and I want to remain anonymous.
Its like walking into a 7-Eleven or even a random neighborhood specialty store and a guy sitting in font of the door asking for your email and asking you to fill out a registration form before you enter to buy yourself a bottle of water for $0.89 cents or a pack of cigarettes. Would you go to that store given that requirement? In most cases the answer, I assume, is NO. It’s the same concept. I don’t care how specialized you are or that you sell the worlds finest chocolates from a small town store in north of Montreal with 2 chefs. If you ask me to register for a one time buy or even send me one email back selling more stuff, that is the end of my relationship with that vendor – content, service or product.
It would be good to see companies develop context sense built into their model, eCommerce or otherwise.
posted by Janak Joshi @ 3/13/2006 03:53:00 PM
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