How Website Registration is Like A First Date

Cory Huff — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 15:45:05 +0000

My good friend Michael is always telling me stories about his dating life. A consistent theme in his stories is the delicate dance between getting to know someone, and asking questions that might be perceived as creepy. He needs to know what he can talk about with these women, but he can’t ask for too much information up front, or women will be scared off.

Signing up for a new website is a little bit like dating. As a brand, you need to get enough information from the website visitor to make their experience pleasant and useful. If you ask for too much information, however, they click away, never to return.

Social login is a great way to make it easy for visitors to give you their information. You just need to make sure they know what information they are giving you, and what’s in it for them to give you that info.

You can start your relationship off right by following just a few easy, clear steps.

Be Clear About What You Want

Facebook has made it very easy to clearly delineate what permissions you are asking for, and why you want these permissions. In addition to lining up each permission in a bullet point, Facebook gives you the ability to show a custom message for the registrant.

This little-used feature of Facebook registration apps can make a difference in your relationship with your customers. Learn how to customize these fields here.

Don’t Ask for Too Much Too Fast

Facebook supports the notion of progressive profiling. This means you can ask for a limited set of data up front to get the relationship started at registration and then later, when the relationship is ready, you can ask for additional information.

The key is to progressively ask for only the profile data you need, when it’s relevant to the action they want to take. This means you can ask for permission to share on their behalf when the user clicks a Share button, ask for movie interests when they join a ticket sweepstakes, or their friends’ info when its time to invite them to a party. Check out our detailed post on how to tackle progressive profiling, Don’t Be A Data Creeper.

What’s In It for Me?

Just because you know why people should register on your website, that doesn’t mean site visitors know. Lacking a clear call to action with associated benefits is one of the most common mistakes with online registration. Just like in dating, if you want something, you need to be clear about it.

Yamaha does a great job of this on their site, and offer both social login and registration with a Yamaha account identity to get the relationship started.

When the sign-in button is clicked, Yamaha clearly outlines the benefits of an information exchange.

As the web hurtles ever closer to dynamic, relationship based interactions, it is important for brands to become more engaging. Being clear about registration expectations and data exchanges is a small step in that direction.

What are some great permission screens that you have seen?

When Collecting Social Profile Data, Don’t Be a Data Creeper

Allison Park — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:00:47 +0000

Making a new friend does not usually happen overnight. Often times it takes multiple interactions to understand an individual’s personality, interests, life goals and ambitions. Moving someone from a “stranger” status to an acquaintance, friend, and eventually, an advocate requires cultivation, patience, but most importantly, information.

Building a relationship between friends is the same as building a community online. Social profile data is a valuable asset to companies wanting to build a stronger relationship with their constituency. While this data will not completely sidestep the audience courting period, it does give companies a better overview of who is visiting their sites, how they like to participate, and where to drive more traffic for better engagement opportunities. Companies just starting to delve into collecting social data should keep a few questions in mind:

What information do I want from my audience?
Why do I want this data?
How will I use it once I have it?
When is it appropriate to ask for certain permissions?

Request Information, Don’t Demand It

Audiences engage with product differently in the virtual space than they do in the physical, but users still have feelings, and the need to feel safe and comfortable in any environment. For this reason, it is important to carefully craft the permission request policy during registration. Registration flows that require many fields frequently discourage visitors from completing their account creation, but asking too little information does not provide you with the valuable social data. Where’s the balance?

While there is no one right way to develop a registration strategy, there are a few important guidelines:

1. Don’t ask for all information up front.

Like a new relationship, the fastest way to scare people off is to ask too many questions and want too much information before you’ve gotten to know them. Take it slow.

2. Ask only for the minimum required information.

Every organization will have different requirements, but the most typical registration fields include First / Last Name and email address. Keeping the initial registration process clean and simple will increase completion and conversion rates.

3. Inform and reward users for sharing information.

Being transparent with your customers is crucial to building a trusting relationship. If you identify what information will be asked of users, why it will be used, and what they will receive in return (updates, virtual or physical goods, etc.), your audience will be more likely to accept your permission request and revisit your site.

4. Ask for additional permissions at different entry points.

Using progressive permissioning is a great way to bring users into your site, cultivate a relationship, and then ask for additional information when the user 1) leaves a comment, 2) enters a sweepstakes/contest, or 3) seeks additional product information.

Befriend and Cultivate

Instituting a layered effect of information collection will not only cultivate relationships with your existing online following, but develop new relationships with prospects. How has your company encouraged engagement with your online users? Have you crafted your registration structure to minimize registration requirements? How has this affected the collection of important social data?

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