How to Not Ask for E-mail Addresses
Posted: August 5, 2008 • Filed under: rantsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed to get the latest posts, Thanks for visiting! If you want to link to me or this post please read how to link to me
I was looking around for furniture in San Francisco and came across a site called “yourfurnituteoutlet.com.” The site sounded promising so I clicked on the link and was taken to a page that looked like this:
The furniture from the pictures looked good, there was only one main problem. I was asked to enter my e-mail address before I was given access to the site. Keep in mind that this was not an optional field, entering an email address was a requirement to view any content, so I did what anyone else would do, I clicked the back button.
I’m all for getting e-mail addresses from people but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The right way is to make it optional for the visitors to input their e-mail addresses. It is then up to the person collecting the e-mails to provide something of value to the subscribers (and not just spam them). The wrong way to collect e-mail addresses is to make it a requirement. If you force visitors to input their e-mail information then usually one of two things are going to happen. Either the user will leave the site, or the user will input a fake or junk e-mail address that they don’t use anymore.
A far better approach for the furniture website would have been to allow visitors to enter the site and then offer special discounts or bonuses for inputting in their e-mails. Not only does this make it more user friendly, but it also means that the users are already showing a sign of commitment. The second you bring in a “requirement” into the equation you begin to cause doubts in the visitor’s mind. I mean why should I or anyone else visiting the site waste their time putting in their e-mail address to a site that is going to most likely spam them with content. I can just hit the back button and go to another site that will let me view their information for free.
Attention is a valuable currency don’t abuse it by making requirements, you are there to help the visitor not the other way around.
Do you have a subscriber base? what do you find to be the most effective way to get users to input their e-mails?
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