Re: Registration pages: A hinderance?

From: Miki Dzugan <mdzugan_at_markneting.com>
Date: Wed 04 Apr 2001 10:59:33 -0600

MIKE DRIEHOSRT <miked_at_lmgnet.com> WROTE:

> A question was raised by one of my company's clients
> as to whether requiring registration for certain parts
> of site deters users.

<snip>

> Does anyone have examples or opinions as to if users
> of B2B sites generally like or dislike being required
> to register, and what, if any impact registration has
> on site traffic?
>

Whether or not you require registration on your site in
order for visitors to use certain features should
depend entirely on your purpose for having the service
at your site.

If the free service is set up in such a way that it may
lead the user to register with the site, such as a
mortgage calculator on a financing Web site, the site
owner may decide to allow free use of the calculator
hoping that the good will generated by its availability
will lead to filling out an inquiry form (registering).

Electric Library, elibrary.com, has made smart use of
free access for years by allowing anyone to search for
information in any of their resources. Once information
has been found, if it is "premium" content, a request
for registration is made at that time. The user can
decide if the information is worth paying for, once
the title and description of the articles have been
viewed.

On the other hand, the pay for placement search engine
GoTo.com has a handy tool, which reports how many
searches were made on a given term in a recent month.
This tool became so popular with Web developers and
marketing people that GoTo decided to make it available
only after the visitor has signed up to become an
advertiser. In this case it evidently was not worth
the server time and bandwidth to support all of the
free use.

The bottom line in your decision should be whether you
might be losing prospects by requiring registration to
use your online tools, or simply filtering out the
freeloaders.

--
Miki Dzugan
MARKnETING
Integrating the 'net into your marketing.
http://www.markneting.com
651-454-5323



Received on Wed Apr 04 2001 - 11:59:33 CDT