Thoughts about registration

Is it a pain or not?

[toolman]

I was just over at an airline site looking at ticket prices. I saw a link to a partner site that promised a better deal.

The cool part was they transferred my form data to the new site. The bad part was I had to "register" just to see if there was an available flight. Guess what I did?

Back button.

Does everyone else do this or am I in the minority. To me, from my own experience, it is bad, bad, bad to make a customer register if you want to keep the site sticky.

[Key_Master]

Agreed.

[mivox]

I have a PO Box and junk email I use for that sort of thing. If I wanted cheaper airline tickets, I'd probably do it. For most sites, no way.

[mayor]

Just register as Daffy Duck.

[click watcher]

>>>I had to "register" just to see

i agree, its not a question of real/fake details, it really annoys me to have to register just to find out info, so i do the back button thing too.

[webworkz]

I fully agree. There should be no registration for access to information.

One thing that really annoys me:
When webmasters have registration requirements just to view product information/prices on ecommerce web sites.

If anything, an account should be automatically created based on details entered when the customer places an order.

Agreed?

Justin Dalrymple

[chiyo]

it really depends on why you register correct?

If the info is not available anywhere else, you will register. If you like the feel of community you will register. If there are tangible benefits for you, you will register. If none of these, well most people wouldnt bother.

So it differs from site and site, depending on their use. I think the only places i have registered are WMW, Yahoo, and the New York Times - they all have benefits i cant get anywhere else.

[toolman]

You're correct chiyo...if it's something you want bad enough. Webmaster world has a need for registration obviously. I'm talking about sites that want you to register to "continue" or to access information in a commercial site, as in arline tickets etc.

What point does it serve other than to prove the site owners are control freaks?

[ggrot]

You can also use this to encourage an individual to give up email information such that you can mail them at a later date(not a good reason). You might also have registration on a site that provides dynamic information that comes in the form of an image or some other bandwidth expensive form. You might have each registered account limited on the amount of 'free' information that they can use. You might require registration for a free trial of a product to be sure a person doesn't use the trial too many times(credit card #s ensure this). There are plenty of good reasons to register for free information.

[webworkz]

Sure, there are tons of good reasons to register at web sites, in fact I operate several registration-required web sites.. but registration for access to airline ticket information? Come on now...

Justin Dalrymple

[IanTurner]

I don't think that registration to purchase is a good plan. It certainly turns customers like me away from a site.

However - registration is useful for obtaining emails for marketing purposes. So I try and get customers to register for newsletters, or for free software/trial periods.

[kaleidox]

I can't imagine ever actually filling out a registration form on a website with real information, unless I have already selected Check Out and I am about to give up my CC#. eCommerce is a grand thing, but willingly subscribing to junkmail?

I guess I am a(nother) webmaster's nightmare - I almost take pleasure in filling out registration forms with bogus (hit random keys for each field) information. I realize it takes the webmaster a scant nanosecond to ignore and delete my input, but it somehow makes ME feel good.

I subscribe to a few hobby-related newsletters, but I wouldn't even consider giving up any real information - just a throwaway hotmail/hushmail type account and a bunch of "Name: skjdhfdjsk Address: asdassa" nonsense. If that isn't sufficient, I go elsewhere. It is astonishingly rare (unheard of?) for useful information on the net to be restricted to just one site or a single newsletter, so like the picky consumer that I am, I go elsewhere.

A form for cheap airline tickets? If I were to spend any time at all on that site, I would fill the form out - six or seven times, with a automated form-filler and useless information. I just can't resist throwing a brick when I see something that so thoroughly ticks me off, and ever since Serial became PPP, Lynx became Mosaic and ASCII became dynamic stereoscopic dancing bears, a large chunk of the web has tweaked this particular pet peeve.

Guess I digressed a tad...