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Does Site Registration Make Sense For Your Business?
By Mike Moran
Expert Author
Article Date: 2009-11-13
A debate has raged for years as to whether you should place your juiciest content behind registration pages that visitors must fill out before seeing the good stuff. Some proponents argue that collecting that registration information is an ideal way to boost your marketing mailing lists. Others say that it ruins your search marketing and is nasty to your visitors. Who's right?
You know the kinds of pages that I am talking about: "Click here for our latest white paper on the three simple steps that totally eliminate global warming, except first give us your name, your email address, and your underwear size." These so-called "forced" registration pages are all over the Web, and for good reason. They work.
Whenever you take content that people want, and hold them up for their personal information before you show it to them, some of them will comply. So, if your goal is to add names to your mailing list, forced registration pages will do that. In that sense, they work.
But is adding to your mailing list your real goal? You might want to ask yourself a couple of questions:- Is the information you receive accurate? If you force people to provide an email address, they will, but it might be billg@microsoft.com, rather than their own real information.
- Are these people qualified leads? As you fatten your mailing list, the question is what you can now do with those email addresses. You can contact these people, but because you forced the information from them, you can't tell whether they are interested in buying your product or just doing what's required to get the information they want.
For some marketers, adding names to the mailing list fits right in with their other marketing activities; it's measurable, and it's the way to go. They argue that they know exactly how much each new email address is worth, so whatever they can do to collect more is the right tactic.
But others might paraphrase Ronald Reagan, asking that we tear down these walled gardens. They have their reasons, too:- Better searchability. Google can't find what it doesn't see, and it can't enter any email addresses into your Website, so all those exciting pages are hidden from search engines. Removing forced registration can boost your search performance.
- More links. Few sites will link to a page that immediately demands private information, so your best content will end up with the fewest links. Opening up the content will cause more visitors to find links to that content and will boost your search rankings, too.
- More pass-alongs. Readers won't send your content to others, either using social bookmarks or email, because they'll not want to subject their friends to your intrusive form. Tearing down the wall makes your content a more likely pass-along.
- Better customer relations. Some argue that anything you do to coerce your customer is a bad start to a relationship that needs to be voluntary, and is just a nasty way to do business. They prefer to attract rather than force, and believe that approach sets a tone for creating customer advocates.
So, where do you stand: fatter mailing lists or better visibility? It sounds like a religious argument, but it doesn't have to be. Test it. Try opening up one of your precious case studies for a few months and place a button on the screen that lets people voluntarily give you their address to be contacted after reading the document. Then check to see if those voluntary leads get you more sales than the old coerced ones did.
Every time one of my clients has tested it, they've discovered that taking down the forced registration page is best. But don't take my word for it. Test it yourself.
If your email list is so potent that you convert more customers than the extra visibility buys you, then that might be the right technique for you. But the great thing about the Internet is that you can test anything, rather than merely argue its pros and cons. Test your registration pages and see what makes sense for your business.
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About the Author:
Copyright Mike Moran
Mike Moran is an IBM Distinguished Engineer, expert on Internet marketing, and the author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc., the best-selling book on search marketing. Mike also writes the popular Biznology newsletter and blog.
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