It was recently called to my attention that a certain Fortune 500 company – remaining nameless for our purposes – decided that in addition to its high-end technology products and services, its site visitors would be interested in their corporate-branded apparel and accessories. Shirts, hats, golf balls, keychain laser pointers. All the good stuff, to be sure.
Not a bad idea, really – you spend money producing all this junk, why not try to recoup a little? At worst maybe you create a small army of walking billboards. In any case, I see the logic. What makes no sense whatsoever, though, is the fact that in order to see anything – let alone buy anything – visitors are required to create an account by filling out a registration form containing over 40 questions.
This is by far the dumbest thing I have seen in quite awhile.
Let me get this straight. To let your company advertise to me, for the privilege of parting with my hard-earned cash on third-rate products I will never use – and probably never wear because your ugly, aging logo plastered all over them (sorry, digression) – I have to give you a volume of personal information that likely qualifies as an identity thief’s wet dream? I have to tell them my job role twice. I am asked what language I speak 3 times – in English.
If, after all of this insanity, I can find my way back to the store, I get the privilege of viewing a wide range of useless tchotchkes featuring the company’s logo! Wow! How lucky can one man be???
Look, as a customer, I just want to buy something – and a process like this pretty much assures that isn’t gonna happen.
From a business perspective, I can certainly understand, and in fact often advocate – within reason – the benefits of gathering customer data via account/login creation. You know who’s visiting, how often and what they do while there. You can store info they may need later, enhancing their experience with the site, i.e. order history, billing info, etc. And of course, you can make them special offers only extended to “premier” customers. I get it. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
However, you will never realize any of the above benefits if your login process is a giant pain in the ass.
Would love to hear thoughts and ideas on this subject….
3 Comments
Amen Paul(s) — this addiction to getting customer intel is costing these companies money, and I guess it continues to surprise me that they don’t see that. To me it’s symptomatic of a larger issue — forgetting who you’re doing all this for in the first place: the customer.
Thanks for the great comments guys!!
We still come across this all the time in our work at Foviance and I, like you can’t get my head around who thinks this is a great idea. We explain time and time again that it is like putting a guard on the shop door and forcing people to have the online equivalent of their DNA record stored forever just so they can go in and shop.
If you wouldn’t do it in the offline world don’t do it in the online world! It is a fairly simple rule to follow.
Agreed.
If you want to track your users, to bring value, then tell them that up front; and if users don’t op in, I would argue that you should still let them participate, maybe just with limited functionality. This feels like an example of a marketer running amok.