Many sites now offer some sort of user registration as a means to provide additional (hopefully cool & useful) functionality to identified users, as well as a means to capture data about the user to sell them lots and lots of ’stuff’. Fair dos. We live in a commercial world and this is to be expected to some extent but users also now expect some sort of payback for becoming a member that doesn’t consist of buying more ’stuff’. It’s kinda like a give-and-take relationship.

So the user is happily browsing your site, experiencing all the content you’ve laid out for them, when they suddenly hit a barrier … ’sign up to [insert enticing functionality here]‘. This is the point where users do a quick, subconscious analysis of the site and company behind it to decide whether they want to make this ‘long-term committment’. I say long-term committment because to the users, this may be how it seems. They’ll expect that once they sign up, there’ll be the bliss of accessing great stuff but there’ll also be a range of direct / indirect annoyances along the way. These could be anything from being on the receiving end of email (or offline) marketing bombardments, having your details ’sold off’ to partners (despite what you say!), having your online activity tracked, having to come up with (and remembering!) yet another set of login details, etc. And to round it all off, users – from experience – may think of this signing up as an unreversible action in that you may be able delete your account but once marketers have your details, you’ll never get them to let them go! Certainly, unsuccessful experiences of ‘unsubscribing from mailshots has helped plant this thought in my head.

So. Back to the will-he / won’t-he user. When faced with having to register, users may consider a number of things about the site and company:

• Do I trust this company? Will they use my details in an unprofessional manner? This impression of trust, integrity and professionalism is gleaned from all interactions users have with your company – from Word of Mouth to TV advertisements, all the way through to their experience on your site. Do you ask for waaayyyy too much data? Do you make me sit there and fill out huge boring forms? Trust and credibility can be enhanced through the creative on the site as well as the content you give your users. Do you give them somewhere they can leave feedback? Is your real address on the site? Is there positive information about the type of company / people you are? Do you re-invest your money into environmental or community projects? Is your site updated – is there actually anyone there? Trust can be assumed though. For sites like Facebook, where all your friends may be using it, users may be less analytical about it due to an over-riding desire to ‘join in’ or not get ‘left behind’.
• How much do I want the content or functionality? This is a key question. Registration may be free (i.e. no monetary value) but users have to pay with their details. If you content is enticing enough, they will sign up. It’s important to emphasise what users will get by registering, before they register. Let users know how much convenience and value they will get in return for being a member.
• How long am I going to be here? Don’t make the form dauntingly long. There’s nothing worse than users deciding they want to join and then are crapping their pants over the amount of information they have to provide. It’s a website, don’t make it look like a tax form or an exam. Sometimes there really is a certain amount of data you need, so collect it in a nicer way. Visually enrich the form so it’s more engaging and attractive. Add cool functionality to make it more interactive. Add reassuring text where required and add on-demand supplementary information when requested. I also think it’s best to use standard login detail formats so users can re-use their usual login details. This might not be possible, so have a good password retrieval process.

That’s all I can think of right now. I need lunch.

Working in the digital sphere and working with / pushing the boundaries of web technologies, one thing we often forget is that there are limits to what people can do on your website, for many particular types of sites. For these types of sites, you can’t expect your site to replace all other touchpoints with your users, but merely complement and enhance them. My wife, flicking through her IKEA catalogue mentioned “now I can see things more clearly”. What she meant was although the website’s great at helping her find products (good site navigational / organisational / labelling systems are in place) and inspire her by presenting different room styles, her experience then needs to go to the next stage further with offline interactions with the company.

To see products in more detail users will need to go in-store or at least pick up a catalogue. Catalogues are a different type of beast to websites. Websites are limited by a certain screen size / real estate and location-based restrictions whereas a catalogue, designed well, can be a leisurely browse over a cup of tea, or on a train-journey. And as more and more of what we do is online, from work to home-management, then I find that there’s more and more that I want to do offline. This particularly includes reading of articles or sanity checking my own work.

It’s so much harder to concentrate on something when staring at a screen. When it’s printed out, you can conveniently read it where you like, at your own pace, hold it at a comfortable height, you can mark it up and you can write all over it. These tasks are still, to some extent, not being adequately replaced by computers – though they may try. The more and more we do online, the more enjoyable things we do offline have become, and companies have to remember not to neglect this space but to take advantage of it and continue the experience through.

Particularly true to shopping for furniture and cars, to name but two.

Lots of factors contribute to a successful online presence for a brand in today’s clued-up consumer world. No longer can you say something on a tv ad (through a celebrity or half-naked model) and we’ll buy it – both what you say and you product. These days people – experienced, slightly-cynical, digitally-networked, and information-rich consumers – will do alot more research to buy most things. Probably the item’s value corresponding to the amount of research done. And researching is so easy. Thanks to the continual advancement of search engines, and the web as a whole, 10 minutes in front of a PC is enough to unearth all the bad things people have ever said about your product, brand, CEO, website, or service. That’s right, once it’s out there it’s there to stay. But it’s not just the access to more information, demos, (price) comparisons, professional reviews, images, and so on. It’s the increased access to people, those we know and those we don’t.

People have always asked for the opinions of their friends and family when researching purchases but the proliferation of instant messenger (MSN), internet telephony (Skype), forums, social networking (twitter, facebook), and articles and user comments mean real opinions are never hard to find. Even online playback of tv shows like iPlayer or on YouTube mean tv shows you miss can be re-watched on the web. In this type of consumer world the brands are faced with potential time bombs in every thing they do, customer-facing or not. Do something fishy and there’s always someone on hand with a camera phone and a one-click-publishing button just waiting to post it online and be the creator of the next big brand-bashing viral piece. It’s like David slaying (or slightly embarrassing) Goliath. There’s only one way brands can win. It’s ground-breaking and possibly controversial but they’ll just have to be nice to their customers …

As the normal everyday user merrily uses their selection of social networking platforms (mine are twitter, facebook, linkedin, delicious) there’s a constant battle between them to steal users, and improve their own offering with this ultimate goal in mind. This is great for us as it leads to improved sites, more useful web utilities, and a better all round experience. Working in an agency, we’re occasionally asked to start new online communities. It’s not easy.

To be truly useful you need people to sign up and often the main reason people sign up is because ‘everyone I know is using it’. Of course that is more the case for Facebook where the very personal style of networking (with photos, relationship updates, sending gifts, etc.) meant you ‘needed’ to use it to effectively stay in touch with people you already knew. As someone on Twitter (a great source of learning) put it: Facebook’s for people you know, Twitter’s for people you want to know. In effect, once a site like Facebook grabs the lion’s share of ‘your’ friends there’s no reason for many to leave.

Add in the fact many users don’t demand the most sophisticated functionality, there’s even more inertia for users to switch platform. Other platforms like social bookmarking may be less tribal, or more individual, so as long as I find something better or cheaper, I can move knowing I’m not leaving my entire social life behind! A social networking platform must be useful. It has to do one thing well to survive. Linkedin helps people connect professionally without polluting the space with holiday photos or ‘fun’ videos. Flickr is all about photos. Ok, they do video now but can anyone outmuscle YouTube with the headstart they have. The sheer volume of videos they have up there mean for videos that’s often the first port-of-call. As a direct result, they get more videos. It’s almost like a vicious circle. Finding a niche is always a good starting point.

Platforms like Ning do this well. Letting people build their own networks around specific interests. However, I think it’s still all about numbers. The more people you can get signed up, the greater the pressure on the rest not to get left behind.

Yesterday it dawned on me that the advent of social networks, email and the internet as a publishing platform means two things for future generations:

1. Kids will never, ever lose touch with their childhood friends anymore (unless they want to!). An email adress (or parents exchanging email addresses / facebook IDs / Twitter IDs …) will be enough to ensure you can find that person decades later in one morning session on Google.
2. Decades later, I’ll have to live through my kids going through my Twitter / Blogging history, in full public view, on a boring summer afternoon while I’m at work.

Something we’re not fully understanding at the moment – because we’re so enthralled and entertained by the current Web 2.0 platforms – is the longevity the content we generate can potentially have. Whereas we learnt about previous generations lives through tatty old photos and stories relayed to us, future generations probably only have to spend an afternoon on Google to unearth our most detailed thoughts and postings from years / decades back on various social networks, blog platforms, forums, and so on. They may be able to re-live years of our lives on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis; mapping out what we did, where we were, what we thought, who we were with and photos / videos of the event. That’s somewhat freaky … but I suspect we have to get used to this fact.

Even websites that were taken offline a number of years ago can be dug up through the Wayback Machine. Using this site, I unearthed previous incarnations of my website and was horrified at my primative (alright, I may not be much better now) web design skills back then.

Things you say and do on the web, echo for eternity on Google …

Btw, if my kids are reading this, hi!