Return on Intention

This post will be short, but very important. If you really want to drive prospects away from your website, make them register or provide you with a bunch of information before you let them see what they want.I understand that the data we collect about our potential customers is valuable, but if you ask for it at the wrong time, you will lose them. From time to time I am involved in creating web applications that are customer facing. Before talking to a potential client, I like to look at what already exists that is close to what they are trying to do. More often than not, I cannot actually see any because I am asked to register with the site before I can get enough of a look at what I came to see to tell if its noteworthy, or even relevant to what I am doing.Give away some information, then ask for the visitors information to go further. Never block the first few steps of your lead or sales funnel with a registration screen. Save it for later.Even if you put it at the end, where you might think people will ignore it the most, the worst that will happen is that your leads will be MORE qualified because they are really and truly are interested. 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under Total Quality Mistake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.