Great Content Ahead!

But you have to register first …
I found a great article and forwarded it to a colleague who might benefit from it. The colleague emailed me and said he couldn’t access it because he didn’t have a login ID. He didn’t want to mess with registration, even though it was free.
My list of IDs and passwords is huge. When I open the list, its contents take several screens to view, with each screen having multiple columns. I bought software to help me manage this giant mess. Some sites require email as an ID while others use a name of your choice as long as it has the minimum number of characters required, and someone else hasn’t already claimed it.
With each site having varying rules, it’s impossible to limit my choices to two or three login IDs. Microsoft works around this with its Passport, but many sites don’t use it, and people don’t trust having one login for multiple sites. It’s funny how some people don’t want one global login account, considering many use the same password for everything.

Why torture with registration?
If many people dislike memberships, even when it’s free, and won’t sign up unless it’s information they need, then why bother? For one, it provides the company with your information. Any shared information is gold to a business and its marketing department. The more they have, the better they know you and your needs so they can provide them through paid products and services.
Sign-ins also help businesses track their membership activities to determine what works and what doesn’t work, which articles are popular and which stink. On the plus side, it ensures the members get content they want and keeps out the topics that are “bad apples.”
For one of my columns, I studied the statistics to see which articles did well and which fell flat. I also reviewed the best articles on the site. Using the data I collected, I modified my column, and the first one after that received the best results ever.
On the other hand, how effective are these registration-required sites? Many users have gotten wise to the registration process and enter phony information along with a BugMeNot entry or a junk email address, which users enter whenever a site asks for an email address that they don’t want to provide (typically free accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail or IDs like Mickey Mouse and Charlie Brown).

The frustration of teasers
Once a person enters a site and clicks on a link to an article that sounds interesting, three things often happen:
1. The site indicates membership is required, so the visitor must sign in or register for a free account.
2. The site provides a paragraph of the article and says, “Want more? Sign up or log in.”
3. The article appears in its full glory without the user having to do anything.
Obviously, number three would be the best choice, as it has no barriers stopping the reader from accessing the content. Number one is upfront about requiring membership and gets right to the point. Number two is obviously a teaser, and those don’t go over well with many users. Number two wastes more time than number one because of the time you spend reading the partial content (if it’s not immediately obvious that the complete article isn’t available).
When referencing an article requiring sign up, providing that information with the reference saves the user time. For example:
Watch Me Do That Online [Free sign-in required]
Vlogs struggle to come up with fresh programming
by Sarah Boxer, The New York Times
This tells the reader that the article requires registration to view it, and it’s from The New York Times. So, based on whether or not the user is registered on the site or takes the BugMeNot approach, it’s easy to make a quick decision about whether or not to bother. However, not everyone takes this approach. I sent an article from a registration-required site thinking it didn’t require sign-in because not all content on the site requires signing in; however, I was mistaken.

Preventing “walk aways”
When newsletter publishers like InternetVIZ select “Best of Web” articles for a newsletter, we avoid pointing to sites requiring registration. Some sites don’t require it when an article comes out, but after a certain amount of time has passed, it requests your login ID. We avoid those, too, because they may not be registration-free by the time the newsletter goes out, or they won’t be accessible from the archives.
Sites that charge for content, on the other hand, are not typically an issue. Subscribers of fee-based content know the content is not likely to be accessible and wouldn’t post such references in their newsletters, blogs or Web sites.
The Internet has miles of information free for the reading. We’re overwhelmed and overloaded. So whatever barriers get in the way are likely to incite more “walk aways” than new members.
A few smart e-commerce sites, aware of this barrier, don’t require the user to register to add things into the cart. Some offer the option of signing up with the benefit of remembering your information the next time you visit, or you can check all the way out by providing the basic data of shipping, billing and email addresses (sometimes optional).

Putting it in their hands
With registration sites receiving phony information or BugMeNot IDs, will the trend change either way? Not likely. Even if all the publishers in the world teamed up and said, “We’re going to create a law that registration shall be required on every site so we’re all on equal ground” — an utterly ridiculous idea — there will be many who refuse to implement the barrier.
The least we can do is let people know when an article requires registration. That way, the decision about whether to sign up or not is in our readers’ hands.
Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net, helping companies by massaging words into content that inspires action. Contact her to discuss how your business can boost its profits.