Note to online vendors:
I don't want to have to create an account to give you business.
Got it? By all means offer me the option of doing so, if that makes you happy, but if I'm buying 10 quid of lightbulbs from your site, or a one-off rail ticket, I really don't want to create a username and password, opt out of your effing mailing list, etc., etc. Imagine if you had to "create an account" with every corner store you bought £10 of stuff from.
And I really don't want to be prevented from making subsequent purchases because I can't remember the stoopid password I gave the last time you made me create an account I didn't want and your "reset your password" feature is slow/broken.
The relevant term here is "barrier to sale." If you're trying to sell things, here's a hint:
Barrier to Sale = Bad Thing(tm).
(Are you listening, National Rail?)
It is amazing how this simple fact seems to elude 90% of all webshops. Recently, I tried to get tickets for a show in a theater. To even see if there where any tickets available I had to create accounts. Now, I have like 3 accounts (including name, address, mail, mobile phone number etc.) all over the place, which I am probably never going to use again.
ReplyDeleteYou would think that any business would try to get the barrier as low as possible, but... reality teaches us otherwise!
And even this site asks me to log on... :-)
"And even this site asks me to log on... :-)"
ReplyDeleteIndeed, but not to create an account with Nifty Snippets. :-) Think of that login as being the equivalent of giving a store your billing details: It's something we actually need in order to do what you're trying to do (they need the payment details to sell you something, we need you to sign into an account for attribution and to minimize comment spam).