
Stop Asking Me to “Sign Up” - gk1
http://www.gkogan.co/blog/stop-asking-me-to-sign-up
======
fl0wenol
Author, I'll tell you what the #1 barrier for me to sign up for anything is
going to be...

I'm probably going to get spammed if I do. Because I have to implicitly
provide email or social network details, and then I'm inviting myself to be
hounded with email newsletters or asked to like your posts, whatever.

Even worse, if your company isn't doing so hot in 3 months, you may decide to
sell your contact list to a 3rd party. Your privacy policy for information I
provide you may allow for this in a weasel-worded paragraph legal suggested
you add somewhere buried in there that I don't care to read, even if that was
never your intention.

I invite myself to be bothered by your business (or others) in this way, in
perpetuity, in exchange for a service that I'm not sure is even worth the
annoyance yet. Again, I'm not even sure if I should bother reading through all
your FAQs yet, let alone any EULAs.

This is a difficult value proposition.

Is there some way that a startup can convince me that they will not treat me
as a commodity to be sucked up and spat out, but instead a precious potential
partner to hold closely and want to serve in exchange for money and/or
feedback?

Can you word that into your TOS or EULAs to let us know that you are committed
to not jerking me around?

That's what I want before I sign up.

Call it "Sign up", "Try it free", "First Hit's On the House", wording is
irrelevant. I'm looking for a commitment and some kind of indicator that the
risk to my already at-limit information overload is low.

Oh and for the love of god, please don't make me install another fucking app
if you could just as easily do the job with a web page that looks good in
mobile chrome or safari. It's insulting.

------
jholman
If I'm on the fence about whether a webapp/product is right for me, and I look
for a demo button, and I find a demo button, and it says "Start Verbing" (for
appropriate value of "Verb"), and I click that button, and I get a signup page
...

... then I know I'm going to hate this company, because they're more concerned
with their conversions than on providing user value, and I close the browser
tab.

If your button is going to a Sign Up page, then you should label it Sign Up.

However, I think gk1 does some of his examples a grave disservice, especially
Gliffy's "Start Drawing" button. This is not a disguised SignUp button,
because when I click that button, I can actually start drawing, and I am not
called upon to sign up! So, good job gliffy, way to show me the user value.

If you make me sign up one instant earlier than is _necessary_ in order for
your product or business model to work, then I know you're a spammer.

------
anigbrowl
Good advice, though I wish the author had focused a bit more on informing the
user about the product to stimulate demand than the semantic benefits of just
changing the wording.

~~~
gk1
Hey, author here. I'm curious what you mean by this:

> informing the user about the product to stimulate demand

If you're interested in a specific topic or question and it's something I have
experience with, then I may expand in a future post.

~~~
anigbrowl
Hi! I meant the early section where you were talking about giving the
prospective user more detail on the product or service, as opposed to just
changing the call to action from 'sign up!' to 'get started!' or 'Begin
somethingizing!'

I was thinking of the recent trend for just offering a very brief video or
textual pitch and inviting submission of email and other details - what you
talked about as examples of asking for blind commitment without adding value.
I think those issues are worthy of full articles in themselves.

On-revisiting the page to check your original wording I was amused to see how
well your pop-up exemplified the argument you made! I'm not big on
salesmanship but found your material of a much higher standard than average,
thanks.

~~~
gk1
Thanks for that feedback. I'm actually testing something similar to what
you've described on a few projects, and will be able to write about it in the
near future.

------
Nullabillity
I disagree, if I'm looking to get started with your product then having
standard language means I can easily get started. On the other hand, if I
don't know what your product does from the rest of the site then I won't even
care enough to try to find you renamed it to in your misguided attempts at
being unique.

