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Quote: "99% of sites/apps/services we visit now make you register and go through an on-boarding process before getting to the meat of the product." That's beca

by lutusp 13y ago

Quote: "99% of sites/apps/services we visit now make you register and go through an on-boarding process before getting to the meat of the product." That's because signing up is the product. The touted "product" is a fiction, a pander to get you to sign up. Another way to say this is you are the product, the advertised "product" is just bait to lure you in. If you haven't signed up and the company e-mails you, they're in violation of the Can-Spam Act. Once you've signed up, you become a customer, a category excluded from the sanctions of the Can-Spam Act. So getting you to sign up is not just the most important thing, it is the only thing. I wish people who wrote articles like the linked one actually knew something -- that might make their articles worth reading.

codegeek 13y ago
"So getting you to sign up is not just the most important thing, it is the only thing." Wait, what? Why does it matter whether I sign up or not. If I don't understand what the service/app is for, why would I want to sign up? If just signing up makes it legal for the company to email me, how does that still make me want to use your app ? It doesn't. Just because I am forced to sign up does not mean I will be a paying customer or an active user. That is what matters not just a sign-up.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Wait, what? Why does it matter whether I sign up or not. It may not matter to you, but it certainly matters to them. If you sign up, you become a customer. > If I don't understand what the service/app is for, why would I want to sign up? Try to think like the site operator. They know they don't have anything interesting to offer you, but you certainly have something interesting to offer them: your identity. > If just signing up makes it legal for the company to email me, how does that still make me want to use your app? Who cares? The point is to get you to sign up, reveal your personal information, not to offer you anything useful for your trouble. > Just because I am forced to sign up does not mean I will be a paying customer or an active user. You clearly don't understand how the Can-Spam Act works. The Can-Spam Act doesn't apply to people who are customers, i.e. people who have signed up. So by signing up, you've given permission to be spammed perpetually.
  - ryandrake 13y ago
    Respectfully, I think your view is overly cynical, and applies to a very small number of services out there that truly provide no value and exist solely for the purpose of harvesting E-mail addresses and SPAMming. For most operators with a genuine product, the push to get you to register is neither 100% for your benefit nor 100% for theirs.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > For most operators with a genuine product ... Those sites can prove their sincerity by telling you what they offer before asking for a signup. But that's not the topic under discussion.
  - misterparker 13y ago
    > Try to think like the site operator. They know they don't have anything interesting to offer you ... Remind me never to sign up for anything you create. It seems you have a hard time getting your head around the fact that many "site operators" try to solve real problems by building services to do so. And I might venture to say they believe their site is even more than just "something interesting to offer" - but something valuable or useful to make your life/work easier or more efficient.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Remind me never to sign up for anything you create. My site is completely free, no ads, no promotions, and no signups (http://arachnoid.com/ http://arachnoid.com/). And believe me when I tell you, many people find my site useful. People regularly send me unsolicited checks, which I tear up. You were saying? > It seems you have a hard time getting your head around the fact that many "site operators" try to solve real problems by building services to do so. The topic under discussion is sites that require you to sign up before showing you what they have to offer. For those sites, my doubts are fully justified. > ... but something valuable or useful to make your life/work easier or more efficient. If they believed that, they would show you what they have to offer before encouraging a signup. But that's not the topic of this thread.
- codezero 13y ago
  Believe it or not, a lot of people are reactivated by post sign-up emails. This gets them to return to a site they probably forgot about. It lets them get a second impression assuming they care. "A lot of people" does not include the typical Hacker News user.
  - briandear 13y ago
    Totally correct. HN users aren't not the typical 'normal' person. We are often in a bubble and forget that 'cool' UX improvements don't often meet the expectations of new users because they've been fed a diet of unusable shit for so long that any deviation from such is met with confusion. Such as not requiring a password confirmation for example. They're so used to it that it throws them when you don't ask for it.
- rhizome 13y ago
  You have to turn it around and think like a marketer: even if you don't want to use the app, even if you don't know what the app/site does, if you sign up, it's for you. You've contributed a snippet of data to the people concerned with that site/app that you are interested in whatever they have (no matter how vaguely it's portrayed), and associated it with an email address. That snippet of data has actual economic value in the right hands.
vdaniuk 13y ago
Nope. That entirely depends on the service. Most saas I use for marketing and programming sends 95% transactional emails and 5% promotional emails. The most important aspec is that a user invests his time and effort in the service and after time using the service becomes an important habit that provides productivity, entertainment or just attacks your limbic system to optimize for user pleasure. And that habit allows to monetize effeciently.
namlem 13y ago
That's not really true. There are plenty of services which exist to sell you things that still make you sign up.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > There are plenty of services which exist to sell you things that still make you sign up. My point is that sites with something useful to offer wouldn't take the risk of creating the bad impression the original poster complained about.

by lutusp 13y ago

codegeek 13y ago

"So getting you to sign up is not just the most important thing, it is the only thing." Wait, what? Why does it matter whether I sign up or not. If I don't understand what the service/app is for, why would I want to sign up? If just signing up makes it legal for the company to email me, how does that still make me want to use your app ? It doesn't. Just because I am forced to sign up does not mean I will be a paying customer or an active user. That is what matters not just a sign-up.

lutusp 13y ago
> Wait, what? Why does it matter whether I sign up or not. It may not matter to you, but it certainly matters to them. If you sign up, you become a customer. > If I don't understand what the service/app is for, why would I want to sign up? Try to think like the site operator. They know they don't have anything interesting to offer you, but you certainly have something interesting to offer them: your identity. > If just signing up makes it legal for the company to email me, how does that still make me want to use your app? Who cares? The point is to get you to sign up, reveal your personal information, not to offer you anything useful for your trouble. > Just because I am forced to sign up does not mean I will be a paying customer or an active user. You clearly don't understand how the Can-Spam Act works. The Can-Spam Act doesn't apply to people who are customers, i.e. people who have signed up. So by signing up, you've given permission to be spammed perpetually.
- ryandrake 13y ago
  Respectfully, I think your view is overly cynical, and applies to a very small number of services out there that truly provide no value and exist solely for the purpose of harvesting E-mail addresses and SPAMming. For most operators with a genuine product, the push to get you to register is neither 100% for your benefit nor 100% for theirs.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > For most operators with a genuine product ... Those sites can prove their sincerity by telling you what they offer before asking for a signup. But that's not the topic under discussion.
- misterparker 13y ago
  > Try to think like the site operator. They know they don't have anything interesting to offer you ... Remind me never to sign up for anything you create. It seems you have a hard time getting your head around the fact that many "site operators" try to solve real problems by building services to do so. And I might venture to say they believe their site is even more than just "something interesting to offer" - but something valuable or useful to make your life/work easier or more efficient.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Remind me never to sign up for anything you create. My site is completely free, no ads, no promotions, and no signups (http://arachnoid.com/ http://arachnoid.com/). And believe me when I tell you, many people find my site useful. People regularly send me unsolicited checks, which I tear up. You were saying? > It seems you have a hard time getting your head around the fact that many "site operators" try to solve real problems by building services to do so. The topic under discussion is sites that require you to sign up before showing you what they have to offer. For those sites, my doubts are fully justified. > ... but something valuable or useful to make your life/work easier or more efficient. If they believed that, they would show you what they have to offer before encouraging a signup. But that's not the topic of this thread.
codezero 13y ago
Believe it or not, a lot of people are reactivated by post sign-up emails. This gets them to return to a site they probably forgot about. It lets them get a second impression assuming they care. "A lot of people" does not include the typical Hacker News user.
- briandear 13y ago
  Totally correct. HN users aren't not the typical 'normal' person. We are often in a bubble and forget that 'cool' UX improvements don't often meet the expectations of new users because they've been fed a diet of unusable shit for so long that any deviation from such is met with confusion. Such as not requiring a password confirmation for example. They're so used to it that it throws them when you don't ask for it.
rhizome 13y ago
You have to turn it around and think like a marketer: even if you don't want to use the app, even if you don't know what the app/site does, if you sign up, it's for you. You've contributed a snippet of data to the people concerned with that site/app that you are interested in whatever they have (no matter how vaguely it's portrayed), and associated it with an email address. That snippet of data has actual economic value in the right hands.

vdaniuk 13y ago

Nope. That entirely depends on the service. Most saas I use for marketing and programming sends 95% transactional emails and 5% promotional emails. The most important aspec is that a user invests his time and effort in the service and after time using the service becomes an important habit that provides productivity, entertainment or just attacks your limbic system to optimize for user pleasure. And that habit allows to monetize effeciently.

namlem 13y ago

That's not really true. There are plenty of services which exist to sell you things that still make you sign up.

lutusp 13y ago
> There are plenty of services which exist to sell you things that still make you sign up. My point is that sites with something useful to offer wouldn't take the risk of creating the bad impression the original poster complained about.