Take Down The Barriers

Data collection from users is an important goal for companies. What most companies forget to acknowledge is that people don’t want to give them personal information. Forrester research says that 87% of users will click away rather than view the information they are seeking when asked to give personal information. That is an enormous hurdle to overcome. I call this the Barrier Effect.

What companies fail to do is look at it from the consumer perspective. Even if you have a wonderful product or are showing a great live event, why would you put up barriers that the customer has to overcome? The response from companies is that we need to get information from the users. I completely understand that but here is what they are missing. The hardcore users will sign up because they have a passion for your product. Great but more than likely you already have their name in your email lists, giveaway lists, promotional lists, etc… Here is what you are missing and it is a big one. Your NEW customers.

Here is the scenario for the casual customer. A friend blasts out an email to a bunch of their friends that says “Hey check this out”. Wonderful, your Online dept should be proud because they have empowered a fan and that fan shares this information with their friends. By the way, approval from a friend is still the most powerful way to market your product on the internet. Once this potential new user gets to the page they are greeted by a Barrier. To add insult to this they are asked to give personal information before they can have the ‘privilege’ to see your product. As you can imagine this goes over like a lead balloon. This is where traditional marketing needs a wakeup call. It is hard enough in this new age to get people to your site. Why put up barriers once they get there.

Let me give you a real world example. When we were showing FREE live practice for the Indianapolis 500 during May we required users to register. We had a good amount of people sign up. This number leveled off after a week. After sending out many emails to casual fans to find out how they liked watching, the vast majority said they didn’t want to take the time to fill out the registration and give us their personal info. This was a real wakeup. The people who signed up were our hardcore fans. I quickly realized we would never be able to grow or even show our product to the casual customer when they are just one click away from the next form of entertainment. I quickly remove the registration for the second week of practice and viewer ship shot up over 400% the next day. Growth was over 100% each of the following days. It was truly amazing once we removed the barriers to get to the very product we are selling.

Based on my earlier results if users really wanted to view our content they would normally type in fake information and click on survey answers that would quickly get them to the content. Needless to say this would skew any accurate data we were trying to learn about our customers.

The challenge has become to figure out a way to gather data without making it intrusive for the customer. I set out emailing colleagues and friends basically ask them what can I do to get your personal information. The answer is surprisingly simple. You have to earn the trust of the customer. For example, I am a big believer in Apple Computers and their products. Along the way they have earned my trust as a company. It is the only company that I have given my personal email address to so they can basically spam me with the products. This was the same answer I received from various colleagues.

The next step was taking down all barriers and having users opt in to give data. The information has been more accurate because people volunteer the information. The data gathered came from less people but it was more accurate. The next step was to figure out how to gather more data. This has come from implementing various social media applications. When users start participating socially on the site, you start earning a certain level of trust if you don’t put up any Barriers. This means people can post information anonymously or under aliases. Usually about 60-90 days of participation the data collection grows dramatically. You start to earn the trust of the user and they in turn will provide you the data you are requesting.