Usability and Privacy
As I’m researching blog articles for the bitchslappin.net political blog I come across a lot of sites that piss me off. Why? Because in order to read the article I just found a link to I have to subscribe to their damned site. In order to subscribe I’m expected to give up a lot of personal information.
Now, you site owners out there who do this to your potential readers, don’t you have any clue you’re breaking the cardinal rule of web design? The rule– Don’t piss off your visitors.
Who has pissed me off within the last few months? The New York Times and Salon dot Com are the two that come immediately to mind. Let me tell y’all something else too. I’ve become so pissed off at this pissant breach of my privacy that on the rare occasions I do decide to go ahead and subscribe, instead of just using my browser’s back button, I give FALSE INFORMATION to whoever’s asking. Yes, that means you, NYT! So much for your demographics and market research. How DARE you ask for my income? What difference does my gender make? I just want to read the stinking article! So my signup identity at NYT is totally falsified. Whatever the real answer was to whatever question they asked is the one I didn’t give. I know for a fact that I’m not the only one doing this. Salon dot Com didn’t even rate that, I just went elsewhere and found the info I needed.
So next time your marketing weenies tell you that you need to do market research by making visitors “sign up” in order to view your article pages or buy your item, you better consider how much traffic you’ll lose by taking their advice. You also better consider that the traffic that does make it through is skewing your information gathering efforts in ways you can’t imagine, and totally negating any supposed benefit from gathering the info since much of that gathered info will be deliberately false.
Technorati Tags: Usability, Privacy, Web Design, Marketing
