Note to the heads of sales, marketing, and web site development:
I’m tired of your registration walls (regwalls), and will no longer be supporting them.
I realize that you want to know who is looking at the materials you are producing, that you are trying to measure the ROI of your promotional endeavors, and that you are seeking for any and every means to monetize the interactions you have with existing and potential customers. I get all that, butI’ve had quite enough, thank you. I do NOT want to sign-up or register on yet-another-website before I can actually get access to the supposedly free software, clipart, coupon, whitepaper, article, business report, or other interesting tidbit that I came to your website for.
Besides the fact that I don’t want to add to my password management burden, (which includes trying to determine if your infrastructure is being maintained well enough to avoid a breach in the near future), I’m absolutely not interested in speaking to anyone in your sales department at this time. When I am good and ready to speak to sales, then I will happily use your Contact Us page on your website to initiate that interaction, assuming you’ve made that easy to find and access.
(Let’s not even speak about the sites that ask for registration info each time you show up or try to download something!)
If you can’t be bothered to provide direct access to the goodies in question, and you feel you absolutely must track who I am, then at least have the decency to allow me to sign onto your site via one of the many social networking sites that I already use. Otherwise, expect to see me bail on your allegedly free offers, as it is clearly not worth my time and effort to proceed.
I plan to be a whole lot more consistent about this going forward.
BTW, over the past 2-3 years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended up selecting the other, non-annoying vendor, because of a regwall at the first vendor. And I won’t tell you how many online newspapers I no longer read because of this. And I’m not the only person who feels like this. Trust me.