One of the biggest bug-bears of my life as a webmaster, is getting people to read the content they are looking at!
I build websites for swingers, most of which have a contact system at their core. To gain access to the other "user profiles" you need to register. Its a very simple process, mainly clicking boxes or selecting an option from a drop down box, but people still get it wrong on about 30% of the profiles. Simple problems like selecting "I am a single male" Then entering in the text field "My wife is bi and I am straight, and we are looking ....."
We give them the option to check before completing the application, our admin team often spot the error, "fail" the profile and return it to the user for correction (a simple process of selecting the correct option) but still they get it wrong. It's a world wide problem, my users in the UK, USA, Australia, Spain, etc., all make the same mistakes. We juggle the fields, we change the option order in the drop downs, we reduce the number of questions, split the registrations into sections, it makes no difference.
I have just rebuilt one of my sites http://ddparties.com/to make registering for our parties a bit easier. After creating your profile and confirming your email address is valid, the system takes you to a page asking you to add an avatar (little picture) of yourself, either by selecting one of many ready loaded cartoon characters to represent yourself, or by using an industry standard upload feature to load a picture of themselves. more than 50% of people skip the section to get to the guestlist to see who is coming. Until we started loading the avatars ourselves, most of the guests we little black heads with the words "No Picture Yet" stamped upon them.
The next process is to add themselves to the guestlist. A simple process, select "Book to Attend a Party" from the menu, then click on the date you want to attend, then confirm that the details we display from their profile are correct. 3 mouse clicks and you are on the list. 20% of last months guests didn't appear on the list, because they couldn't work out how to add themselves.
In the past I have even used voices to read out each box, but people still got it wrong. I have spoken to many other webmasters and they all confirm they have the same problem.
Does anyone out there have any ideas how I can change the entry forms to make people read them and click the correct boxes?
Is anybody actually reading this?
Ah well, grumble over - back to work.
David
I build websites for swingers, most of which have a contact system at their core. To gain access to the other "user profiles" you need to register. Its a very simple process, mainly clicking boxes or selecting an option from a drop down box, but people still get it wrong on about 30% of the profiles. Simple problems like selecting "I am a single male" Then entering in the text field "My wife is bi and I am straight, and we are looking ....."
We give them the option to check before completing the application, our admin team often spot the error, "fail" the profile and return it to the user for correction (a simple process of selecting the correct option) but still they get it wrong. It's a world wide problem, my users in the UK, USA, Australia, Spain, etc., all make the same mistakes. We juggle the fields, we change the option order in the drop downs, we reduce the number of questions, split the registrations into sections, it makes no difference.
I have just rebuilt one of my sites http://ddparties.com/to make registering for our parties a bit easier. After creating your profile and confirming your email address is valid, the system takes you to a page asking you to add an avatar (little picture) of yourself, either by selecting one of many ready loaded cartoon characters to represent yourself, or by using an industry standard upload feature to load a picture of themselves. more than 50% of people skip the section to get to the guestlist to see who is coming. Until we started loading the avatars ourselves, most of the guests we little black heads with the words "No Picture Yet" stamped upon them.
The next process is to add themselves to the guestlist. A simple process, select "Book to Attend a Party" from the menu, then click on the date you want to attend, then confirm that the details we display from their profile are correct. 3 mouse clicks and you are on the list. 20% of last months guests didn't appear on the list, because they couldn't work out how to add themselves.
In the past I have even used voices to read out each box, but people still got it wrong. I have spoken to many other webmasters and they all confirm they have the same problem.
Does anyone out there have any ideas how I can change the entry forms to make people read them and click the correct boxes?
Is anybody actually reading this?
Ah well, grumble over - back to work.
David
Labels: profiles, swingers parties, swinging couples
posted by dirtydavid at 8:18 AM
1 Comments:
You guys look hot
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