Content providers sites and "Open Doors"

[Paul Markham]

Two weeks ago we opened our doors and let people browse through the catalogue part of our site without registering. A lot asked me to keep them informed of the results.

Well here I am keeping you informed; To date can't see any great improvement in sales.

I know the anti registration brigade will be shouting "It's too early to tell"

But if in two weeks we are not taking any more orders than before and there is not increase in people who look through the site and decides to buy on impulse, well then I don't see it as a great success.

Seems the serious buyer buys and some find reasons not to.

[Trax]

ok i get your point
what i dont get is:

what do you have to lose keeping it like it is?

[Paul Markham]

Originally posted by Trax
ok i get your point
what i dont get is:

what do you have to lose keeping it like it is?

A little bit of B/W, upsetting our payment proessor for not checking people and most importantly email addresses.

We have built a very nice list of email addresses of professional people, who may not buy today but might buy in the future when we send them a Newsletter with the content they do want.

with all respect to those this applies to but, if we are waiting for someone to get a check to buy $20 worth of content it's hardly going to be worht the chance of getting a big program in our mailing list and slowly feeding him a constant supply of new sets. He will need some in the future and we will email him the right way at the right time.

[Paul Markham]

I can't tell yet if the registrations we are getting are from the "Serious" buyers that will buy in the future, too early to tell.

But would you take the risk of losing them to gain nothing?

I think that's the gamble and whether it's worth taking.

Had some people from boards look at the site two weeks ago, they said they never bought before because of the registration situation and being unable to see what we have without registering.

Seems we are still waiting for them to buy.

[Martin32]

we did the same thing now for 5 days. We had a major thread going all over adult boards and there was no increse in neither sales nor registrations.

Our IT guy is already working on getting the registration back where it was in the beginning

Martin

[Paul Markham]

Martin I think you are right, the serious buyer buys.

Our registrations actually dropped.

Seems all the "Why do I have to register to look" brigade are keeping out of this.

[mind]

Well we are working on a little different approach - we are working on a brand new site layout which will include a "guest" button which will allow webmasters to visit the shop - but without the ability to buy and view prices before having registered or logged in.

This is hopefully a "best of two worlds" solutions - maintaining our registration, but allowing content shoppers to visit before registering.

- sounds good?

[Lykos]

For serious buyers it is not poblem to register,i am preety shure in that,couse i know from my own...if i really want something i will do anything necesary to get it

[Paul Markham]

Originally posted by mind
Well we are working on a little different approach - we are working on a brand new site layout which will include a "guest" button which will allow webmasters to visit the shop - but without the ability to buy and view prices before having registered or logged in.

This is hopefully a "best of two worlds" solutions - maintaining our registration, but allowing content shoppers to visit before registering.

- sounds good?

That's basically what we had, they just come through look and go away. I think the drip, drip, drip approach of emails works a lot better in the long run.

[MixPhoto.Sales]

Originally posted by charly

We have built a very nice list of email addresses of professional people, who may not buy today but might buy in the future when we send them a Newsletter with the content they do want.

Are you going to spam all those ppl?

[baddog]

Originally posted by MixPhoto.Sales
Are you going to spam all those ppl?

haha - you have to ask?

Charly/Paul . . . did you ever stop to think that you can not undo in 2 weeks what you have created over a year?

It may take a while before people that think they need to register discover that they now don't/

Hate to break it to you, but not everyone reads all of your posts

[Groove]

Registration is all about content providers getting you on an
e-mail list and spamming the shit out of you. The two biggest
offenders being Charly and SoBeGirl.