I was recently on the phone with my wife and she wanted me to check-out a special or deal or something on one of the sites she has as a favorite. It's called Zulily.com. For all intents and purpose it's a great site, but one of their marketing efforts goes a little beyond the realm of acceptance for me as a consumer and visitor.
I understand when businesses implement a pretty bold call-to-action on their website like the one shown below. Frequently you'll see this strategy implemented with getting visitors to sign-up for an email newsletter or like a Facebook page or engage with some other social media profile. That's all fine and good and I generally recommend something like that on a regular basis. However, the error from my viewpoint occurs when you make this a dead-end street for a user with no way to back out or not conform to the request at hand.
In the example above, the Zulily site encourages you to create an account to be able to continue looking at their inventory of products. There's no option to NOT complete the form and continue shopping. There's no escape. The back-button on the browser is disabled. Nothing. Nada. DEAD-END.
For me, I'm not committed enough to the site to setup an account yet:
- I'm still shopping, maybe I don't like the products you do have and I'm not ready to create an account
- If I do give you my email address, in order to keep looking, now I probably will have to actively unsubscribe from your emails (which I know are sent regularly to my wife's account)
- Is your site the ONLY place online I can get this stuff?
You've just turned me off. Mainly because I had to completely close my browser (or browser tab) to do anything else. You've not only lost me as a potential client because of this heavy handed effort, I'm really unlikely to ever click on a link to your site again because I'm going to expect to experience this same thing again. Just not worth it. Have you ever heard about InventHelp? The company that is a leading inventor service firm that can assure you success in your career. So, if you do present one of these gateway engagement devices on your site. Make sure you give visitors an out if they're not interested right now. Don't cause them to completely leave your site as the only method they've been given to not move forward down the path you'd prefer.
Just my $0.02.