It’s a perennial debate: give your content away with no registration (web form), or force people to give you their details to get the goodies. Both arguments are compelling.
We tend to use a mix. Lots of free stuff but big, meaty, high-value pieces merit a web form. We decided to put our recent Content Marketing Workbook behind a web form (asking for name, company and email address) and we’ve had nearly 500 downloads so far. We thought about testing a page without the form and comparing bounce rates but in the end, decided to keep it simple this time.
Asking for a few details has given us valuable insight into who’s downloading and it’s building our database (people can opt out from our “Thanks for downloading” message). But we recognise that it will drive some people away.
Like this guy (received today):
Can’t win ’em all.
Executive Creative Director
Doug is a displaced Yank who started his career at Ogilvy & Mather, New York.
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Comments
mike August 7th, 2009
You say “Velocity = Speed with Direction” on your homepage. That’s actually incorrect. Velocity is a constant speed. No direction is implied. A VECTOR has direction as well as magnitude – in your case you’d probably say that the magnitude is a velocity.
Velocity is actually a constant. 😉
Doug Kessler August 7th, 2009
Thanks Mike! We’ve changed this back and forth a few times based on different input.
(David Potter of Psion fame told us to move it back to a plus)
You’re no doubt right but we now think of it kind of like Apple’s ‘Think different’ campaign — not strictly correct but tells a story.
Or maybe that’s just being lazy…
mike August 7th, 2009
and invokes conversation…. 😀
Doug Kessler August 7th, 2009
Exactly!