340 Part III: Designing Sites for Long-Term Sucess
340 Part III: Designing Sites for Long-Term Sucess Table 13-2: Different Site Types and Potential Benefits of Offering Registration Site Scenario Benefits of Registration Political party registration The ability to register online with your political party can allow you to access to news, features, private planning and discussion forums, and, eventually, you might even be able to vote via the safety and comfort of your own home. Intranets for government and industry An intranet might require access from workers in the field. This allows private, protected communication for intranet users, especially if the intranet is framed within a public web site. Through registration, authorized users can have access to the site features that others cannot. Dating web site Typically, these sites offer some level of privacy and anonymity to their users, but with known registrants a company can provide additional, more accurately targeted resources and services. Product support forum Forums tend to be potential problem areas due to angry customers and poor online etiquette. Registration can help you filter out those individuals looking for a quicker fix, and provide better response to those users who have legitimate product support needs. Online software registration By registering purchased software via vendor web sites, better service can be provided for the customer. You can track purchases, ship dates, downloads and offer opt-in newsletters or updates at the registrant s discretion. Another concern is poorly designed registration and login interfaces. Janice Fraser at AdaptivePath has designed an excellent for-pay report, including templates and samples to address this issue successfully. Find this report at http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/reports/ registration/. Secret #222: Consider Cookies to Track Usage A simpler way to track user behavior on your site is to use a cookie. Cookies are generated in a number of ways but are stored on the user s machine. They are saved by the browser and sent back to the server when the site visitor returns. Tracking your visitors means you can keep your site fresh and engaging by focusing on the specific documents they are requesting, what they are doing on your site, and how they are doing it. You can then target your newest content and information very specifically.
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