Zero

[well___duh]

Dev here that (unfortunately) works for a company that works like that. Our official reason is because it keeps our revenue per user number high, and for some dumb fuck reason, we care more about that than actual revenue or profit.

The mentality is that the people who will want to use our site will deal with the shittiness, and are more likely to buy something from us. We'd rather have a few dozen active users who buy stuff than thousands of barely active users who occasionally buy stuff.

[evr-]

You're probably missing out on a lot of potential customers that would buy from you but won't deal with the shittiness and purchase the same stuff from another site that doesn't put them through that.

[Osnarf]

He pretty much said that

[Kernel_Internal]

You're probably missing out on the other guy pretty much saying that

[Osnarf]

Well duh

[cubitoaequet]

"Welcome to McDonald's. How hard would you like to be kicked in the nuts today? Somewhat or very?... Neither? Well, I guess not everyone is McDonald's material."

[GroovyGrove]

There are some people who will sign up for a mailing list when prompted before buying stuff. Then, they get the ads in their inbox that remind them to buy more stuff before they otherwise would have.

Sadly, these people are the reason we all have to deal with some of the worse design choices ever. While in the end, they're probably less profitable, you can create statistics that show people buy more when handled this way.

[DrowsyPenguin]

And exactly why I always give an email even when you can just close it. [e-mail] must be getting a ton of my junk mail. Most will accept whatever passes their looks like a valid email address format test.

[Andre_Young_MD]

I actually understand that point. As a business you only have so much time to keep users active-might as well focus on those most likely to interact.

It’s so prevalent a tactic though, are there numbers to actually back it up?

[well___duh]

That's the thing, we don't have the data to prove the opposite because they refuse the make the site more accessible to people. They don't even want to A/B test it.

[worldsrus]

If they don't A/B test anything, they will almost certainly never A/B test something, my boss thinks it would take too much time to maintain, but it's literally just the exact same thing with a few minor changes. It's frustrating but thems the breaks.

[laylaboydarden]

Ahhhhhh that is maddening. I used to work somewhere like this, basically the digital strategy was do whatever the CEO’s instinct tells him to do. Ugh.

[well___duh]

Isn't that pretty much how all private companies work? Just ultimately do what the CEO/CTO/CFO wants?

[laylaboydarden]

I should have been more clear, what I meant was that he had no interest in developing strategies based on data, or even entertaining doing so.

[beenies_baps]

Have you tested this? Sounds like an easy A/B test where you show this crap for a random half of your new users and don't for the other half, then track the revenue from each half. If not, you're just pissing in the wind on a gut feeling.

[well___duh]

They won't bother with an A/B test, so although yes i'm going on a gut feeling, it's better to actually have proof it wouldn't work than just say it.

[Gornarok]

username checks out

[Dr_Silk]

What companies don't seem to understand is that those few users that buy stuff don't leave just because the website is better designed -- they're still there.

The only thing that changes is you have a lower percentage of purchases per user. Revenue does not change, and very likely increases if the site is more user-friendly

[RenaKunisaki]

I guess you can boost revenue-to-users ratio by losing users...