Member Article

When bigger isn't always better

1.8 seconds. The amount of time it takes to form a first impression. And we all know that first impressions last, unless were are then extremely impressed or disappointed by the subject in question.

Registration processes are often the first point of contact you have with a business. As such, they are also the first impression. Therefore, a lovely, simply and short registration process will leave a good lasting taste and those which take so long they put Lord of the Rings to shame may mean you lose that customer. A registration process should not be an adventure and if it is, you have to ask yourself if Bilbo would partake in it: –

• Do the questions asked achieve anything?
• Do they hone in on relevant information?
• Do they contribute toward the goal in mind? (In Bilbo’s case, his adventure was to destroy the ring)

Anything you can do to improve the registration process adds to your credibility. A more efficient and streamlined customer on-boarding process directly increases conversions and increases growth. A short little hobbit was much more effective at achieving his goal than the great hefty orcs were.

We have become used to e-commerce businesses using processes such as predictive address to speed up the checkout process and reduce cart abandonment. However, did you know you can also dramatically speed up the on-boarding process for businesses who register on your website?

From either just a company email address or company name and postcode you can return a huge amount of information about a business. Not only does this make your CRM system absolutely love you, but any businesses signing up will be so thankful they just have to input a name and an email address. This makes them less likely to get bored and just leave your site. Just like that. People are fickle and if a grain of boredom enters their minds, then goodbye to them.

The real magic happens when you use this glorious information to streamline your internal processes.

Pulling back just the right amount of information, such as credit limit, number of employees, address and director details, which can be instantly added into your processes and back end systems improves both the registration process and the customer journey for your client and provides a process to use accurate data internally. This in turn allows for accurate data driven decisions to be made throughout the business.

But what kind of decisions I hear you ask?

Decisions that involve targeting. Decisions that involve segmenting data, profiling data, understanding data. Want to target companies that have 50-100 employees with a good credit rating in the north west? You can achieve this level of detail in your campaigns if you have enough information when you capture your leads.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Victoria Wilson .