Nothing but Anxiety From Mashable’s Austin Real Time Registration Page
Posted by Gregory Ng | Filed under ★★★ If It Works, Great
If you are headed to Austin next week for the SXSWi conference you may have received an invitation today in your email inbox to sign up for Mashable’s Austin Real Time website.
This website is a way for attendees of SXSWi to join the community and share their social activity with other attendees. Seems like a great way to network, discover new people, and fuel the overwhelming desire to overshare with other people like me.
So I clicked through from the email and landed on this landing page:
Straightforward layout that gives you immediate information on what it is you are signing up for. I clicked the “Sign up instantly with Twitter” button, granted access to the application and was ready to get on with my Austin Real Time experience.
Then I was taken to this profile page and was hit with a real time event of fear and anxiety.
You see, this profile page is riddled with all sorts of types of FAIL. When it comes down to it, it’s not about the information they are asking for that caused a little bit of sweat under the collar. It’s about how it was presented and asked for. Let’s go into some detail here with each one:
Account Information
The first question I have is “What account?” I thought this was just an aggregate of my social media content that i gave permission to be published on this site! Is this an account specifically for Mashable’s Austin Real Time? A simple copy change that says “Your Mashable’s Austin Real Time Profile” would have sufficed.
Please fill in any gaps in your profile
Only my city was pre-filled and the rest of the fields are listed as mandatories. Are there more bits of info about me that are in my profile that you haven’t shown me yet?
Where are you traveling to SXSW from?
Why do you need to know this? What if I don’t want people to know? What they should have done is added a little question mark icon that explained “This will add your profile to other attendees from your city.”
Email Address:*
Hold your horses and Pete Cashmore’s horses! Why do you want my email address? Isn’t the entire point of signing up through Twitter or Facebook so I don’t have to give you that information? And what will you do with my email address? I don’t want strangers to know my email address. And where does that red Asterisk point to? Oh, you won’t share it with anyone? You’re only going to use it to communicate with me? Then tell me that.
Password:*
This is the step that almost caused me to abandon this page. WHAT PASSWORD?!!!!!!AND WHY DO YOU NEED IT??!!!! AND WHAT IS THAT RED ASTERISK POINTING TO?!!!! ARGH!!!!!!!! This makes me as upset as this woman:
At first I thought it was asking for my email password. No F’N way I’m giving you my email password. See how, lack of clarity can push your mind to question innocent things like Mashable’s Austin Real Time wants me to create a password for my profile? Here’s a suggestion: change the words to read “Create a Password”. Oh, and tell me what that red asterisk is for!
Send a tweet to your Twitter followers.
I would love to see the conversion numbers on this checkbox. It is so unclear as to what this means I am confident if I find out, I will find Amelia Earhardt reading the series finale script of LOST.
If I click this button will it automatically send out a tweet? And what will it say? No way I’m clicking that button.
Here’s what Mashable’s Austin Real Time website should have done.
I am currently VP, Creative at Brooks Bell Interactive, an online direct response agency in Raleigh North Carolina. Anything written for this site represents my own opinions and not that of my employer or the clients I work for.