You will be assimilated

Freedom is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You must comply.

Borg Collective

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Hugh

In "Conversion and Acquisition", I wrote about the inverse relationship between conversion and acquisition, possible causes of the inverse relationship and how it might be fixed. In this (much shorter) post, we're going to look at this same issue from another angle.

Let's assume that you have not implemented a forced acquisition method and you ask yourself "what do I know about my customers" and then ask the same question after you implement a forced acquisition method - will your answer be the same? Unlikely. The motivation and values of repeat customers are likely different than the motivation and values of people who are occasional users. Let's consider the simplest of these differences - repeat customers are have a vested interest, to at least some degree, in your continued operation whereas those who intend to be a single-use visitor are not invested in your business to any degree.

Why is this important? Every day we make assumptions and decisions based on what we know about our users. If our representative sample changes, those assumptions and decisions must also change. There may be simple assumptions about the design of a web page that are incorrect - assumptions that we can address by A/B testing, but what if there are assumptions associated with the risk of a transaction or possible fraud - those are considerably more difficult to test and correct.

In short, the more you rely on knowing your users the more contraindicated a forced acquisition method is.

Oh yeah, it's a bloody evil thing to do, too...just look at the Borg.