{"id":1759,"date":"2014-11-21T11:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-11-21T05:30:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2021-11-04T16:05:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T10:35:39","slug":"when-should-mobile-apps-ask-their-users-to-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/21\/when-should-mobile-apps-ask-their-users-to-register\/","title":{"rendered":"When Should Mobile Apps Ask Their Users To Register?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just like some people will never pay for a mobile app &#8211; or any digital content for that matter &#8211; I&#8217;ll never use a mobile app that forces me to register before I&#8217;ve had a chance to try it out.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this rule doesn&#8217;t apply to mobile banking, Twitter, HootSuite, and other mobile apps that show <em>my stuff<\/em> as against generic stuff. (My bank balance is <em>my stuff<\/em> but USD:INR exchange rate is generic stuff).<\/p>\n<p>My registration phobia is especially targeted towards apps of malls (e.g. DLF Promenade), coffee shops (Caf\u00e9 Coffee Day), et al. Since they don&#8217;t design their store layout or coffee brew just for me, I see no reason why they should insist on registration as the price of entry. When apps in this category try that, I bail out immediately.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Hi <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PromenadeDLF?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@PromenadeDLF<\/a>: I won\u2019t register for your app until I\u2019ve tried it. Haven\u2019t I taken enough trouble to scan the QR code &amp; install your app?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; GTM360 (@GTM360) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/GTM360\/status\/480681278195634176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 22, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Now, these companies can &#8211; and do &#8211; claim that they&#8217;d like to tailor their content to be of greater relevance to me (e.g. &#8220;my usual brew&#8221; in the case of the coffee shop) and justify their demand for upfront registration on this basis.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar-fi.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1763\" src=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar-fi.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"280\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar-fi.jpg 630w, https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar-fi-200x88.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not against targeted offers but I&#8217;d like to use the app first and figure out if I like it before sharing my profile data and agree to being sold to. So, asking me to register before letting me have a glimpse of the app is a strict no-no.<\/p>\n<p>I use at least three apps that get this:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.phonethics.inorbit\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">InOrbit<\/a> (mall), <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.alphonso.pulse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">LinkedIn Pulse<\/a> (newsreader) and <a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=uk.co.nickfines.RealCalc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">RealCalc<\/a> (calculator). You can use them immediately after installation without completing any form or logging in with your social network credentials. They assume correctly that, if you like them, you&#8217;ll open them again, and present their registration screens during your repeat visits. Called &#8220;progressive profiling&#8221;, this best practice is a fair approach.<\/p>\n<p>Now, that&#8217;s me talking from the user&#8217;s point of view.<\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 70%;\" \/>\n<p>If I think from the perspective of the business, things get tricky.<\/p>\n<p>Brands have invested a lot of time and money in developing their apps. They&#8217;re forever under pressure to prove ROI. Progressive profiling may not always work, as in my case: Despite using Pulse and RealCalc regularly for over a year, I&#8217;ve not registered on them.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, app owners are not completely misguided if they believe that the only time to grab the identity of their users is at the very first touchpoint with them.<\/p>\n<hr style=\"width: 70%;\" \/>\n<p>As we can see, there&#8217;s an inherent conflict between the priorities of users and app owners towards registration. This raises the following question:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When Should Mobile Apps Ask Their Users To Register?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Even two decades after the emergence of ecommerce, this debate has not yet been settled in web apps.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar03.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-1762 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar03-126x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"126\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar03-126x200.jpg 126w, https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/mar03.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 126px) 100vw, 126px\" \/><\/a>On the face of it, it shouldn&#8217;t arise in mobile apps: After all, the first step after unboxing a smartphone is to register it with Apple or Google, who immediately glean the user&#8217;s Personally Identifiable Information such as mobile number and email address. Therefore, every smartphone carries a unique ID &#8211; unlike a desktop or laptop where there&#8217;s no registration step.<\/p>\n<p>But the debate still arises since Apple and Google don&#8217;t share the PII with app owners.<\/p>\n<p>If this changes, we can expect an end to this debate in the case of mobile apps.<\/p>\n<p>Until then, mobile app owners can get inspired by the &#8220;best of both worlds&#8221; approach followed by <em>Gaana<\/em>: The Spotify of India provides a number of ways to register in its splash screen &#8211; and incentives for doing so. It also includes a &#8220;Skip to Gaana&#8221; hyperlink at the bottom in fineprint. Diehard &#8220;registrationphobes&#8221; like me can take the trouble to spot this link and enter the app without registering. Others can register to proceed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just like some people will never pay for a mobile app &#8211; or any digital content for that matter &#8211; I&#8217;ll never use a mobile app that forces me to register before I&#8217;ve had a chance to try it out. Of course, this rule doesn&#8217;t apply to mobile banking, Twitter, HootSuite, and other mobile apps &#8230; <a title=\"When Should Mobile Apps Ask Their Users To Register?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/21\/when-should-mobile-apps-ask-their-users-to-register\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about When Should Mobile Apps Ask Their Users To Register?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,4,10,13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b2-product-v-services","category-digital-marketing","category-mobility","category-product","category-mandatory-category"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1759"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8583,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1759\/revisions\/8583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gtm360.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}