If you want lots of people to buy your product, sign up for your newsletter, or just visit your blog, get rid of anything in their way. Unfortunately, I think a lot of accidental obstructions remain in processes because its creators and implementers fail to critically consider each barrier.
Example of the moment: Yahoo! Publisher Network requires tax and payment information before they’ll let you have ad code to put on your site. For me, this meant closing the window. I was ready to publish some of their ads, giving them money and their advertisers traffic.
By contrast, Google’s AdSense product only requires you to put in tax and payment information when they’re ready to pay you. And what a motivator I imagine that is, knowing they’re ready to send you a check. And what’s the worst that can happen if a publisher never fills out the tax and payment information? Google keeps the money.
Since Yahoo! is working on creating a higher-quality network, it is possible that this barrier is intentional. Could it be that by requiring tax information, Yahoo! gets more dedicated publishers? Maybe.
If that is the case, at least the obstacle has been considered and purposely left in place. At least they critically considered the barrier.
Feel free to share your own examples–I don’t require you to register to leave a comment.
Update: Yes, I realize YPN is a beta program. Consider this feedback. 🙂
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