[Sigia-l] challenging users vs. revealing that content/products are unavailable

[Elisa]

Samantha -

If it is any help, banks do this all of the time.  I know that when I went
to
open my online account at my bank, the first thing that they asked was
what state I was in.... nothing else. Particularly in banking, regulations
vary so much from state-to-state that they have to screen that way.

I would prefer not to be shown options for which I am not eligible.

just my thoughts...

elisa

Elisa Miller
elisa at txmillers.com
214-902-8966


"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. "
                                                                 Goethe




On Aug 27, 2004, at 3:29 PM, Samantha Bailey wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'd like to poll the group to get some input/feedback on a situation
> we've
> encountered.
> I'm interested to hear from you whether you've encountered this
> situation or
> not--just getting informed opinions will be valuable.
>>
> We've explored our options and it seems to boil down to either
> offering a
> challenge in the form of asking users to specify their state (and then
> presenting the appropriate suite of product/rate/fee info) *or*
> presenting
> all of the information--in which case we could lead with blocks of
> states
> and then show the product info or we could lead with product info and
> then
> indicate the state specific information. (The way other product
> information
> is organized the approach of product info first followed by state
> would be
> most parallel/consistent).
>
> On the one hand, the challenge option is the simplest--it allows us to
> create a more elegant interface and present users with the information
> that
> is most relevant to them. Of course, if they want to compare what
> scenarios
> might exist if they were to purchase in other states they would have
> to do
> that as a separate step (side by side comparison isn't supported in
> either
> scenario and is *not* a frequent user concern for the products in
> question).
> On the other hand, the challenge option *is* a challenge--it forces
> users to
> give us information in exchange for content that we want to have
> generally/publicly available on our site.
>
> We have used challenges in the past in unavoidable scenarios and we
> did not
> get a lot of negative feedback (unfortunately I don't have analytics to
> gaugue whether we had a lot of abandonments at the point of the
> challenge,
> so I don't really know the impact). In addition, we've recently tested
> a
> wizard that required users to submit quite a bit of "personal"
> information
> (i.e., far more sensitive than State) and we were surprised how willing
> people were to provide that information (granted, they were
> anticipating a
> greater "payoff" from the wizard than standard product information).
> Taking
> that into account, I had been leaning toward the challenge approach.
>
> One of the senior folks on our team feels *very* strongly that a
> challenge
> is virtually always inappropriate in public/unauthenticated space and
> is
> very much opposed to the challenge approach, arguing that we should
> take the
> alternate approach and have users browse the information even if it
> means
> that in some scenarios they'll learn that the product being described
> is not
> available in their state.
>
> I'm interested in two things:
> 1) What do you think about challenges in public space? Anyone know of
> data/reports about the impact on user experience? What have your
> experiences
> been?
> 2) What have your experiences been when users are able to browse
> content/product information that they then learn is not available? Is
> this a
> negative user experience, or are users appreciative of seeing as much
> information as possible?
>
> Thanks!
>
>
> Samantha Bailey | samantha at baileysorts.com
> http://www.baileysorts.com
>