[Sigia-l] Create Account vs. Register

[Brett Ingram]

Hi,

We have a site with 3 levels of usage -
Anonymous - where the user can spend up to 20 minutes listening to music
without giving any information about herself,
Registered - the user can listen for free (with ads) by giving an email
address, creating a password, and letting us know her age and zip code
Subscribed - Pay an annual fee and the user can listen without ads.

We have been debating the language to use - "Create an Account" vs.
"Register". Currently we mix the two and I am working to make us
consistent in our use of language.

I have been looking to see if there have been any studies that explored
this issue at all. So far, I haven't had any luck. Some of my own small
scale, qualitative studies in the past have shown confusion among users
as to what they think these words mean.

Does anyone know of any published studies out there that explore this,
or have any data of there own to share?



Thanks,

Brett Ingram
Interaction Designer
Pandora Media, Inc.