- Stakeholders and executives
often love login walls, and I get it,
we want to protect our intellectual property,
ensure personalized information is personalized,
and monetize our content or services.
But here's a hard truth, login walls don't always
yield the leads you'd think they'd yield.
Maybe you saw colleague Raluca's video
about login walls and their relative interaction cost.
If you haven't, definitely check that out.
But I'm here to discuss an often misinterpreted study,
the Gamberini Reciprocity Study.
Dr. Luciano Gamberini, director at the Human Inspired
Technology Research Centre at the University of Padua,
ran a study with his colleagues
analyzing two different versions
of data gathering on websites, reward and reciprocity.
The reward model refers to content that is gated
and gets rewarded to the user
after they provide their personal data to the company.
The reciprocity, or reciprocation model,
refers to content which is free to access
without providing any personal data,
and only after content is accessed
does the company finally ask for personal data.
So reward condition,
personal data is collected before providing content,
reciprocity condition,
personal data is collected after providing content.
The experiment yielded interesting results.
The reward condition, aka login walls,
yielded 16% more submissions of personal data
than the reciprocity condition.
This is what often gets cited or quoted the most,
however, the critical information that's often omitted
is what happens in the reciprocity condition.
While there were 16% fewer submissions,
each submission contained more voluntarily submitted data
like name, surname, address, phone number, et cetera.
Most of the submissions in the reward condition
only had one to two pieces of information,
typically email address, and maybe a first name,
if they got lucky.
And think about it, when you are presented
with a login wall, and no context about what lies behind it,
have you ever typed a fake email address
or spam account email address?
Or perhaps included your real email address
but then immediately unsubscribed
as soon as an email came from that website?
I don't know about you, but I certainly have.
This principle of reciprocation,
one of Dr. Robert Cialdini's Principles of Influence,
is a psychological principle
in which people feel a sense of obligation
to repay what someone has provided,
regardless of the actual value of the exchange.
Salespeople at car dealerships
are notorious for using this same principle
as they sit you down for price negotiations.
- Hey, can I get you anything to drink?
Maybe a coffee, tea, water?
- Um, I guess I'll take a water, please.
- Okay.
- It doesn't matter if that water
did not cost the salesperson anything,
you will feel an undeniable sense of obligation
to conduct a very expensive transaction with this person
who has personally handed you a requested beverage.
Moral of the story, the benefit of login walls
does not outweigh the cost of lost goodwill.
Users just don't find hidden-content surprises rewarding.
Instead, consider providing something of value,
even if your business model
requires users to have an account.
It's not enough to just describe the content
in a modal or pop-up.
Showcase what the site offers, and provide a sense of value,
even if it's limited reciprocity,
which asks the user to create an account
after viewing some pieces of content.
If you want more leads,
sure, use login walls to reward users,
but if you want better leads, let your customers
see the real reason to come back for more.