Which of the following is the most intuitive? Which heading would encourage you to sign up (taking into consideration you arrived at this page upon attempting to join DaniWeb and were redirected, and this page is hosted on dazah.com and has a Dazah branded UI).
Jump to PostDefinitely option 3.
Jump to PostNumbers 2 and 3 seem identical to me. Same two sentences, just in reversed order. I vote number 1 because it immediately informs me that signing up for Dazah is mandatory if I want to sign up for Daniweb. Numbers 2 and 3 can be misconstrued as ENCOURAGING me to …
Jump to PostHmmm. I'd say 3, but amended to make the association/reason even clearer:
DaniWeb is part of the Dazah network of communities: Sign in with Dazah to access DaniWeb
Jump to PostThen Doubleclick was acquired by Google. Suddenly I needed a Google account to log into Doubleclick.
Because Google (Dazah) was bigger and better known than Doubleclick (DaniWeb). I had never heard of Doubleclick until you mentioned it just now.
For you it happened that way, but for …
Definitely option 3.
I'd say 3 too.
Numbers 2 and 3 seem identical to me. Same two sentences, just in reversed order. I vote number 1 because it immediately informs me that signing up for Dazah is mandatory if I want to sign up for Daniweb. Numbers 2 and 3 can be misconstrued as ENCOURAGING me to sign up for Dazah (see quote below), which leaves open the thought that there's an option to join Daniweb but not Dazah, which there isn't. If you are looking for the perfect, short, KISS-simple wording, and you clearly are, might as well slam that door shut right away, which 1 does, but not 2 and 3. Thus the "encourage" phrasing below in the original question seems wrong...
Which heading would encourage you to sign up
The fact is that there are people who don't care about Dazah and have no desire to join or be matched, yet they are forced to sign up for Dazah in order to use Daniweb. There's no need to re-argue that since it's a done deal. You'll lose some people due to that decision. You've mentioned many times that you'll lose many many more people if they have to spend a lot of time thinking about it and going through extra screens figuring out how it all works. With 2 and 3, I would be browsing Dazah looking for an opt-out option and trying to decide whether to join Dazah and Daniweb or just join Daniweb, options that don't exist. I'd rather just have it be extremely clear immediately what my actual options were, given the premise that I'm trying to join Daniweb: 1) Join Daniweb and Dazah or 2) Don't join Daniweb.
If you're looking for wording on how to not lose Daniweb people due to the Dazah sign-up requirement, that's a separate issue IMO.
Speaking of wording, on Dazah's Join page at the bottom, you have a "What is Dazah?" summary that starts with "Daniweb is one of the many apps in the Dazah network..." rather than "Dazah is...". Your second sentence introduces the term "Dazapps". Too technical too fast and given the whole "Daniweb vs. Dazah" confusion, a description of what Dazah is and what its merits are should stand alone. Consider a slight rewording of the main points in that very short description that leaves out "Daniweb" and "Dazapps" altogether. You have a "More information" button that you can click for more in-depth information. Stick "Daniweb" and "Dazapps" there if need be, but don't LEAD with them in the "What is Dazah?" explanation on a Join page.
I'd rather just have it be extremely clear immediately what my actual options were, given the premise that I'm trying to join Daniweb: 1) Join Daniweb and Dazah or 2) Don't join Daniweb.
If you're looking for wording on how to not lose Daniweb people due to the Dazah sign-up requirement, that's a separate issue IMO.
I'm looking for wording on how to not lose DaniWeb people due to the Dazah sign-up requirement ... but I'm trying to do so by getting the point across that you are creating one account ... a Dazah account ... and that one account grants you access to an entire network of communities, DaniWeb being one of them.
There is no concept of two separate accounts, no two separate logins, no two separate email addresses, no two separate anything.
There is no concept of two separate accounts, no two separate logins, no two separate email addresses, no two separate anything.
I have a Dazah Control Panel and a Daniweb Control Panel, right? And if the concept of Dazah catches on as you hope, I might join a car forum tied to Dazah, and an exercise forum tied to Dazah and a politics forum tied to Dazah and a gaming forum tied to Dazah etcetera etcetera, and each of these is going to have profiles suited to the forum (ie Daniweb lets you fill in your PC Specs but does not ask what car you drive. Presumably the car forum would have you fill that in and not care about your PC Specs). Each of them is going to have permissions/privacy settings like Daniweb where you I can add/revoke certain permissions for some forums and not others, and I'll fine-tune all of these profiles as far as whether I am interested in being "matched" with someone on Daniweb vs. the Car forum, do I want them to know about each other, etc., etc. In addition you could have private groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and private areas within groups (ie Area 51). A highly fine-tuneable, configurable Control Panel for each forum seems like a requirement?
and that one account grants you access to an entire network of communities
It's hard to visualise since right now there's pretty much only Daniweb, but some communities are not compatible with others. What exactly does "access" mean? There are some groups in that I don't want to be matched with or share data with.
I think if I wanted to sign up for DaniWeb any sort of redirect would put me off. I've been thinking about it and it seems to me it's about where you enter the network. Were I to enter through Dazah, because it's a network of communities for me to chose from, I would sign up. Were I to enter on DaniWeb, or one of the other communities a redirect to Dazah would confuse me.
Compare it to google. There used to be gmail. You signed up because you wanted free e-mail with large storage. Then along came other services, for instance google+. When I made my gmail account, I didn't want google+. Yet I had one, because it was all the same account. Fine by me, I never use it. Now that there are so many services on offer it's shifted from "gmail" account to "google" account. It's however very clear that gmail belongs to google. Dazah and DaniWeb? Not so much. And the Dazah name carries no weight yet, so if anything it's going to be a barrier, not an advantage.
The difference I guess is this: started with gmail, then created google+, then said "hey, you know that gmail account you have? you can use it to log in to google+".
So a better way, in my opinion, would be to promote the other communities on eachothers sites and tell users they can use the same account for all. Until then, I wouldn't mention the name Dazah anywhere near the login. Even though that might hurt the attraction of new communities. Although you could wonder how many visitors actually have a community and want to hook it up to Dazah. Wouldn't you be better off trying to find those within your own network? With the people who actually run communities.
Compare it to google. There used to be gmail. You signed up because you wanted free e-mail with large storage. Then along came other services, for instance google+. When I made my gmail account, I didn't want google+. Yet I had one, because it was all the same account. Fine by me, I never use it. Now that there are so many services on offer it's shifted from "gmail" account to "google" account.
I used to have a Doubleclick account. Then Doubleclick was acquired by Google. Suddenly I needed a Google account to log into Doubleclick.
I didn't change the wording in the heading and subheading (for now) but I did go ahead and change the color scheme as well as the wording in the About Dazah portion. Improvement?
A highly fine-tuneable, configurable Control Panel for each forum seems like a requirement?
The DaniWeb edit profile page letting you modify DaniWeb-related stuff is really just a UI "trick" for the sake of the end-user ... under the hood, Dazah stores everything about all of the communities you participate in all in one single place. There's actually just one profile that follows you around to all of the Dazah-powered apps you choose to participate in.
The benefit is that niche communities that would otherwise just have a narrow perspective of their audience join the network in order to pool their resources and create well-rounded profiles of users they have in common.
From a privacy perspective, you opt-into each Dazah-powered app and explicitely give it permission to access your Dazah profile, Your profile expands with each Dazah-powered app you connect to learning more and more about you.
DaniWeb chooses to extract some of the DaniWeb-relevant stuff and offer the option to change it from a DaniWeb-looking edit profile page, but under the hood, there's actually not a concept of a separate DaniWeb profile. Not all Dazah-powered apps may choose to do it the way DaniWeb does. Other apps may be more transparent about how there is one profile and one profile only.
Good answer. Makes sense. I lose track of what I've posted, so forgive me if this is a repeat. Back to your original question regarding wording, for me, in general, when I have a question about something, I'll google, say, "C++ vs. Java array out of bounds check" and see what comes up. I'm in research mode and I don't want to be slowed down by pop-ups or other diversions encouraging me to join a forum, so navigating through extra screens would make me less likely to join since I'm hoping not to have to join ANY forum if I can help it. I'm simply looking for my answer. If after refining my search and checking out some links/forums I can't find an answer (pretty rare that I don't find an answer), I may join a new forum to post a question. By that time I've spent several minutes searching as you are supposed to do, plus crafting a good question takes a few minutes, so let's say five minutes minimum for this task, but probably longer.
To join a new forum, I likely have to provide an email address, pick a username, and go through a few clicks to verify my email address, prove I'm a human rather than a bot, etc., so add a minute or two there, call it seven minutes minimum for this process including research and crafting my question. Given that time commitment, when I transfer from research mode to "join new forum" mode, clicking through a few more screens (a rules screen for example) is comparatively trivial time- and effort-wise: 10, 20, 30 seconds? I'm simply not concerned with that extra time once I've committed to joining a new forum to ask my question, nor am I going to be deterred/diverted by a little extra or inexact wording, especially since I'm expecting to have to wait a few hours for anyone to answer my question even when I phrase the question well and put in effort (and asking a bad question simply delays the answer due to the answerers either ignoring it or needing to ask for clarification). I'm much more likely to not join a forum if I can't quickly find a good page describing the privacy policy, the rules, or the site's security (and I do read those pages or at least skim them).
That's me at least. Can't imagine I'm alone. However, you apparently have a lot of data showing that those extra clicks or a slight change in wording or having to read four sentences instead of two seems to make a difference. I believe you, but I just can't relate to this given how few forums I join and the premise that I need an answer and I need to join a forum to get the answer. Small price to pay for free help. As such, perhaps I'm the wrong guy to weigh in on this stuff... :) If I see a decent writeup of Dazah and wording that says I have to join Dazah to join Daniweb, I'll either care about Dazah and it's therefore worth the effort to learn about it, or I won't care about Dazah and simply go through a couple extra mindless clicks, pausing to make sure I'm not agreeing to anything I don't want to agree to privacy/security/rules-wise, then put Dazah out of my mind.
Hmmm. I'd say 3, but amended to make the association/reason even clearer:
DaniWeb is part of the Dazah network of communities: Sign in with Dazah to access DaniWeb
How about changing Daniweb to Dazah's Daniweb: <DAZAH: DANIWEB> Heh.
Then Doubleclick was acquired by Google. Suddenly I needed a Google account to log into Doubleclick.
Because Google (Dazah) was bigger and better known than Doubleclick (DaniWeb). I had never heard of Doubleclick until you mentioned it just now.
For you it happened that way, but for me the reverse is true. I wouldn't mind going to Doubleclick now because I have a Google account anyway.
DaniWeb is part of the Dazah network of communities: Sign in with Dazah to access DaniWeb
I like that addition as well. After all, I'm not signing up for Dazah but for DaniWeb with Dazah.
DaniWeb is part of the Dazah network of communities: Sign in with Dazah to access DaniWeb
I like it.
AssertNull, but what about:
can be misconstrued as ENCOURAGING me to sign up for Dazah (see quote below), which leaves open the thought that there's an option to join Daniweb but not Dazah, which there isn't.
I thought you felt it was important to include that a Dazah account is required??
I do feel that. I think "Sign in with Dazah to access DaniWeb" is farther along the path to making it obvious that Dazah isn't optional than the original option number 3 that everyone else was voting for. It's not QUITE as obvious as your option #1, but satisfactory and a nice middle ground. If it was me, I'd still prefer # 1, but HappyGeek's revised #3 works.
I'm generally a "Get the information out there" type guy. If the information is delivered, even if the wording is inelegant or takes a few more sentences than may be required, your job is done and it's far preferable to leaving relevant information out. But I'm a guy who tends to read the boring fine print anyway.
HappyGeek's two sentence description, then a clickable "Why do I have to join Dazah in order to join Daniweb?" link explaining things in more detail for those who want to read it (those who don't care won't click, but the link text itself further drives the non-optional point home) is ideal.
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