There are lots of good reasons users stop coming, so context matters: - Were they ever regular users, or were they just checking you out (Second Life, which has a huge fall off after registration)? - Have they forgotten their password and would log on if you reset it for them? - Do they just need a gentle reminder/invite and coupon or tour of what's new on your site? Or do they have a reason for not wanting to log on--for example, despite weekly e-mails from my brokerage firm, I simply do not want to face how much money my retirement account has lost since my last log on.
The other reason of course is they don't need what's offered by your company. Reminders and incentives are unlikely to affect those people, so good to separate them out if possible, and perhaps follow up with them separately. If you were charging a monthly fee, they would cancel their accounts rather than drop out. I'd recommend testing responses to various approaches rather than sending a survey, which is unlikely to engage anyone except the small demographic of people who like to fill out surveys (most of whom are members of this list :) A friendly "we haven't heard from you in a while" e-mail accompanied by an incentive can revitalize lost visitors/customers, at least the ones who saw value in your service in the first place. Finally if you do follow up (and you should), please offer an easy unsubscribe. There's nothing I hate more than being spammed by some site I logged onto once three years ago that wants me to remember a user name and password in order to stop getting mail from them. Diana On Thu, Dec 11, 2008 at 4:12 PM, Michael Stiso <mikest...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello. I'm curious about methods for finding out why subscribers to a > site stop visiting that site. For example, imagine that I have some > social networking site, and I notice that some subscribers (some of > them new members, some old) simply stop visiting it. They don't cancel > their accounts, they just stop showing up. > > How might I discover their reasons for dropping out? I imagine that > surveys can be automatically sent to people who don't log in for a > specified period of time, but I'm wondering if others may have > developed user research methods that would be less potentially > irritating to the users. > > Thanks for any thoughts on the matter. > > Mike > > > -------------------- > Michael Stiso > HCI Research Scientist > SINTEF ICT > Oslo, Norway > http://mikestiso.com/ > > > Want to help with a survey on design patterns? Please? > Check out this link, if you can spare 5-10 minutes. Thanks! > > http://preview.tinyurl.com/63f9gq > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
