In his article ‘Top 10 Mistakes In Web Design‘, Jakob Nielsen the web usability guru wrote,

“Consistency is one of the most powerful usability principles: When things always behave the same, users don’t have to worry about what will happen”

He goes on to add,

“The more users’ expectation prove right, the more the will feel in control and the more they will like it. And the more the system breaks users’ expectations, the more they will feel insecure”.

Photo by Son of Groucho

That’s why in e-commerce, you always see continuity in design from the product page, throughout the checkout process. This so basic that many including your customers expect you, an online marketer to know. Unfortunately, there are still many small online businesses who may not be quite aware of this. As a result, their membership signup process contains many stumbling blocks for the customer.

The customer starts off on a well designed sales page. Once they are convinced and ready to order, they click through to a checkout page that is looks nothing like the one they just came from. If you are very lucky and the customer continues with their order, they could find themselves inside a members’ only area that carries yet another design. As the customer moves through the process, they could see as many as three or more different page designs that do nothing to indicate a seamless process. Nothing to re-assure the customer they are indeed ordering and receiving the product from the same company.

It is a process that entirely breaks the customer’s expectations and ultimately causes them to doubt your membership offer.

Perhaps membership sites are more complex to set up than a one-time delivery product. The system you have to use is different. Most off the shelf shopping carts don’t support recurring memberships with protected membership area and you are just overwhelmed by the delivery process. Maybe, you are confident of your influence and believe your product is so good that there is no need to worry about prettying things up. But this is all poor excuse and it goes deeper than just eye candy.

Like it or not, impressions count. If it is important for one time delivery products it is even more important for recurring memberships because members log in every month. The more confused they are, the less likely they will stay. It also subtly demonstrates how seriously you take your members. If it looks like you’ve never moved into your own website, they’ll begin to wonder how long you will continue to deliver.

Building a membership site takes considerable work. There are many things to work out. But how people experience your site before they become a member and after has a lot of impact. Take time to brand your membership site signup, login and account management pages. You may find you are able to increase your sign up rate by making a simple customizations.

Using aMember for your membership site and not quite sure how to begin this branding process, pick up our aMember Customization training will guide you through each step.