This hypothesis is testable and, from personal experience that I regrettably can't show you, the data do not support it. There is no reason you should take my word for this -- try it for a week or two on a site you control.
Increasing user investment in the interaction is one way to cut down on abandonment -- for example, if you're doing comments, asking for a name/email address BEFORE they write the comment will decrease the number of comments you receive markedly, but asking it afterwards will decrease it very little, because people have emotional investment in seeing those two paragraphs they just wrote actually show up.
Increasing user investment in the interaction is one way to cut down on abandonment
I'd say it's also a way to stack up on churn.
Treat me like that and I may go through your damned procedure to at least not have wasted my last 5 minutes for nothing. But at the same time you have just lost all my sympathy which might influence buying decisions and definately influences loyality.
Always look at the "lifetime value" of your customers, a simple conversion split-test is only half of the story.
Yep, I agree with moe on this one: you just get more churn. In Get Satisfaction's case, I signed up because I wanted the comment to get there, but I deliberately used a low-grade address, and have forgotten my details already. I won't be going back there.
This hypothesis is testable and, from personal experience that I regrettably can't show you, the data do not support it. There is no reason you should take my word for this -- try it for a week or two on a site you control.
Increasing user investment in the interaction is one way to cut down on abandonment -- for example, if you're doing comments, asking for a name/email address BEFORE they write the comment will decrease the number of comments you receive markedly, but asking it afterwards will decrease it very little, because people have emotional investment in seeing those two paragraphs they just wrote actually show up.