Should a classifieds website user be made to sign up before posting ads?

Question

I am in the classifieds website business. I am struggling to find general consensus about the best way to design a user experience for being able to post ads on a classifieds site. Specifically, the site is http://www.buyagainbaby.com. But, this site follows the same pattern and architecture as the others I design, so ironing this out will help moving forward.

In order to both post and ad as well as contact an individual about their ads, should a user be made to sign up first?

There seem to be two schools of thought.

1) If I force the user to sign up you put security in place that maintains a certain level of integrity for content as well as accounts. Also, having a person sign up to contact a user allows for one to hide (or protect) the poster from receiving spam, which, is more prevalent when there is unfettered access to the 'contact this poster' form.

or

2) Allow anonymous users not only post but more importantly contact users about posts. I am finding that it is most annoying for authentic users to have to go through the extra steps to sign up just to be able to access the 'contact this user' form. If you have ever used craigslist, you may know how easy it is to interact with the site. At the same time, you know how frustrating it is to get so much spam.

The signup process is fill out name and email, and then verify via a link sent to your email address to activate the account - pretty standard stuff.

Thoughts? Thoughts on even a better way to find a balance here between ease of use and content / user integrity?

Any other thoughts on how the website could be more user friendly are greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Assumptions:

• The business cares about great UX, and collecting email addresses is not the key driver
• You want to make interaction with the site as easy as possible, i.e. posting ads, users getting in touch with each other
• Content quality and privacy matters
• Users can administrate their ads without an account or login

I looked up buyagainbaby and having to register an account before getting in touch or posting ads really feels like a hurdle. If there is a competitor offering an easier solution potential users might turn to their site instead of yours.

The following workflow seems much easier to me but still addresses the assumptions above:

a) As a seller I want to list an item

1. Seller enters item title, description etc. into a form, adds pictures
2. Seller unhesitatingly enters his email address (because they know the email is not disclosed to buyers or any other 3rd party)
3. Seller clicks the link in the verification email they receive (to verify the email address and activate the ad)
4. Seller receives a confirmation and administration email after the ad is activated (it contains a link that sends them to a page and enables them to edit/pause/delete the ad or buy upgrades like increased visibility)

b) As a buyer I want get in touch with a seller

1. Buyer clicks a button in a certain ad to get in touch with the seller
2. Buyer unhesitatingly enters the message and his email address (because they know the system will not disclose their real email in the communication to the seller)
3. The email is sent to the seller and the two of them are connected via your platform

Key to both use cases is that the system would anonymize both email addresses to a random but unique email in your system which your system then would map to each users' email.

In the scenario above users can focus on their task/goal, which is listing the ad or getting in touch with the seller, without having to worry about another account that they would need to maintain.

Optionally you could offer users to create an account by entering a password if there is a real benefit, e.g. easier administration of their ads.

Answer 2

I am not sure if you are pre-populating the form fields with the user details while filling up the form (provided the user is registered). However I'll go with that assumption and going by that thought process, I would suggest this process :

Allow users to send messages to those who posted the ads without signing up but remind them that they would not have to fill in the form fields every time if they signed up as the data would get pre populated if they had an account and they were signed in.Also tell them that registered posts are more likely to get a response as opposed to those just sent as anonymous or as a guest.

With regards to the posting of content,you should get users to sign in so that there is some level of authentication involved and secondly they can keep track of what messages have come in from whom and they can access/edit their content when they want to.

With regards to signing up and validation,if you think its a major pain,have you considered open authentication using google or facebook or twitter?

Answer 3

Do what Wikipedia does(used to do atleast): Have a captcha and a maybe a not-too-annoying process("enter email id so that we can get back to you, real name, blah") for the contact form. Next to the captcha write "tired of writing your name/captcha every time? Create an account!" with a convenient link.

For posting stuff, it's really your choice, and it depends if you even want an anon to post. Since its just classifieds, I think it's OK to allow anons to post, as long as they provide an email id. But lock half the features; and say "want to use this? Create an account! It's fast sand free!" or something along those lines (hopefully less obnoxious). Kind of like WolframAlpha and other sites, except you don't have to pay.

You may also consider adding OpenID logins (like stackexchange) useful. That makes it extremely easy to create an account.

Answer 4

No. Craigslist does not.See how well they have done! Email is hidden behind a randomly generated email. They just require you to input your email so it will go to the right place, but there is no real registration. Classifieds have a degree of privacy to them inherently anyways, the faster the better for them, IMO.