What Type Of Things In A Members Area Hurt Retention?

Im always seeing posts on various industry message boards from companies and paysite owners saying that they have good retention but, its very rare that i will see a discussion about the things that should be avoided inside a members area from the get-go that will actually hurt customer retention.

With that in mind, what are some things that you feel hurt retention when it comes to paysite members area?

For me the main thing has to be a bad navigation or, navigation that isnt readily accessible from anywhere, on any page on the members area, for instance, where instead of having to click a link, the member needs to constantly use their back button in their browser.

What other things do you folks think hurt the amount of income paysite owners can make specifically inside the members area of a site iteself?

Regards,

Lee

Anything that leads the surfer to think the site owner doesn't care once he's made the sale.

I went inside a site that used to sell well last year, and realized that it hadn't updated inside since last year either - and it was easy to tell that it hadn't updated.

So at least do a 'fake' shuffle of your content.

and of course stuff that doesn't work...

crappy navigation

no updates

not enough updates

poor quality videos and/or pics

models or action that don't live up to the site's claims

too many upsells

misleading links that make upsells sound like content

and like Bill said, stuff that doesn't work. i once reviewed a paysite that hadn't been tested, and none of the videos worked *LOL*

So far this is all spot-on and I have nothing to add.

Except to say that everyone has already hit the nail on the head when it comes to this.

I firmly believe that over-promising and under-delivering won't get you any further than an initial sale.

Patti,

Im suprised you didnt mention forums or chat rooms, in terms of features that dont work well for retention, ive seen a few sites that have message boards inside them that are totally dead.. Even the site owner doesnt post on them.

I know back when i used to surf porn, if i saw a site that had message boards inside them that had nothing on them id cancel my membership.

Regards,

Lee

I have read from time to time about straight sites who claim that internal social networking endeavors help their retention.

I always wondered how that could be. With Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, everything else, are people really that into paying for a porn social networking site?

The only way I could ever see that being successful is if the porn stars are active on it, too.

Having said that, whenever I see a porn star writing perfectly, I always think it's the producer. I'm not saying that porn stars are stupid. I am just pointing out that they all seem to have great grammar and sound alike (yes, you are supposed to read into that).

news feeds from places like yahoo!!

anything that can not be managed by the site owner i think should not be in the site includes stuff like plugin feeds and stuff like that i was researching feeds a few weeks back and on gms there was a lot of threads with members complaining about feeds not working!

Right, most of the problems have been covered. I can only speak from the consumer side of paysites at this point. In the past, the following has caused me to cancel membership or stop going to a site:

Top of the list: bad, inconsistent, or completely apathetic customer service. Sometimes you need to contact the webmaster when things don't work right or for something. I have a lot of patience knowing others are waiting for the same. However, when I get a careless, apathetic, or assholish answer to something important, there's no reason to fight it, I just leave.

The other is a site that advertises certain type of content that isn't there after you join. If the models in the ad look like or do what only 1 percent of the models do on the site, this is :thumbsdown:

Navigation and constant technical problems also test my patience. But if the content is rare or unusual, can't be found any other place, then sometimes that helps pull me back for a little while.

Of course, low quality filming (bad lighting, boring angles, so forth) and/or low quality video (not clear) is a disappointment.