If you have a website where users 90% of time only read and view content, but rarely post, like a blog, does it make sense to force a login?
If I force the user to login to view some information, like how Quora.com lets you only view the 1st answer unless you log in, will this turn people away? Especially if other sites offering content close to yours don't force logins?
The advantages of a forced login are 2:
- you know exactly who your user is and you can design your website according to user's behavior and
- you can keep scrapers away much easier, especially if you hide the content scrapers want.
Generally, are people sick of logins?
Answer
Answering your question, which doesn't involve specific motivation behind it. Yes, people don't like to register on sites, people don't like giving information all the time, people don't like remembering passwords and user names.
This behaviour is common to everyone, but some groups are more annoyed than others and some are more radical than others; for instance, a person that doesn't have much interaction on Internet except to look for some minor things like reading news, visiting one or two social sites and not much more, won't mind registering in one more site if he has a reason to. On the other side of the spectrum, a persona that is browsing a lot, and is already registered in many sites through the years, is more likely to leave a site and not use it again if he has to register and there is no good reason to it.
The most important thing here, is the reason. usually people won't mind registering and then login if you give a good reason for it.
Leaving comments on a blog, for instance, is something that doesn't deserve an account, creating an account on Amazon to buy things, is worth the effort.
Remember, the information or control that you want to have over the user is something that you want, not the user, from the user perspective, it's your job to keep the site clean and functional. Whatever you do behind your site doors, is your problem.
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