[thelist] Asking for email address twice

[Ben Dyer]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:22 PM, Matt Warden <mwarden at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Fred Jones <fredthejonester at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> It makes no sense, and I can honestly say that I've never done
> >> anything except copy & paste into the second field.
> >
> > I'm not 100% sure, but anyhow I think that evolt may be a skewed
> > audience, b/c we're a bunch of geeks. Regular folks may be more prone
> > to typos etc. b/c using the web is not necessarily what they do all
> > day. :)
>
> Well why not make customers fill in their street address twice before
> shipping them their ordered items?


Because the Post Office is generally forgiving of such errors in delivery,
even on seemingly-bigger errors like transposing numbers in the address or
ZIP Code. If the e-mail is sent to the wrong address, the user will never
receive it.

For me, it boils down to how imperative the e-mail address is to the action
you're performing. If it were something really important or
mission-critical, like where the user is spending money or signing up online
for bank service or bill-pay service, I might verify the user typed in the
e-mail correctly. But just for setting up an account on a site or something
along those lines, I wouldn't waste my time.

--Ben