Default Opt-in Interest - Creative ways around user confusion

Ben Smith

Convio requires displaying your generic default opt-in interest on surveys, forms, etc. We want to display opt-in Interest check-boxes on our forms for some of our specific eNewsletters. However, since we're required to display the default Interest, it creates confusion for the user about what they're opting into. If they opt-out of the default Interest, but leave the eNewsletter Interest checked, they'll get NO emails from us.

Has anybody figure out creative ways to get around this awkwardness?

Ben

Noah Cooper

Ben,

One option would be to use Javascript to hide the site-level email opt-in checkbox, and only check it in the case that the user checks at least one of the interest opt-in checkboxes. This approach of course means that if the users checks none of the interest options, they will be opted out of all email, so you'd have to decide if that's an issue for your organization.

If you used the Utils.js library included in Convio to do this, it would look something like:

<script type="text/javascript">

function interestCheck(){

    var interest1=document.getElementById('interest1_checkbox').checked;

    var interest2=document.getElementById('interest2_checkbox').checked;

    if(interest1=='checked'||interest2=='checked'){

        document.getElementById('optin_checkbox').checked='checked';

    }

}

addOnLoadHandler(function(){

    document.getElementById('optin_checkbox').style.display='none';

    document.getElementById('optin_checkbox').checked='';

    interestCheck();

    var optIn=document.getElementById('optin_checkbox');

    Utils.addEvent(optIn,'click',interestCheck);

});

</script>

... where "optin_checkbox", "interest1_checkbox", and "interest2_checkbox" are the IDs of those fields. (And of course, you don't necessarily have to do this with Utils if you have another library you prefer.)

Alternatively, you could do this kind of in the reverse order -- if and only if the user checks the site-level opt-in, show the interest opt-in options, so that the user flow is:

1) I indicate my preference as to whether or not I'd like to receive ANY email.

2) Once I do so, an additional list of options appear that provide me with the ability to more granularly manage my subscription preferences.

3) If for some reason I uncheck the top-level opt-in checkbox, the rest are also unchecked and re-hidden.