YouDecide.com - Not what it seems to be

On a lazy rainy Sunday I decided to test out YouDecide.com. It seemed like it might be a site that supported decisions about personal financial services. I was hoping to find something interested and a good example of a performance centered web site, but I was quickly disappointed. 

The first annoyance was that I couldn't access the services of the site without registering. So I decide to register and began to discover that YouDecide took a very unconventional approach to site registration. Most site ask for a username and a password. They generally accept a mixture of letters and numbers for  the password.  But YouDecide uses a PIN of 3 to 6 numbers. I missed that instruction on the first pass through the form and used my regular password. 

The YouDecide registration form had fields for recording a hint signon information. As shown in the following screen shot, the section label for the fields is: Just in Case (Username/PIN Hint)  I mistakenly assumed that just in case meant these fields were optional. As the screen shot shows, I was wrong. 

To make the process even more confusing and frustrating, YouDecide decided to offer a limited set of hint questions. But try to as much as I tried I could not find a question that came close to providing an adequate hint for my username and a numeric pin number.  

Figure 1

 

After three tries I finally got the form competed to the satisfaction of YouDecide and returned to the Home page which had a big "Give Us Your Feedback" graphic. I clicked it to, thinking I could send them a message about the rather irritating design of their registration form. Instead Youdecide proceeded to open 2 separate browser windows and fill both of them with the same long marketing questionnaire. I finally found a free form message field at the bottom of the form. 

Figure 2

YouDecide has perfected the art of using conventional terms in an unconventional manner. I click the link "Click here for Online Help" (Figure 3) expecting to get written help. Instead, YouDecide opened a separate browser window with the message in Figure 4.

Figure 3

Figure 4