The Drost Axiom: Whenever you see a common practice that everyone hates, it's because IT'S A MONEY MACHINE BABY.<p>Corollary: Don't gum up my hacker news feed with blog posts championing the antidote that everyone loves, because they don't matter.<p>As to the actual content of the article: Netflix advertises their cancellation policy less than they advertise the fact that they accept all major credit cards. That sidebar is just a bunch of comforting words; a long-form sales blurb for people that want to read something while they teeter on the fence.
Reminds me of an old Joel Spolsky post about eliminating barriers to exit, not just entry.
<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html</a><p>'Now suppose one brave ISP would make the following promise: "Try us. If you don't like us, we'll keep your email address functioning, and we'll forward your email for free to any other ISP. For life. Hop around from ISP to ISP as many times as you want, just let us know, and we'll be your permanent forwarding service."'<p>(Yes, there was a time when people actually tied their email to their ISP's domain.)
Splitting long forms across multiple pages can be detrimental to usability.<p>As a user, I want to know what information is going to be requested of me prior to commencing completion of the forms. I don't want to reach the payment page after filling in countless other fields to discover that my preferred payment method won't be accepted or the shipping rates are unacceptable. Placing form fields on a single page means that the user doesn't have to hand over information at the risk of not receiving something in return.<p>Requesting an email address or password multiple times is frustrating too. Hacker News gets this right. To sign up, all a user has to do is type text into two fields, click a button and it's done - ready to use.
I'll wait for more evidence that making it super duper clear that you can cancel <i>significantly</i> improves conversion.<p>Now this doesn't mean that cancellation may be a non-significant factor. I just think that it is more of a macro factor than a micro one that can be done right on just your own site and be expected to have an impact. If the last three sites the user signed up on had shitty cancellation, your text promising ease of cancelation is undoubtful to convince them. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have it; it does mean you should manage expectations in terms of it's influence on conversion rate.
I find even with fairly easy cancellation forms online there is usually to much stuff trying to get me to not cancel and trying to use subtle emotional messages to change my mind.<p>If I've come to this page generally it is probably too late to try and convince me not to cancel something.
Simple and true. Difficult cancellation processes are really annoying. I recently cancelled two services, and even though I called them thanking them <i>and</i> opened a ticket, they still kept sending me expiration notices for over a month. Gosh.
I feel the same way about email. If I know you're running your list through someone like Mail Chimp, I'm more likely to give you my email address, because I know how easy they make it to unsubscribe.
Isn't it also easier to implement if you don't force the customer to go through a rather long and annoying cancel form?<p>Win-win for the developer and the user, then.