Yesterday, if one were to ask me if I was going to change by blog from Blogger to Posterous, I would have laughed and said “Doubtful!”

However, some things are just completely unexpected. I saw a tweet from one of posterous’ founders, Garry Tan.

“Blogger users:  Switch to Posterous. Blog more. Tinker less. http://post.ly/m5J2 (via @posterous)” – @garrytan

I clicked on the link, just to see what kind of options that I had. The simplicity amazed me. Just two fields to plug in, my current blog address and my e-mail address. No password, name, city, etc. I entered my site and e-mail and clicked submit JUST TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED.

The process was amazing. All the information on a blog is public anyway, so it’s easy to scrape. In a matter of minutes all my posts were added, including pictures. I spent a couple minutes finding a simplistic theme, and setting it up with my custom domain. Within 15 minutes I was done with a process I had no intention of beginning.

This is the power of simplicity. When you make it easy for customers to get started with a very low barrier of entry, you’ll get a higher level of engagement. Especially when it comes to the web, the endless number of forms, passwords, etc become a hassle to maintain. Make it easy for a customer to become a customer, and then sell to them. Think of the bare minimum that you need in order to create a solid connection and then build out your needed information after they are already engaged. Will this end with lots of “hanging” customers with incomplete information? Of course, but overall I think it leads to higher numbers and higher engagement.