Will Making Users Verify Email Upon Entering My Website, Make Them Turn Away and Lose Interest?

In short, yes. I'd almost guarantee if users are visiting your site and have to confirm their email prior to even seeing the content, it's going to increase your bounce rate tremendously. What are you wanting to collect their emails for? Marketing I assume. You'd probably be better off creating a dedicated landing page for what you're trying to promote and collect the emails there by way of giving away some form of valuable content.

I'm gonna have to go with Joshua G from Clever Marketing all the way on this one when he said, "It's absolutely going to cause an increase in bounce rate, and will likely also negatively affect your Organic Search Visibility.".

Personally, I usually find double opt-ins annoying when I'm on the receiving end of one.

For me, it's like "Don't question my choice to opt in or make me rethink it." "Just give me immediate value when I receive that next point of contact from you".

But maybe that's just me.

Why should anyone have to verify an email address if they are not making a purchase?

The only way it could work would be if you drive people to your website ie an 'invitation', and their email is their access. Then you have to have an invitation to get in. I have used that in the past as 'security' for parts of a site that only clients could have access to.

Otherwise, might as well close down the site. You are announcing that you don't want visitors.

Mark

I think probably a Captcha to show they are human would work best if you just want to make sure that a human is entering your site. To me I want as many seeing my site as I can get. I don't care if they are just looking around, it may register in their mind what you offer to use at a later date. The "lookers" may also be comparing several businesses to see who is the best source for what they want.

Requiring an email to view a website is a double sided obstacle. On one hand, if you want ONLY the very serious to access your website, then it's a great way to do that. However, you may also be losing valuable potential clients. I like the idea presented about offering a free consult or something else of value in return for their email verification. This would eliminate the "just looking" people, still get the very serious people, and also gather SOME of the possibles.

Yes, if it's just to access a website, it will turn away a lot of your audience. If the goal is to build an email list for email marketing, there has to be an exchange of value.

Their email address is valuable to you, so you must offer them something valuable in exchange. Depending on the nature of your business, it can be a guide, early access to something, a free consult... whatever you can offer en masse that your audience will find genuinely valuable. Then ask for their email in order for them to gain access to that content.

Yes

Yes, it likely will. Best find a way to offer them something fist before making such an invasive request. Even then A lot of search firms are using an auto capture feature that comes across like a phishing attempt (like ZipRecruiter) so watch out for that.

I would suspect if you tried doing this the experiment wouldn't last long before you reverted back. Nobody's going to put their email address before even getting a taste of what you offer.

The only circumstance that might differ would be where you have created such an environment where people absolutely know you're the best website in the entire world and they want a piece of your awesomeness. I for one would never venture in that route because you'd filter out too many people too fast. It's never good putting the burden on your visitors and this does exactly that.

Wow. Lotsa answers - quickly - and fairly consistent, too. I'm a usability guy, so opt for fewer barriers *on general principle* and assume that marketing follows engagement.

Some here have also raised the Quality qualifier (i.e. "Is the extra effort sometimes worth it?") Good one. The web tends to salivate over Big Shallow Numbers ("Just LOOK at all my Likes!"), but that's not always theRealValueProposition.

... imo