robwebb2k

Nothing bugs me more than a bad signup process.  The signup should be viewed as your site’s sales process.  The ball is in your court to  close the deal when someone starts the signup.  Don’t blow it!  A few things I try to keep in mind when analyzing or building a signup process…

1. Ask for the most interesting, fun, and relevant information from the user first. Ask for the most senstive, boring, and personal information from them last.  Example:  If you are trying to sell cake on your website, the first piece of information you should ask for is what kind of cake the user wants.  This is why they are on your site.  They will be happy and excited to give you this information.  Much more happy than they would be to give you their email address, cell phone number, or credit card number.
2. Only ask for information when it is absolutely necessary. Every additional page you include in a signup process will result in attrition and on a smaller scale, every question you ask will do the same.  Sure it would be great to know every users’ birthday so you could send them a happy birthday email, but if you’re selling cake do you REALLY need to know it?  You can also break the information gathering process down into smaller pieces.  Example:  You only need payment and delivery information if they actually place an order that they need to pay for and have delivered….so ask for it only when they need to pay or have something delivered.
3. Break the process down into easy to swallow steps. We’ve all seen daunting signup forms that stretch below the fold.  Nothing says “signup” like one of those guys.  Ideally your users will feel like they are working on a project and not actually signing up for anything.  Prompting users with one or two questions and a nice big button will move them through the process quickly and draw them in.  Lumping them all together will cause gag reflexes.  Of course too many steps will cause damage as well, but if you follow #2 you should be OK.
4. Only create barriers when abuse makes them necessary. If you’re building a consumer site, chances are you’ve had some sleepless nights thinking about fraud, abuse, etc. and how you can prevent those problems.  This is important stuff to think about and plan for, but there is no need to build barriers to prevent problems that don’t exist.  Example:  making users verify their email address will prevent fraud…but if you have no users (and no fraud) there is no reason to create this barrier.
5. “Invite” and “share” only when appropriate and only after you have “sold” the user. Everyone now knows that inviting and sharing are how sites organically grow.  That doesn’t mean you should ask your users to import their whole address book and share the news of their pending cake purchase.  Instead carefully lead the user through the signup process and prompt them to share  with relevant people once they have bought into the service and have something worth sharing.
6. Test, test, test. If you already have a signup process in place, try tweaking it towards a sticky system and see if it works.  If your site is currently configured for a traditional non-sticky signup (email, password), take baby steps and measure along the way to see if you’re making progress.  The counter argument to sticky signups is that users are comfortable with traditional signups.  This is definitely true to some degree…however I’ve never met anyone that enjoyed them.

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Examples:  Sticky & Simple

Anyvite:  Juicy information up front, dry stuff in the back, super easy sharing.

Craigslist:  The LAST bit of information asked for is your email address.

37 Signals Job Board:  Clean and direct with relevant questions first.

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Examples:  Sticky & Complex

Pageflakes:  The page is already built and ready for you to personalize and claim.

Netvibes:  Straight into the juicy info needed to build your personalized page.

Widgetbox:  Build your widget first, then claim it if you want to.

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If you like geeking out about this stuff check out the gallery at Product Planner and easily examine the flow of your favorite sites.