Summary: you must relentlessly streamline the process by which a user joins your site and avoid even this process as long as possible.
In marketing lingo, it’s called your ‘conversion rate.’ This is the percentage of users who you successfully convince to take some action. On the web, this usually means getting someone to
- Click your ads.
- Create an account, or
- Buy your product.
Today I’d like to focus specifically on the second goal. This is a topic that has not been getting enough coverage. I see the same mistakes being made on hundreds of sites, and they have significant impact on the user experience.
Let’s start with an example.
Just this morning I read a blog entry on TechRepublic that I enjoyed. I was so impressed I decided to click the ‘thumbs up’ button to cast a positive vote for the entry.
Oops. “Access to this feature requires a free TechRepublic membership! Not a member? Click here to join now.”
Bad already. I’ve tried to interact with this site in the tiniest way, and it is already committing the cardinal sin in sales and flirting: trying to close too quickly.
Slow down guys. I’m not ready to make an account yet. I just want to get to know you a little bit.
This is where I usually give up on a site. I did want to test out a feature or two, but I’m not invested enough to take the time to hand over my information and create yet another account.
However, for the sake of science, this time I pressed on. Here’s TechRepublic’s registration page:
Wow! FOURTEEN required fields PLUS two “please spam me” check-boxes that are helpfully selected by default. This image is 860 pixels tall and you still can’t even see the submit button yet.
Why oh why make this so hard? Attention spans on the web are notoriously short, yet this site insists that ‘company size’ be a required field. I disagree. TechRepublic does not need to know my company size for me to vote up that blog post, they want that information so they can sell it to their partners.
I feel dirty now. Let’s take a cleansing look at a good registration page:
Ahhhh, much better. Four required fields, and one is just a captcha to make it hard for bots to create a billion accounts. There’s a field for an email address, but it’s optional! These are requests I’m willing to fulfill.
Let’s wrap up with some straightforward advice:
- Think of forcing your users to register as a last resort. Deliver as many features as possible without registration.
- Do not withhold features from unregistered users to convince them to register. (Under certain business models, this may be unavoidable.)
- When users do register, streamline the process as much as possible. One page maximum!
- Keep required fields to a minimum. If you’d like more detailed information, allow users to enter it through a different page later on (optionally!)
- Consider eliminating password complexity requirements. If you’re not holding sensitive data for them, let your users use any old password they prefer.
Happy New Year everyone.
Edit: yes, my comment boxes have name/website/email fields. All these fields are optional.
77 Comments
Are ‘Name’, ‘Email’, and ‘Website’ info really required for me to leave a comment???
No comment!
Couldn’t agree more
How can you track votes, if it is not backed up by accounts? Just cookies probably won’t do..
Agree on the rest btw
interesting. I agree entirely.
It’s about time someone mentioned this – hopefully the sites will pick it up.
…practice what you preach.
No – Name, Email, and Website are all optional.
worse – 2 pages of form followed by credit card info to try an unwanted product – & still get email w/o submitting
FYI, reddit also requires registration before you can give the thumbs up on content.
So I don’t have to register to leave a comment?
I must agree with you. When I go to a site that has all of these registration rules I’m immediately annoyed and usually leave. They really aren’t thinking things through very well. All of those extra fields should be included in the profile or something if you want to fill them in later.
Reddit’s registration is extremely simple which is a big reason it’s now my favorite bookmarking site.
In order for you to get my comment you’ll need to fill out this small registration form…..
Couldn’t agree with you more!
I particularly hate when I have to register for a bulletin board on a site to *Search* said forum!
I am probably at the site for some problem I am having and I have to create an account to search??
Almost indescribably stupid policy, imo.
This registration process is largely a holdover from magazine subscription submission. Even “free” trade magazines required the same info TechRepublic requires so they can sell it to advertisers, and it was a simple process to get the information you wanted (the magazine) by giving them the information they wanted (the numbers for advertisers), even if it was false (yes, I work for a medical supply company and make $400k-$500k a year if it will get me your neat pharmacology trade magazine and associated weird catalogs for free).
Now, of course, this is bad/dumb to us on short attention span web, but it is important to recognize that the way a lot of people make money, be it in print or electronic media, is in the selling of information to advertisers. That’s why TechRepublic wants all that info, because as awful as it is that they may lose your ‘sale’ as you put it, it probably seems worse to them that a user is able to interact with the site without them having that sales information.
It is one of the many holdovers of the publishing industry that people never really liked but recognized as necessary, but will eventually go away as more companies get wise to responding to what users need instead of only focusing on what the company wants.
you are correct!
wish every site registration was simple as that
I just use (free) Roboform to fill all of the forms, and I use it to enter contests as well. I use a throwaway mailexpire.com email address that is set to expire after a few weeks (or less). The other option might be to try the right-click use of the firefox “bugmenot” (bugmenot.com) plugin.
So True
There’s no way in Hell I’d fill out that TechRepublic form. Interestingly, ZIP code is not required but phone number and information about company size is?!
I agree, if you HAVE to get registrants make the form as simple as possible. You can always encourage the members to fill out additional profile data later on as they become more involved and invested with the website.
>I particularly hate when I have to register for a bulletin board on a site to *Search* said forum!
That really sucks IMO. In those cases I usually see if Google has the forums indexed with the “site:” keyword.
I like Tumblr’s even better. Email address, password. Go.
Flickr’s used to be amazing. But then Yahoo! happened[1].
[1] http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/flickr_signup_from_human_to_droid_in_a_yahoo_moment.php
Comments
I can understand why web sites are constructed so as to cater only to those who are committed to being part of their community. Otherwise, you get a million people cluttering up your site with comments, advice, etc.
Obviously, if you’re the web site for the International Brotherhood of Ball-Bearing Manufacturers, this is more true than if you’re a political commentary site. There is a spectrum along which different webmasters with different goals put up low-to-high barriers, depending.
I agree completely. Reddit has the best type.
“one is just a captcha to make it hard for bots to create a billion accounts.”
I can understand the goal, but often i just wasted times with captcha which did not recognize what _I_ recognized.
They may make life harder for bots, but they also make life harder for legimite users
I remember completing the same registration page at TechRepublic, and yes, it’s one of the worst around…I even recall receiving DAILY spam from them, apparently I failed to uncheck the defaulted boxes, but why would I do that?
Some of the best advice I’ve seen in a LONG time. Want to see user-registration nightmare? Try signing up for Windows Live. It has like 15 PAGES of information that you need to fill out – just so you can play a freakin game that you already bought.
Unbelievable.
Lately I’ve been registering for tons of new sites and it’s a painful, painful process. Time to tone it down, companies!
Nice article. I hate keeping track of all the accounts I have, I have lost track on at least half of the ones over the course of my lifetime.
If you’re going to have an account there’s something you’re protecting. There’s no way in hell I could support bad passwords. I think 8 chars with a number is complex enough for most sites without being bad and I doubt it will hurt your conversion rate any.
I scanned this page and thought it was asking me to sign up, so was ready to click away. Glad I didn’t. Great blog
3 just kidding. thanks for the read.
Optional fields are great, as you said, but users need to *know* about them. Please put “(optional)” after all optional fields in your comment submission.
–
Ed note: How about I just don’t put “required” instead? :)
To go to a site for information and giving information as a price is a ridiculous egotistical presumption that precipitates my backing away from entering that site. It no longer exists for me for all the rest of my life. I may miss out on something but I will never know what it was and do not care. Example New York Times, are they the only fish in the ocean?….NO! And that is true for all those other sites too.
Some additional advice: allow users to continue what they were doing before they registered.
Log them in immediately after registering and redirect them to where they came from. Even if you require confirmation via e-mail to make the account permanent, just let them continue without for that one session.
Instead of having to jump through the additional hoops of reading the confirmation mail, confirming the registration, logging in through the ‘front door’ and then having to find their own way back to what they wanted to do in the first place.
It should really say these fields are optional. Some sites don’t mention it, and then give you a “this field is required” error message. Maybe just note it above after “please fill out the form below.”
Techrepublic has a lot of good FREE technical information, articles, etc. If you want to access the info, fill out the form. It’s that simple. I’m sure the folks at Techrepublic don’t create and aggregate this info. for their health. Many similar sites charge for access to information.
You know what would have been ironic?
If we were required to register to leave a comment on this page…jej
There needs to be a revolt! I’ve registered to many sites but I don’t frequent them enough to remember my credentials so basically I’m back to being the same user I was before on those sites and since thats more work, why bother?
Engadget has the right idea, you can up or down vote comments without having to register. I tend to read more articles there than I do at other similar sites. For example here is the latest post from their site, I just grabbed the first one I saw to use as an example:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/02/zeetoos-zeemote-the-wiimote-for-your-cellphone/
Great advice if you are running a site similar to Reddit.
Would be nice to have information on how much data is acceptable to collect on an e-commerce site, or a community where exclusiveness is an appealing trait.
On sites requiring more data, better all on one form, or step by step “wizard” style sign up?
Great start, but this topic begs many more questions than your article answered. Would love to see a follow up.
The site http://clickodometer.com has one of the quickest and easiest I’ve used too.
Okay while reddit is better I don’t know if it’s ideal.
if your seriously looking to get rid of fields there is no reason to have both a username and email. perhaps a username would be nice for display purposes but they can login with the email. I know email is optional on their page but you want the page to also look as small as possible.
also two password fields are standard but you can scale that down to one. if you have a good forgot password system set up it’s better to let a couple people miss type a password then add an extra field.
their CAPTCHA is also too dark. I know there are not too many CAPTACHA libraries with a focus on design but one with a white back ground would not feel so heavy on the page and make the form feel smaller.
Though I have not tested the difference between CAPTCHAs and an email confirm system I personally feel an email confirmation email would make registrations go up while keeping out the bots as well.
I’ve always like the LibraryThing registration page. only three fields.
perhaps if openid or whatever it’s called were to take ground you’d only have to go through such a painful process only once.
Well said. I have never found a registration page quite as idiotic as that one, but I have very often abandoned a site at the first “you must register to do this” warning.
I just leave an email address I save for spam on sites like the ones you mention. The required forms I fill out with bogus information. I don’t feel like such a cog in marketing’s wheel that way.
1) I suspect most people put FAKE info in registration pages.
2) I’ve lost track of half the passwords I ever created, because there have been so many. No, I don’t like keeping them in my browser’s password file.
3) There is more stuff on the web that interests me, than what I have time to look at. If I meet a registration form on your site, I leave.
4) In the rare event I do decide to register, don’t punish me for mis-typing a single field by resetting the *entire* form and making me start over.
5) If you have a legitimate (community building) interest in collecting personal info, do it a little bit at a time over several visits.
Hooray for sanity!
What really frustrates me is when google returns a blurb and link to a page, then you get there and you must create an account to see anything … then you go back, look at the cached page, only to find (paraphrased) “these search terms djsojfos fsdopsp whatever appeared on links to the page below”…
either I have really poor color perception or more than half of the
CAPTCHAs are unreadable…
Thnks, I agree with you.
When some page requires registration, don’t link to a registration page. Give a 302 response instead to redirect the user to the registration page instead.
When a user has logged in, going back in history and selecting links won’t take the user to the login page that way. The user doesn’t understand it if (s)he logs in and later reads that something requires prior registration.
Somewhat unrelated here, but when submitting your form results in a financial transaction, generate an id in advance and put it in a hidden field, then on submit, make sure the same id hasn’t already been processed. You could use a random number thats unique for at least the last n hours/days (I would). You shouldn’t reuse an existing table to do this bookkeeping.
This way, the ‘view source’ function in browsers won’t lead to the *nasty* surprise of getting billed twice.
Reddit’s CAPTCHA is totally unusable.
Look at the screenshot of your “good” registration page.
Now tell what’s the CAPTCHA answer?
RIVXLO
RIYXLO
RIVXLQ
RIYXLQ
Yes, right it’s: “your letters stink”
By the way, Reddit, your registration page stinks too.
If you do sign up for something, consider using the name “joe blow” or “john doe” or “jane doe” (These are good for those companies’ databases).
How about when you wan’t to communicate with a company, and they force you into their email system with a 2-inch square box (or even a one-line box). They usually don’t reply, but it is funny when someone occasionally replies to Mr. blow at my junk email box.
I agree some captchas can be hard, but if reddits one reads as anything other than RIYXLQ your the one with the issue, not reddit
Sikorskyfcu.org is a credit union… I am a member because I am an employee of Sikorsky.
there are three… 3… Tres…Tatlo… pages to just login… let alone signing up. I know this is a secure website and all but even my regular bank doesn’t make it this difficult. My bank only has a one login screen.
if you screw up your login, your account number stays on the screen for all to see.
Couldn’t agree more. Thanks for articulating something that’s been bugging me for ages. I really don’t want to get cosy with sites until I’m finding that I use them regularly.
Hmm…. yes I agree – I am a Techrepublic member and thinking about quitting as they are so annoying and invasive.
Conversely, I have only just started using Reddit and your article made me want to sign up!
Do you feel validated now? :)
In some contexts making your user registration page sucks can also be a good strategy.
In community sites who make (or break) the content ?
Participants !
Depending on your goals, you may wish to select them a bit.
So this fastidious registration process can be a good way to check their implication and motivation before they can act.
Even for a simple vote.
Aren’t these little thumbs up or down that decide what’s on the frontpage ?
I m affraid to imagine what the web would look like if every website has to be ruled by their average google lurker…
Please don’t throw me wikipedia as an example, as not any site has such a noble goal and wiki structure, plus i know they had very hard time moderating, which not any community could overcome.
OpenID is the answer.
I agree totally with your password idea. I HATE it when sites DEMAND I use a number in my password. I use passwords that DON’T have numbers in them by design. And when I must use a number, it just makes me forget my password. How does including a number in a password make it More secure? It doesn’t, it’s just some idiots idea of security that can be backed up by NOTHING. Good post, and I’m glad I didn’t have to register to comment!
Great article
You’ve convinced me. I’ve kinda known all along that people hate making accounts, I myself hate doing it, but I required it on my site (www.linkbin.com) to cast votes.
I see the error of my ways and I’ll be making it so people can vote without an account.
Brilliant. You’ve got it all right. I simply won’t bother registering unless a site really has something that’s worth the effort and I already know it.
Very informative article, thanks!
Hi Ben,
Enjoyed reading your article.
The Reddit reg form is good indeed.
We are in the process of re-designing our site and will have a simpler Sign up form, with less required fields.
Only username, password, email address, CAPTCHA and Acceptance to our T&C.
I just found this post from the aweber forums. I couldn’t agree more. I have quickly leave websites that require me to create an account for something as simple as voting, leaving a comment or providing feedback.
Here’s a vote for your post!
Geoff
Another reader from Aweber Blog. Thank you for the support of feelings for a long time.
Spend time developing the relationship after the Prospect signs up.
Thanks again
Good points. For my purposes, I keep my form simple: two fields–first name and email. I have decent conversion.
You are speaking the truth, people just want to post a comment and then wait a little while and see what others have to say about it then the move on throughout the web. thanks for saying what needed to be said.
Great article. Thank you for posting it. I to found you from AWeber and I thank them for giving us your link.
I am now going to read some other posts on this site and take a look around.
I try to think of the Golden Rule when I am working on web forms. And basically it come down to this. If I give the subscriber something of “value” they will give me there email address, something I “value”. Exchange!
Randy J Bradley
I totally agree. Sometimes I would like to leave a comment to a good article, etc, but who has time to register at 100 different sites, creating passwords and user names, blah blah blah. It is ridiculous. So, when I see, “You have to register to leave a comment” I move on.
Простите, что не втему, но всех прочитавших пршу зайти на молдавский блог и прочитать инормацию по голосованию за нашу независимость – это очень важно дли нас
I’ve got to wonder — why is a password even necessary? Why not ask just for the name and the e-mail address? Isn’t that enough for first time visitors?
Почему это вдруг вот так то? Думаю, как нам раздвинуть данную тему.
Как мухи на гавно… ейбогу… ну как мухи на гавно.. на гавно мухи… как будто.. ейбогу.
I don’t think I’ve ever come across another news/blog type of site that had a had a registration form as invasive as Tech Republic’s.
And it’s not only to vote or post a comment that Tech Republic requires registration. Perhaps _that_ could be justified on the grounds of deterring trolling, spam and just reducing the number of inevitable idiotic comments that have to be waded through when searching for signs of intelligent life.
No. Merely trying to _view_ all comments on one page (as opposed to tediously having to view each individual comment on a separate page) triggered a ‘registration is required’ page.
…………….
I also agree w/ a previous post regarding the fields for posting a comment _here_; without actually stating that the name, email and website fields are optional, that will not at all be clear to many people. (and many will not bother posting because of that)
Will this comment work without providing my name, email and website?
I like how reddit doesn’t require an e-mailadres to register.
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