Perfecting your Signup Process

March 3 2009
42 comments

I recently signed up for the free service Are my Sites Up?. Thanks to Chris Coyier for providing this free service. I think it is a good example of underdoing the competition. The signup process offers an interesting opportunity to think about the details of the user experience in signing up for a web service.

Signup and the User Experience

A signup form is a big hurdle for a user. Most web services require the user to jump through this hoop before they can try any part of product. How does the user know it is worth the hassle? I think Luke Wroblewski said it best in Sign Up Forms Must Die:

I’ll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. In the introduction to this book I described the process of stumbling upon or being recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form.

Gradual Engagement

Avoid the signup form hurdle by allowing a potential user to try your service before signing up. This is gradual engagement, a method that doesn't require the user to make any large commitments up front. A signup form is a large commitment.

No Signup Needed

Are My Sites Up is a service that notifies the user when the HTTP status code of a URL is something other than 2XX. The only required information to provide this service is the URL and the email address.

One possible gradual engagement process:

User enters email address and URL to monitor.
User receives email with confirmation link.
Email contains link to create an account and set a password.

Test the Signup Process

Signup Steps 1 2

The signup process is usually the user's first experience with your service. It must be perfect. When I signed up for Are My Sites Up I was confused by step 2 of the process.

Step 1: Submit signup form.
Step 2: ? -- I tried to login but my account was not working and no error was given.
Step 3: Realize I might have to check my email to activate my account.
Step 3: Click activation link in email.
Step 4: Login.

A notification of the next action to take in step 2 would be helpful. I'm sure that user testing the signup process would have caught this error.

Try Variations

What should happen after the user submits the signup form?

Option 1: The user is logged in automatically. This allows the user to immediately use the service. The disadvantage is that the user will not have the opportunity to login and hence possibly save their password with their browser.
Option 2: The user is given a notification and told the next action to take, and then eventually redirected to the login page. This will allow the user to save their password in their browser.

There are many possibilities that depend a lot on the service in question. Each of these should be tested for usability and then can also be A/B tested against one another.

Update

Apparently, step 2 was supposed to have a message indicating that the user should check their email, but this message wasn't displayed due to a bug. It has been fixed now.

Comments

Hey Erik,

I'm right there with you man. We had this really nice message worked out for Step 2, where it explains how you have been emailed and to check that for an activation link and how we need to do it this way to keep out bots.

A bug popped up somewhere preventing that message from displaying which has been the source of much confusion.

We are working to restore that ASAP.

Some interesting other options here too. I like the one where the enter a site to monitor right away and they get a confirmation email after that.

Chris Coyier wrote on January 3 2009

Erik- I'm the backend developer on Are My Sites Up?, and I can tell you for certain that we did do extensive user testing before launch, and that the code for telling a newly-signed up user to check their email was in place. We got tripped up by a bug in redirection later on, and I guess that all of our testers had made it far past the signup stage by the time that the bug made it into production, so we didn't notice until people started signing up at launch. I guess what I'm saying is that sometimes, even if you send a bunch of users at a site to test, some things slip through the cracks.

In any event, the message now properly appears upon signup.

Also, during the user testing phase we decided to go against Option 1 that you listed above, as it would allow anyone/anything to sign up, set up some sites and leave, without the email address being valid or them even being a real person. To make sure that we didn't get overrun by a bunch of fake users and to keep our database as clean as possible, we decided to go with user verification within email for now.

richard wrote on January 3 2009

Richard - You are right that there is a downside to allowing users to signup without verifying the email address. Another option that might be worth considering is to allow signup with only a URL to monitor and an email address and require confirmation of the email and completion of the signup process within a certain time period. You could send an email after a week, or after the first time the site goes down with a link to complete the signup process. If the process isn't completed, you could deactivate the account.

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