

How We Increased New User Registration 27% - chunsaker
http://www.stormpath.com/blog/how-we-increased-new-user-registration-27

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mladenkovacevic
I don't think 5-8 fields is as huge a barrier to sign-up rates as you might
have initially believed. I believe that friction starts to occur on somewhere
around 10+ fields.

Here's a couple of other theories as to why your new approach works better:

Commitment: When you initially ask for JUST an email address from a prospect,
it's kind of like starting a conversation with someone by saying "Hey what's
your phone number" without even caring to ask for their name and a proper
introduction. Basically their email is the most valuable piece of information
they have to give you, and immediately going for it sends the wrong message.
Presenting them with a full form (that includes their name, company, maybe a
job function) conveys that you really care to know about them and sets the
expectation that they will get something useful out of any interaction with
you.

Convention: I've encountered more signup processes where the request for
contact information is front-loaded. It's simply what internet citizens are
more accustomed to. In fact some users may have thought that by giving you
their email address, they were done, and didn't even carefully review the
"verify your address to proceed" email. They probably just waited for
something more and simply gave up when the next step didn't magically present
itself.

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chunsaker
I think you're right on both these points - your point about commitment is our
CEO's lead hypothesis, which I definitely did not capture as articulately as
this.

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drd
Thanks for sharing your experience. Your old flow is like you go to a bank and
ask for opening an account, they get your address and tell you we will mail
you the forms to fill out the required information. Not many people like to
change the context to finish something. I think these types of design flaws
are well known that they should have been prevented in the first place.

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derefr
> The user can login and merrily start building.

I'm surprised that this step was still in there in the new version of the
flow. Why not set the user as logged in automatically after registration?

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chunsaker
Good question. The manual login ensures that a session is started with the
correct authentication credentials. Its a good default way to protect against
session hijacking attacks.

I suspect we will automate the first authentication down the road, but with
such a small drop-off in the new workflow, we're focusing on more core product
features first. There's still lots in the new workflow, website, etc. to
improve.

