
Please confirm your email address - huhtenberg
http://bvckup.tumblr.com/post/9101329123/please-confirm-your-email-address
======
starpilot
Using the imperative wording "please confirm" suggests the recipient must take
an action, rather than passively receive information. This reminds me of a Mac
OS X Human Interface Guideline:

"Use a verb or verb phrase for the title of a push button. The title you
create should describe the action the button performs—Save, Close, Print,
Delete, Change Password, and so on."

[http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserEx...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Controls/Controls.html)

The difference between "Email confirmation" and "Please confirm your email" is
like that between "Ok" and "Save."

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MatthewPhillips
These are the types of stories I like to see on the front page of HN.

~~~
yycom
Isn't this just obvious though?

~~~
Sukotto
Lots of things are obvious in retrospect or when pointed out but opaque before
then.

And some things are obvious to you and amazing to others
<http://sivers.org/obvious>

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latitude
That's my post there. It'd be very interesting to compare email confirmation
rates. I am running on a private mail server that is configured according to
all possible spam filtering guidelines and yet I am still at only 82%. I
wonder if these 18% is just people overwhelmed with emails in their Inbox or
if there's still some issues with being mis-categorized as a spam.

Anyone else cares to share their numbers?

~~~
dennisgorelik
What's the best wording for email body with confirmation link?

Currently I use:

====

Please open this link to confirm your email:

[http://www.postjobfree.com/a.aspx?k=c3d26a0fc5d145cf88898a92...](http://www.postjobfree.com/a.aspx?k=c3d26a0fc5d145cf88898a92ea99cb20)

This link will expire on: 8/19/2011 10:29:11 PM EST.

====

Thanks for the tip about subject for email confirmation!

In the past I was using "Link to confirm your PostJobFree email", but your new
version with clear call to action ("Please confirm your email address") should
perform better.

~~~
rufus_t
Surely you don't need expiry to be accurate to the second. Also, most people
in the world have no idea where "EST" is (or even what it means).

Why not just say "The link is valid until August 19", and then let it expire
some time after all the world has moved on to the 20th? (No MM/DD or DD/MM.
Please.)

I personally prefer the old fashioned "Just reply to this mail" method, which
many mailing lists use for confirmation, to opening a browser window - in the
worst case I have to wait for my browser to launch, too - and I'm going to
close that window immediately anyway so I can get back to what I was actually
doing, so I just think "I'll get to that later", but then I don't, and when I
remember [did I click that link? I'm pretty sure I did, so there's probably a
bug in their list somewhere and I shall ignore them henceforth], the link has
probably expired anyway [can't be bothered checking what time and day it is in
"EST" (Estonia?)] so I'll just browse around for funny kittens instead. And
all of that just because somebody wanted me to click on a link. They're sooo
cute!

~~~
dennisgorelik
Why would you browse for what EST mean if you can simply open confirmation
link and see if it works?

But the suggestions overall are valid - thanks!

What's better:

1) "The link will expire 2011 August 19"

2) "The link is valid until 2011 August 19"

3) "The link is valid for one day until 2011 August 19"?

~~~
xom
"valid through August 19"

~~~
grecy
I've always found "through" to be confusing when used like this. It's like the
whole "Next Friday" thing - is that the one about to happen (it's the "next"
one to occur), or is it the one after that? (in Australia, it's usually the
later) I much prefer "valid until August 19"

(I'm a native English speaker, not from the US where "through" seems more
common)

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EGreg
We had a cool thing. We let the user use our site once, but to "activate their
account" and set up a password, they had to click the link in their email.
Otherwise they would be reminded next time they tried to sign in (without a
password)

It gave people an incentive to verify their email!

Check out blurts.com and qbix.com for examples

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rickmb
I remember a talk by Terry Chay in which he showed that adding a smiley to the
subject (don't remember the project) dramatically increased the response.

Little details can make such a big difference.

~~~
cema
This is surprising to me. I would expect that I would more easily mis-
categorize such an email as spam (than the one without a smiley).

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acangiano
For AnyNewBooks.com I have the following thank you page:
<http://anynewbooks.com/thank-you/>

And the email I send has the subject: "Please confirm your subscription"

Between the two, the message is fairly clear. Yet, I still receive emails from
novice users once in a while, who aren't familiar with the concept of
"confirming" a subscription. Usability isn't easy.

~~~
cyhperpunks
Not to detract from your nice design, but wouldn't something like this be more
effective?

<http://i.imgur.com/d98aC.jpg>

That is, downsized screenshot, with graphics drawn on top. I think the
original looks too much like a real window.

~~~
hdctambien
It might be interesting to add a click event on the link in the image and
track how many people actually "click here" on the image of an inbox.

Maybe even have a popup that triggers if that link is clicked that says
something like: "Sorry, this is just a screenshot. Please check your email
inbox for this message"

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sudonim
We use the Devise gem <https://github.com/plataformatec/devise> and the
default subject line is: "Confirmation instructions". I can't say anyone on
our team thought to change it. Good clear language like "Please confirm your
email address" would be great to have as the default in gems like devise

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duck
I think it totally depends on your subscriber base, but with Hacker Newsletter
I've seen about a 95% success rate. I have always used the default MailChimp
subject which is "Hacker Newsletter List: Please Confirm Subscription".

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resdirector
I use usertesting.com. You get a ten minute video and audio of testers using
your site. These types of small (aka big) problems are weeded out pretty
quickly.

Can't rate them high enough.

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pkamb
This always bothered me about SEOmoz's new public analytics button on all
their blog updates.

The button says "Post Analytics". That makes me think "send analytic to
SEOmoz". But what they really mean is "view this blog post's analytics".

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joshu
This is good. I wish more people would talk about email praxis because it
seems like voodoo a lot of the time.

Do we even really need to confirm email addresses?

~~~
moeffju
Yes, at least in Germany, you have to show that the user confirmed their
email, or risk a cease and desist when you mail them otherwise. Some lawyers
send those for fun and profit.

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cpeterso
You might also consider adding a web bug image to your confirmation email. If
the user loads the confirmation email's HTML, you know it is a real email
address even if they don't click the confirmation link.

Admittedly, it might be someone ELSE'S email address, but they could manually
unsubscribe from your mailing list later.

~~~
moonlighter
Using image links 'calling back home' isn't reliable, because email clients
have options to prevent such images from being shown automatically, especially
if those emails might be considered spam.

~~~
philfreo
Considering Outlook and Gmail block them by default, it's extremely unreliable

~~~
robryan
In this case though, it shouldn't hard confirmations, a possibly increase them
a little. Unless people choose not to confim because they get a "images have
been blocked" message.

~~~
mkopinsky
It will also give better data - you can see of the people who opened the email
and displayed images, what percent actually clicked the link.

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Tilleul
78 comments so far, and not one mention of technical writing. I have to admit
that I almost never hear about hiring or contracting with tech writers in
early-stage startups. But it might be a worthwhile idea.

I'm a tech writer, and I hope that not too much self-advertising for my first
post here.

------
trustfundbaby
I bet the one with the title "Email confirmation" was going to spam folders
... I've seen a lot of spam with that exact title when I'm cleaning out my
gmail spam folder

