Die Sign-up Form, Die!
We’ve all been there. You’re told of a great web service from a trusted friend. The web service you’ve heard so much about promises to be innovative and useable. You arrive at their web site hoping to experience something grand, you click their “Get Started Now” button and then you see it. The dreaded sign-up form.
Several things happen next. First, you curse. Next, you immediately start trying to find a way to circumvent the form, you start thinking to yourself “I wonder if Joe would let me use his credentials so I don’t have to fill out this blasted form…” or “Great, more fake credentials I’ll have to keep track of…”. Then you realize that while you would prefer not to divulge your private information to yet another online service you’re reminded that all those “We care about your privacy and won’t share you information with anyone…blah blah blah” is really bullshit and even your next door neighbor knows your social security number, the names of your last 18 pets and even what city you proposed to your 3rd wife in. You give in, embark on those eager blank textbox fields and glaze over as the password strength meter grows into a giant happy smiley face. Consigned to the next 8 years of constantly deleting this web site’s newsletter from your inbox and vainly pressing the “Unsubscribe” button in their “You’re a valued customer…” emails you finally begin using their web service.
As Luke Wroblewski put it “We can do better. In fact, I believe we can get people engaged with digital services in a way that tells them how such services work and why they should care enough to use them. I also believe we can do this without explicitly making them fill out a sign-up form as a first step.”
Gradual engagement is like a free test-drive for online web services. Rather than tout what your web service can do, why not provide your potential customers with a few lightweight interactions and collect the necessary information much less painfully while they use it.
Contrast the aforementioned web service experience with another online family tree service called “Geni”. The first thing potential customers see is not an annoying registration form but a call to action that immediately has them using their product. Geni makes it clear on their homepage what they offer so you can get started making a family tree by offering your name and email address. Next, you can add your parents, their siblings or your siblings etc. While you were at it Geni sent you an email with your username and password so can get back to your family tree at anytime.
- Geni’s Homepage
- Adding family members through Geni
You may be thinking “Hey, they asked the customer for their name and e-mail address first!” Gradual engagement doesn’t mean that you have to hand over your entire product and then cross your fingers that they’ll sign up. It does mean that you gradually engage them in using your product while presenting them with form fields that are reasonable to collect during a particular stage of the interaction.
Through gradual engagement customers can understand the value of a web service without being required to reluctantly and may I add begrudgingly fork over their personal and private information first. In Geni’s case gradual engagement has given them over 5 million profiles in 5 months. Not bad.
It is important to note that because the customer didn’t explicitly create an account with that web service it may leave some confused about whether they have an account or not. Such web services need to provide an easy way for people to access their information if they didn’t see or chose to ignore the email sent to them regarding their account information.
Wondering if gradual engagement can be implemented effectively for your web service? First, think about how a series of lightweight interactions with your service can show a potential customer how they can use your product and why they should care. Your customers won’t be gradually engaged by you asking them for their information one sign-up form field at a time in a wizard-like style.
Points to Consider if you’re planning on killing sign-up forms and using gradual engagement for you next online service:
- When visualizing the customers’ initial experience with your web service think about how you can get them to utilize it rather than collecting information
- If you do employ gradual engagement ensure the customer can clearly see how they can use your service and show them why they should care.
- If you auto-generate accounts provide a clear way to access their information. Many customers will not realize an account exists for them.
- Avoid gradual engagement solutions that merely gradually engage them in form completion.
