Building the registration process that your SaaS deserves may take longer than you expect, especially if the objectives and needs are unclear.
In this post, we review the most common ones and how you can find the perfect flow for your product, really faster.
Which are the needs of your sign-up form?
Surely you have encountered some of these needs when building the onboarding of your product. Find out how to solve the most common ones.
- Need #1 — Reduce signup friction
- Need #2 — User verification
- Need #3 — Data qualification
- Need #4 — Legal compliance
- Need #5 — Individualized onboarding
- Wrap up — Build a completely personalized flow
Need #1 — Reduce signup friction
Lengthy sign-up processes take a toll on conversion rates: the longer a form is, the more likely that users will abandon the process.
If your strongest point is the product itself, and you want the users to try it as soon as possible, you just need to allow them to register and access with minimal effort.
The solution — Social login & Passwordless flows
There are many examples that provide a quick and secure access with social login and passwordless flows, and these two options are also not exclusive.
You can combine both of them with conditional logic to offer your users a really flexible and agile access to your platform.
The example above uses social login to provide direct access and a passwordless flow that sends a one-time password (OTP), to prevent users from having to remember and manage passwords.
And, besides this, which are the benefits?
- One-click access. Social login provides a direct access by checking the credentials of the chosen social media account, allowing users to access in a click. You can also get data from these accounts to know them better.
- Avoid passwords issues. Temporary codes make users no longer have to remember passwords but, as admin, you can also forget about their storage. They are automatically generated and valid for 10 minutes.
- Custom access options. In addition to the social login, you can send users the temporary codes (OTP) by email or SMS, or magic links by email. Let your users choose to make access even easier.
A real example — Notion
If you want to see a real example, take a look at the Notion registration process. It combines 2 social login options and a flow that sends both an OTP and a magic link by email, providing really flexible access options.
Need #2 — User verification
Over the last years, fake data have become a serious problem for software product businesses in general.
Spam bots fill user databases with fake information, and compromise the coherence and trustability of the data we use to make all kinds of decisions about our service. Plus, real people sometimes also use fake data, for example, to abuse free trials.
The solution — Multi-factor authentication
Quickly verify users by asking for more than one authentication factor. For example, the classic credentials: email + password, and then send them a temporary code by email or SMS, to check if they really have access to the given contact information.
The example above asks for an email and a password, and then sends a temporary code by SMS, but it can be modified and reinforced depending on your needs and the contact data that you have stored in your database.
The main benefits of this option are:
- Clean user database. Keep your database free of fake and duplicated users, and start collecting data from people who really have an interest in using your service. All the teams in your company will appreciate it.
- Trustable data. If your metrics aren’t fed with real, quality data, they can lead you to draw wrong conclusions about your audience and, in consequence, to make bad decisions about them and your product.
- Reinforced security. In addition to verifying that your users are real people, using temporary codes will also help you to reinforce the security of their accounts, checking that they really have access to them.
A real example — Autopilot
Looking for inspiration? Take a look at the Autopilot sign-up process. It combines the Google social login and a 2-factor authentication flow.
As you can see in the picture below and among other data, it asks for an email and password, and a phone number to send a temporary code (OTP), to verify the users accessing the free trial.
Need #3 — Data qualification
Incorrect data will lead you to wrong conclusions.
To make the most appropriate decisions regarding your users and your business, you need to better profile and analyze them, in order to obtain really useful information for your team. These flows will be especially useful if you have an inside sales team and a freemium business model.
The solution — Conditional logic & Data enrichment
Stop bothering your users with too many questions. Create dynamic forms to display different fields in the same form, for example, depending on whether they use a personal or company account, or get data without asking them, with data enrichment services.
The example above uses conditional logic and an external data enrichment service to check if the email domain belongs to a company, which is mandatory in this particular case, storing custom extra data about it provided by the data enrichment service.
Among others, the main advantages of these flows are:
- 100% customizable data. Customize both the data that you request directly in the form and the data from the data enrichment service. It is up to you to decide what info to use, as long as it is published on the Internet.
- Easier and quicker profiling. This type of flow allows you to take a good first step when it comes to knowing your users, avoiding work overload for your sales team and providing the basic information for a further analysis.
- Great user experience. Dynamic forms are the perfect formula to avoid bothering users with too many questions and to get the right information without making the process too long and tedious for anyone.
A real example — Auth0
A good example of this type of flow is the Auth0 registration process. At first, it looks like a very simple form, but it analyzes the domain of your email to find out whether or not it belongs to a company, and then asks for different information based on it.
Need #4 — Legal compliance
User verification and data privacy are key aspects in certain registration processes. If you need to handle especially sensitive information in your forms, you would like to know that now you can easily configure the persistence of that data, field by field. Simply make sure that the user meets the legal requirements needed to contract your service.
The solution — Transient fields & Upload files
Ask your users to attach all the information you need to verify that they meet all the requirements, personalize legal fields and easily set up data persistence and storage, just clicking on checkboxes to get your users’ data properly protected.
The example above is simple, but you can combine it with conditional logic and even waiting lists to personally assess requests in advance before approving them.
And which are the advantages of these flows?
- User & Data verification. They allow you to check with complete certainty that your users are who they say they are and if they meet the requirements. You will be able to verify that their data is really authentic.
- Really trustable metrics. By verifying your users in this way, you will get very valuable data and very accurate and refined metrics. The better you know your real users, the better decisions you can make for your business.
- 100% customizable data privacy. Personalize form’s data storage field by field and also set up data persistence and submissions’ IP storage in a really simple way. It was never so easy to properly comply with GDPR.
A real example — N26
Banking and financial services are great references when using this type of user and data verification. If you want to check its use and get inspiration from a real example, we recommend you to take a look at the N26 registration and account opening process.
Need #5 — Individualized onboarding
If you have a beta product with a waiting list or if you want to be more efficient in sales, to make a personalized onboarding with each of your new users can be really useful for your users, but also for your metrics and database. Although it may seem like a lot of effort, there are some effective ways to avoid it being an overload of work.
The solution — Approval forms & Conditional logic
Again, a dynamic form is the solution for this need. In this case, we can use user data to group or categorize the users, and combine this with a waiting list or approval form.
The example above is a simple waiting list, where an admin reviews requests and decides whether to give them access or not. We can include conditional logic and even data enrichment in the flow to get more info about the user, as we have seen before.
Among others, the benefits of this type of flow are:
- Access control. Gain absolute control over the people who access your service and change the requirements for acceptance based on your needs at all times. Once accepted, you can send a magic link to the users to give them easy access. You can also analyze and audit user groups with this.
- Better tracking. Having total control over access makes it much easier for you to track new users, their expectations, their needs and pain points. You will get valuable information for all the teams in your company.
- Personal assistance. All the user information will help you substantially, whether you are looking to give personalized support or make a very solid and customized sales proposal, in addition to finding new features.
A real example — Salesforce
Salesforce is one of the companies that uses a system similar to this, combining it with a free 30-day trial. During that time, their team contacts each user to make sure they understand the tool, to discover their needs and to let them know the pricing options.
Build a completely personalized sign-up flow
Still haven’t found the perfect flow for your SaaS? Now you can build fully customized signup flows and save a lot of development time on it.
Our form and flow editor allows you to easily combine all these strategies in a completely personalized flow, in addition to connect any external service with an API. Build the onboarding flow that you exactly need for your product, with much less effort.
They are compatible with any stack, thanks to our JS SDK, and they can be embedded anywhere by simply copying and pasting a single line of code. Check them out!
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This text was originally published in Arengu’s Onboarding Academy.
