10 Ways To Increase Signups With Better UX

You don’t want to lose potential users just because your signup process is too difficult. Probably the best signup would be no signup at all. Unfortunately, you do need that connection to your users and you are not a government, you can’t sign up the whole country automatically. The easiest way, of course, is logging in with one of the user’s social accounts. How to sign up, however, is the user’s decision and an email alternative should always be available.

This article describes 10 ways you can reduce friction in the signup process and increase the number of new users who open an account with better user experience. It’s important to mention that whatever you take away from here or any other source or benchmark, the bottom line is that you need to test. Each and every product is different. It has a different kind of users, user journeys and tells a different story. Even though the overall design is very similar in many products, the real difference is in the details. To really know where your users have a hard time or even fail to complete the process, you need to see them trying.

1. Let new users try the product first

You are probably familiar with the following situation. You install a seemingly interesting app you found in the AppStore. You press the app icon to launch it for the first time. A brilliant splash screen fills your phone and then maybe another screen welcoming you to the app. That’s it. Now you are required to sign up. You look at the screen and ask yourself “Why? I don’t even know if I like it or not? Naaah!”. There is a good chance that this is the point where you give up. Uninstall the app and look for something else.

There are products for which late signup is not an option, such as messaging apps. However, if you do not absolutely have to require sign up as the first thing, ask for it later. Give your users time to get to know your product, even enjoy it. Only then ask for a signup. Now they know what they are signing up to and there is a better chance that they want to.

2. Give a good reason to sign up

It’s obvious why you want your users to sign up, but what’s in it for them? Your product has to communicate at least one benefit of signing up. It could be the ability to save a collection, take part in a discussion or share content. Whatever they are, if your users are not aware of the benefits, they won’t see a good reason to sign up. Keep in mind that you are just one of many products asking the same user to sign up and most users’ mindset is “Why should I sign up?” rather than “Why shouldn’t I?”.

3. Ask for signup in context

This connects naturally to the previous point. If the request to sign up comes as a reaction to something that the user was trying to do, then the benefit is derived from the context. For example, the user tries to add a product to a collection. The signup screen comes up and asks the user to sign up in order to complete the action.

4. Ask only for the minimum to create the account

Every additional input field, dropdown or question that you require for signup will reduce the number of users who will actually complete it. Take a good look at what you actually need know in order to create the account and ask only for that. As a matter of fact, you shouldn’t need more than an email address and password. Need more info? Ask later. By separating the signup to steps you also create a feeling of progress. Worst case if your new user abandons the process after the first step, you already opened an account and now you can send triggers through email communication.

5. Don’t ask for a username

Selecting a username is a tedious task. Your users have to find a name that they like and is not already taken. It’s also not something that can be changed later, in most cases. This is a big decision to make in order to be able to sign up. People don’t like decisions. That’s a good reason for procrastination, which you don’t want when you hope for more people signing up. If you need to display names for social features, for example, ask for their real name.

6. Display error messages at the right moment

It’s pretty simple. While the user is still typing, let’s say, in the email field, it is too early to complain that the address is not valid. Let her finish. On the other hand waiting for the “submit” button to be pressed to display error messages on multiple fields at once is too late. The right time to bring the users attention to an error in her input is when she is finished with that specific input field.

7. Form clear and actionable error messages

Displaying an error message at the right time is not enough. Its content has to be so simple that every user can understand it. Know how to take the right action to fix the problem is the next step. Suggestion for the shortest path to fix it should also be offered within the message. For example, if the password has to have numbers in it to be valid, instead of saying “Note: Passwords must be at least 8 characters in length and contain at least one number and one symbol.” you should say “Please include at least one number in your password.” What should be the minimum requirement for a password to be valid is, of course, a different discussion.

8. Don’t let the input field title disappear

There are many examples of products using the gray placeholder text within the input field to display its title. At first sight, it seems as a good way to save screen space and offer a cleaner design. The price is however paid in usability. As soon as the user starts typing, the title disappears and she has to rely on memory to type in the right information. In many cases, users need to look again at the title to be sure that they are typing the appropriate input. The only way, however, to see the title again in the described design is to delete the contents of the field, look at the title and re-type everything. That’s a lot of unnecessary hassle just to fill our a form correctly.

9. Build a product that says “This is a company you can trust”

This is not really in the signup process, rather in the product as a whole. In order for a user to give you her personal details, she has to trust you. Since she can’t meet you personally and get to know you, trust is built through the product itself. It’s much easier to lose trust than to gain it. Designing for trust could probably be a complete book on its own. In short, I would say that it’s in the details. Which details? All of them. Here are few examples of how to destroy trust: typos in the copy, inconsistent design, low-quality assets, wrong metaphors or idioms for common actions, bad performance, too many bugs, and so on. Basically, anything that a detail oriented person would get angry about. Users won’t be able to point out the exact details that made them decide not to trust the product. It is usually a general feeling that they can’t explain.

10. Send a confirmation email

Why? Several reasons.

1. Typos. Instead of asking new users to type in their address twice, which is by the way really annoying, the confirmation email is the place to figure out the problem early.
2. There are users who sign up using fake email addresses. In many cases, those belong to real people who don’t even know who you are. You’ll start getting angry emails from them right after your next email communication. Signups with fake emails can’t be confirmed by the user who did it, therefore innocent bystanders are not going get emails from you.
3. People sign up with a fake email address because they don’t really care about your product. They don’t think that they are really going to use it. Given time, however, some of them might enjoy your product after all and will become valuable users. Now you don’t have their real email addresses and chances are that they don’t remember to correct it.
4. There is also a group of people who just forgot that they signed up a while ago. Having your confirmation email in their email accounts might solve uncomfortable misunderstandings.

Find out more at www.polarhedgehog.com