Lifting Membership Numbers On Your Site

When was the last time you were asked to fill out an application form before entering a department store? Well, if we were to equate e-commerce sites with bricks and mortar stores, I'm sure we would make the sign-up process at most websites a lot less painful. Contrast that registration form with the one at versiontracker, where all they require is an email for a 'basic' account.

Google gets it, but Flickr doesn't. iStockphoto also has one of the best sign-up flows out there. LinkedIn gets top marks, because it allows you to sign up in minutes, then incentivizes you to add to your profile later - with a progress bar. Nobody wants to have low marks!

Take a look at your favorite sites: do they turn you away at the door? Or do they invite you in to browse, and ask for your name after you've had a look? All sites with lengthy sign-up processes need to adopt the following best practices:

1. It's a numbers game: the first goal should be to capture the name or email of everyone visiting the site. Versiontracker is the clear winner here.



2. Don't make customers wait: It's 2007, and they've had this thing called 'AJAX" for a while - use it. Why do some registration forms make you submit multiple times, only to tell you that you can't have the member name that you want? iStockphoto does a great job here, checking both the member name and email address in very short registration form.



3. Ask for more information later: as marketers, we'd love to have every piece of information about a registrant. However, it's not going to happen, so don't fight it. Working under the principle that some information is better than no information, create different levels of membership and try to grow the population at all levels. For instance, level 1 might contain only email addresses, but level 10 would contain everything. Understand that you must gain the user's trust and offer clear benefits as trade for this information. LinkedIn is best in this category.



4. Announce the steps: If a 5-step registration process is required, telling people that they're on step 2 of 5 isn't good enough - describe what all the steps are up front. Doesn't this seem less painful than being dragged down a long registration path where you might not feel like answering the questions in the last step?