Account Registration
Problem summary
You wish to know who the active user is in order to provide personalized content or opportunities to conduct a purchase.
Example
Usage
- Use when you want to protect access to content your website for your “core users”.
- Use when the information you wish to display depends on who the user is. It can depend on the user’s geography, timezone, age, interests, or even the user’s prior interactions with your site (friends added, submitted content, etc.)
Solution
Let the user register an account with your website so that your system can remember details about the user and in turn use them to personalize what information you display to your users.
Design flaws when adding account registration and sign-in features include:
- Hiding the sign-in button (or form)
- Draw attention to crucial operations such as “Register new account” “Sign-in”, and “I forgot my password”. At least make them look like clickable links
- Sign-in opportunity not provided on key locations. Users often wait to the last moment to sign in. Key locations are points of action; for instance when the user wants to add a comment to a blog post.
- To strict requirements for password. The strength of the password you require needs to match the need for protection. A too strict password policy can hinder sign-up.
You can make your account registration easier on your users including:
- A detailed description of the requirements you have for usernames and passwords. Additionally, you might want to provide a password strength meter to provide instant feedback on how well the entered password meets the requirements instead of displaying an error message after the user has clicked the submit button. Similarly, you might also want to use AJAX to check for the availability of the username on every keystroke, so that the user does not need to submit the entire form several times before he is allowed entrance.
- When logging in, return to the page the user came from. If the point of action was submitting a comment to a blog post, redirect the user to the comment form after login.
Rationale
In turn for account registration, your site can provide personalized content to your users. Account registration allows for remembering details about the user; product wish lists, preferences, interests, shipping and billing addresses, VAT number for billing purposes, and more.
Benefits of letting the users register an account with your site include:
- You know who is using your system
- You know how often they visit
- You know what they do on your site.
- You can store information your users might need later, such as billing info or wish lists for future purchases.
- You can use account registration to reserve special content from your regular users.
- You can differentiate prices, information displayed, and access rights depending on who the logged in user is.
Discussion
Is account registration necessary? And when?
Customers do not like to identify themselves until they actually need to. They need to when he or she has decided take action – for instance to purchase a product. Until then, you do not want to block users from taking action or browsing your website. In general, you will only want to protect the pages that actually requires you to know the user’s identity. Users hate having to register an account to do something simple. Examples of too early sign-in requirements is before letting the user browse your web shop’s products or before the user can get an idea of what they will get after account registration.
What kind of site do you run? Is it really necessary to develop a relationship with your customers (or users) or is the typical behavior of your kind of customers to stay anonymous? In the latter case, you might want to consider not requiring an account registration at all – even when the user is purchasing a product.
Why should the user register?
You need to clearly state what benefits the user will get from registering an account with your website as this step is a burden for the user. One way to do this is directly to communicate the benefits in written sentences such as “Track your order”, “Change your reservation at a later time”, or “Receive our newsletter” (Yes, that actually is a benefit to some people).
Another way to communicate the benefits of registering an account is to block points of action. Examples of this are submitting a comment or content to the site.
Asking too many (unnecessary) questions
Knowing your users is important, but wanting knowing them too well can hinder account registration. Even though your marketing department is eager to know the exact interests, phone number, or even size of yearly paycheck of your users, asking them this is not always a good idea. With spam e-mails being a common known phenomenon, the average internet user is reluctant to trust you with such data.
In case you really need certain information from the user, then tell them why you need id. A simple “In case we need to contact you, please provide a phone number” will do.
Making up a user name and thinking of a new password are big tasks for the user already. The fact that the user needs to make up their mind about these things in the first place is already annoying as it has taken away the user’s focus from the task he or she had at hand.
More examples images of the Account Registration pattern
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| When signing up for an account at Yahoo!, helpful texts accompany each text field as the user moves the focus of the cursor from field to field. Once the user has typed in data in a field, the validity of the data is checked and fed back to the user in form of small feedback boxes. | On the front page of yahoo.com, the same box with personalized content is shown whether you a logged in or not. It functions as a great indicator of what features the user is to expect once the user has registered an account. | Registering an account at 30boxes.com is simple. The number of information required to create an account has been kept to a minimum. Also, benefits of using the offered product is listed to the right of the form to further the arguments for signing up. | At basecamp, the link to the account registration page is clearly highlighted. As the user can only see the product once logged in, a tour of screenshots is provided, along with selling points on why basecamp is so great. To minimize the hindrances to signing up, it is noted that signing up is free and only takes 30 seconds! |
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| Account registration at vimeo.com is as simple as it can be. Additional information can be specified by the user at a later time once logged in. | Logging in at Vimeo is a plain beautiful experience. | The front page of facebook has account registration as its main attraction. The benefits of registering an account are clearly listed right by the sign-up form, which has a minimum set of fields. Also note that you can also search for your friends to see if there is anything in it for you at this moment. | The login screen at aireo is very simplistic and to the point. All remotely unrelevant information has been stripped from the page. |
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| When you try to access an area you are not permitted to log in at on brightkite.com, the problem is presented with an accompanying graphic: a stump of a tree that you supposedly stumbled over. This kind of graphic is used to add personality to the site. | Both the login screen and signup screen are dead simple at wakoopa.com - and look very much like each other. Notice how the gradient radial background increases focus around the center of the screen where the content of the screen is. | When you register an account at instapaper.com, an effort is made for the user to build trust in the website, by letting the user know that instapaper is in no way interested in spamming you. You can freely choose to either use your email or any other word, which helps to build trust in the non-abuse attitude and honesty of the site. |
Good method, but you shouldn’t ask to much information at the moment a user is subscribing, for at that moment he probably wants to make use of a service. You can ask for more info later on. The yahoo account registration method is therefor less efficient than vimeo way of doing it.
E-mail address should not be required if it is not necessary. The best way to solve forgotten passwords problem is to use e-mail as an option. Moreover it is much better when user can decide to get notifications via IM.