While I love the process outlined in the last sketch (and think many people will try it out), 37signals discovered back in 2009 that adding a similar tagline to their headline boosted signups by 30% so the confusion over its popularity surprises me: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1525-writing-decisions-headli...
"I’ll bet that the time-to-signup isn’t an important anxiety factor."
It is for me. When I'm looking to try out a product, I hate having to jump through hoops just to get to the download link. Fill in 5 pages of information (generally with fake data), making sure I'm not opted in to a mailing list, waiting for that confirmation email etc etc. What a pain in the butt when I'm not even sure I'll use the product for more than a few minutes.
I have skipped trying out a product on several occasions because I simply couldn't be bothered going through their signup process.
You have gave up your signup process because you were not excited enough.
What article suggest is to "clutter" your minimalistic sing-up form with useful information on what happens after you sign-up. Hopefully this will excite the user more. So that filling that extra field or confirming that e-mail will not be such a pain.
Basically if you are not exciting the visitor, then even a tiniest time-to-signup won't help.
Another kind of evil (but effective) approach is to allow the user to do all those post-signup activities (like set up a dashboard or create some content), and then say "now sign up" at the end.
They're already invested, so you get better conversion.
That's not evil, quite the opposite - you don't bother the user and ask them for the required information until the very moment it's needed.
It's called gradual engagement and I consider it good practice.
What's structurally similar to this and definitely a dark pattern is letting the user work towards their goal and at the end tell them suddenly they have to pay for the result.
That would be evil. Gradual engagement as you describe it is not.
Deception. More verbosely, you allowed the user to assume something, yet contradicted this assumption. Somewhat similar when a woman strings a man along, then requests payment.
I would consider it deception if I was being told it was free the entire time until the sign up step told me it cost money. Allowing me to try this before registering is more likely to get me to sign up.
Certainly not evil. It allows me (as a user) to properly gauge whether or not I'm interested in your service before I provide any personal information. It's a win for me.
Have you ever noticed in 90's shareware games how levels that are only included in the paid version are just nearly not as good as the ones in the free version? That's because you're a much more interesting target before you have made your purchase. A (web) application that has a very useful "free" part with a sign up form at the end (whether it asks for payment or not is irrelevant) will always make me think that "this is very all the cool levels end, from now on it's going to be fairly average and boring".
Yea, I wouldn't say this is evil, it actually solves a lot of the problems being discussed here with people not wanting to go through the hassle of a signup process without even knowing what they are getting into. With your example they are able to try the product immediately without going through all the "paper work" - if they like it then they can signup.
I think Groupon kinda does this for new users (ie, you enter your email, hit next, it scrolls to the left, you pick your city, etc.)
One thing I've found is that if the purpose/value proposition of your product isn't already fairly obvious when a user comes to your site, you should spend more time in marketing the product and educating potential customers instead of trying to attract people who are pretty much clueless about what you do. On one of my web apps, having to sign up was the single most voiced complaint about the site, even though signup literally took less than five seconds.
'When’s the last time you shopped for a software product under intense time pressure, where every second counts?'
Analytics could definitely be one of those times. If your site is being Slashdotted, your priority is going to be getting quick access to real-time data about traffic flows, and not messing about with Google Analytics (which until recently, didn't even cover real time).
I'm guessing the site in question is GoSquared (the sign up process matches, at least) - and I've worked on a couple of sites where I've installed GoSquared precisely because I knew how quick it was to install.
While there's some quality fodder there, I couldn't get beyond this line:
"I’ll bet that the time-to-signup isn’t an important anxiety factor."
This isn't the only reason that sign-ups have been pared down; the current trend of thought on the matter is that it also reduces barriers to conversion.
Engaging your audience without making them jump through numerous hoops is a great practice, even if that means the occasional company adopts the practice a little too quickly before the rest of their process is fleshed out. I'd certainly prefer that to the alternative, where I've invested a great deal of time with a long form, just to have the same end result, 'and then what?'
I don't claim that addressing anxiety is the only reason to say "Signup in 30 seconds." However, data about what converts better isn't a reason. Conversion data gives you correlations, not reasons for the correlations. I prefer to work from a theory of causality when I'm deciding what to put on the page.
That's an entirely valid point and for the most part, I agree. Where we seem to differ is where we feel the balance exists between correlation and causation. I feel the former still gives very strong contextual direction, and this shouldn't be ignored, especially when the proposed solution is the 'and then what' flow.
I'd actually love to see some studies of how that works in practice, especially given that screen real estate is so valuable around the signup call-to-action. You may be on to something!
