Registration experience is crucial for user growth. Especially for the social app, users will be required to provide a series of personal information, upload documents, or choose from different options.
When users click on the start button, they are making a commitment to invest a certain amount of time and energy to trade the benefits they aim to get. But as product designers, we should keep in mind: this commitment is fragile and easy to break. Once the efforts required to proceed to the next step outweighed the expectation, they will quit.
This dynamic process can be demonstrated by Victor H, Vroom’s expectancy theoryPeople’s motivation depends on their desirability of the outcome and the possibility of completing the task.
In this case, whether users will choose to continue will be influenced by how much effort it will take for them to move forward and their confidence in doing so.
We need to streamline the whole process for our users and make this journey enjoyable for our users. Here are some suggestions.
1. Turn long-form into smaller chunks
Long lists of blanks or multiple choices intimidate users. Being asked to complete so many tasks at the same time, they will feel overwhelmed. Breaking this form down into several bite-sized chunks will largely increase users’ willingness to move forward. Every time they completed one step, they will acquire a sense of achievement by clicking next. Thus, they will be more motivated to follow your guidance and continue their journey.
On the other hand, completing one task a time requires fewer efforts from the users and they don’t need to think about what to do next after filling out a single blank. The only thing they need to do is to click next and perform another action.
In Steve Krug’s book “Don’t Make me Thinks’’, he says “It doesn’t matter how many times I have to click, as long as each click is a mindless, unambiguous choice”.
Same here, it doesn’t matter how many blanks they have to fill or how many choices they have to make, as long as each step is a mindless and pleasant one.
2. Let users know where they are
It’s nice to have a progression bar on the top of the screen to keep track of their progression, to let users how much they have completed and what to expect for the next. Most importantly, every time they completed a step, their progression will move forward a little. This positive feedback encourages them to go on. Without the progression bar, the whole process seems to be endless for them. They will be facing enormous uncertainty of how many “Next” is awaiting them and keep thinking about whether they should quit or not. The progression bar can be comprised of several dots or dashes. The percentage is also another succinct and direct way to indicate the progress.
3. Be conversational and personal
Being asked personal information can sometimes feel like being interrogated. The conversational style is a trick you can use to draw closer the distance between your products and your users. And that’s when good UX writing come into play, to deliver accurate and clear instructions for users to guide them to complete the task. It’s a good way to replace requiring information with inviting more self-exposure.
4. Keep your users informed
Most of the users are cautious with their personal information. To eliminate their concerns, designers need to keep the users informed about the purpose of acquiring the information and how it will benefit the users’ experience afterward.
Besides these four tips, there is much more to keep in mind. Just imagine your users as a group of the laziest and hard-to-please people in the world, what will you do to make the complete this registration process?
