Excuses, excuses, excuses... Login and vote now.
By bloid
via alistapart.com
Published: Mar 25 2008 / 08:13
I’ll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. In the introduction to this book I described the process of stumbling upon or being recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form.
We can do better. In fact, I believe we can get people engaged with digital services in a way that tells them how such services work and why they should care enough to use them. I also believe we can do this without explicitly making them fill out a sign-up form as a first step.
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Tags: opinion, web design
Comments
jtheory replied ago:
Good article! There's an opposing force, though -- users want to know the conditions of trade *before* they put a lot of time in.
If I get to step 10 of 10 only to find out that a website will require my home address, phone number, permission to email me ads, and the email addresses of 5 friends... I will be royally pissed. It should be obvious what's involved in using the service fully, just like it should be obvious what the site's business model is -- if I can't tell how you earn money, I'm going to be suspicious as hell that you aren't saying because you know I won't like it.
Paddington_Bear replied ago:
From an administrative point of view having sign up forms is a security measure when dealing with anything that requires user input. While it does tick me off when I'm trying to simply view a topic on a forum I think that in order to participate I should still have to register. Not having a registration process is like inviting bots and malicious users to a party.
bloviatexjs replied ago:
Yes, they must!
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