How to reduce the number of users who don't complete the registration process?

I run a dating site, and I'm trying to reduce the number of users who start the registration process but do not complete it. Our registration process is as follows:

User enters their email address and chosen password.
They're sent an email to validate their email address, and shown a form telling them to validate their email address.
User clicks on link in validation email and continues registration process.

We're losing quite a few people at step 2 - they do not validate their email address and never come back. I keep email validation as a first step mainly to be can-spam compliant and also to reduce bogus registrations.

Any advice as to how to reduce the loss during this step?

User Experience Registration User Acquisition

asked Nov 21 '12 at 15:43

Sherif Buzz
462 points

You might have a spam problem. Either spammers are using your web page to test if they can use it to relay email to their victims (but appear to you like a lot of signup attempts). Or your emails are getting blocked by the prospects' spam filter or mail server. Add explanations to the pages to educate users to check their junk mail folder, add the sending email address to their address book etc. Also review your mail message to see if it spammy, and check your own mail server is configured to not look like a spammer. – James 12 years ago

3 Answers

The main thing about registration completion is that the user needs to care. ;)

Without having more information about your specific registration process, here are some things you can do:

Reduce the likelihood that your confirmation email goes to the users spam folder

Use Litmus to make sure your email content will pass spam filters
Set up SPF records to verify your sending IP address
Consider using a service like SendGrid to increase deliverability (you can also monitor open and click rates on transactional emails with SendGrid)

Test subject lines and email content

Test subject lines, find out which ones most compel the user to open the email
Make sure the link the user needs to click is easy to click
Make sure the user knows what clicking the link will do
Emotion is the driver of action, make the content of the email compelling to the user
Does the email content look trustworthy and professional?

Review your current registration process From the way you write about it, I suspect that the process is more arduous for the user than necessary. Here are some questions to ask:

At what point in the user's visit do you present them with the option of registering?
Are they engaged enough at that point to make an investment in your site?
How friendly is the registration process?

Put your current registration process through UserTesting.com -- you'll be amazed.

Maximizing conversions is an art. Think like your users. Really care about your users. Test, measure, optimize, test, measure, optimize...

answered Nov 22 '12 at 02:03

Komra Moriko
136 points

Welcome to the site, Komra! Great first answer. – Zuly Gonzalez 12 years ago
One other point- whenever I am sent an email like this to verify my enrollement/submission- that email had **better** be sent within a few **seconds** of when I click on the button. Nothing annoys me more than getting that email an hour or two after I clicked. – Gary E 12 years ago
@GaryE delays are usually out of the control of the sender. Usually they are an issue with the recipient host or somewhere "along the way" – Sherif Buzz 12 years ago

In addition to what other users have posted here are two other options to make sure your users complete the signup process:

Send them a reminder email in spurts of 1 week, 1 month, 3 months if they forgot to validate their email reminding them to do so.
Have them create their account with another registration service. For example on many sites users can immediately login with their Facebook, Google or Twitter accounts which doesn't require them to validate through an email.

answered Nov 28 '12 at 05:12

Sarahfriedlander
91 points

Hi Sarah, we already do this automatically. Facebook login is the next step (you can see my answer below) – Sherif Buzz 12 years ago

Just to update everybody on what we actually did and plan on doing further down the road.

The one main change that made nearly all the difference is moving the email validation to the last step. Our conversion rate doubled just because of this.
We already have SPF, domainkeys, etc, so our email does not go to spam (no change)
We made the registration process a bit more flexible (more fields are voluntary or can be filled in later)..this caused a moderate improvement.
Am now adding Facebook login, will update with stats when we have them.

regards and thanks.

answered Dec 1 '12 at 10:39

Sherif Buzz
462 points