Reinventing Registration Forms

Perhaps the biggest challenge for a website designer, from a brand and user experience perspective, is the design of the website's registration form flow. When designing an experience around registration, User experience designers generally focus on the creation of usable forms, best practices, and optimizing the process. The end result, however, is always a form. Whether it is a single page form, or multi-page form, registration always results in a form. All in all, it seems that registration never benefits from the due diligence of understanding a brand, content strategy, or likely user behavior...which is odd, given that the registration process poses the biggest threat to the perception of a client's brand, if the process results in a poor user experience.

Marketers and keepers of the brand also have high expectations from consumers, when they ask them to register. They tend to add "optional" marketing fields, hoping that the consumer will freely offer up their personal information. The problem is, on a registration form, there is usually no apparent benefit to giving the brand additional, optional, personal information.

It's time to rethink the registration form.

Designers should begin with an in-depth understanding of their client's brand, tone, and voice. The end goal, is to convince the consumer that there is a worthwhile reward for offering up the information that is being solicited. Asking the consumer for personal information, and then illustrating the benefits of doing so, requires a two-way dialogue.

As designers, we should ask ourselves, is a "form" the best vehicle to have a conversation with the consumer?

Perhaps, we need to understand and map out the dialogue that the brand would like to have with the consumer, if the brand was an actual person, engaged in a conversation. Maybe it would go something like this:

"Hello. We are psyched that you are here, and think you are going to enjoy your experience. Let's get to know each other!"

"What's your name? _______________"

"Thanks, {username}!

Did you know that, if you connect us with your Facebook profile, we'll be able to provide you with instant recommendations for products and services? We promise that your personal information and profile will be safe, and not given to a third-party.

"Would you like to sign-in to Facebook, now? _______________"

(if they do connect with Facebook quickly reveal how many recommendations are being generated)

Etc.

The point is, as Usability Engineers, we tend to focus on how quickly end-users complete the registration process, instead of how effective the experience is at encouraging consumers to have a deeper level of engagement with the brand. In theory, creating a meaningful dialogue, highlighting consumer benefits, and designing an engaging experience, should result in deeper brand connections, versus a quick, optimized form.