Website Membership UX
In this article, I'm looking at website membership and how user experience can be adversely affected by poor design. By way of examples, I will be referring to two fictional (at the time of writing) websites; 'Flip Flop Fitz', an online shop selling fashionable flip flop footwear to customers in the UK and 'Bobblebook', a worldwide social-networking site for fans of bobble hats, beanies and berets.
Is it necessary?
Registration can present a barrier to conversion. People don't like to identify themselves unless they have a clear understanding of how their information will be used and what they're getting in return. They are naturally sceptical of the unknown and conditioned to be mindful of privacy and security on the Web. Why do they want my information? What will they do with it? Will they be watching how I use the website? Will I get lots of spam? Am I entering in to some sort of contract? What's in it for me?
Flip Flop Fitz has identified a number of aims which justify membership. It wants to allow repeat-customers to place orders without having to enter the same billing and delivery details each time and provide them with a record of previous transactions. It also wants to build a database of people who wish to receive promotional emails. Crucially, however, it recognises the importance of allowing non-members to browse the full product catalogue and begin the order process without interruption or obligation.
Bobblebook by contrast is a far more closed experience which requires membership almost from the start. The main feature of Bobblebook is the ability for members to share personal information through their own profile pages the privacy of which the owner must be able to control.
If we're asking for registration, there should be a clear benefit to the user.
Expose the benefits
Rather than actively trying to sell membership to users through promotion and advertising, the benefits of being a member should be discoverable by sharing the activity of existing members or by exposing features available to them through the interface. In other words, people can see the entrance to the nightclub, hear the music and watch people having a good time through the windows before deciding whether they want to join the queue and pay the price on the door.
Flip Flop Fitz allows customers to post reviews of flip flops and give a star rating out of five. Firstly, there's no reason to demand membership just to read the reviews. On the contrary, customer reviews help users to make buying decisions and are a key sales generator. Each product page displays the average rating and a link to see all the reviews posted so far. There's also a link prompting the user to contribute a review. Everyone visitors and members can read all the reviews in full and see the call to action on the interface.
Bobblebook allows non-members to search for friends who are already registered, helping them to decide if it is worth becoming a member too. They can't interact with their friends without joining but they can see who's there and what sort of things they can do if they choose to become a member.
By publishing member-generated content and exposing the interfaces, both websites are advertising the benefits of membership, not hidden on a page of 'member benefits' but by subtly sharing the activity of existing members and hinting at what tools and features are available through the UI. Users can see what's available without obligation and make an informed decision about whether they want to sign-up. This builds a list of people who are definitely interested in the product, rather than a bloated database of accounts created by people just trying to find out what's being offered; people who will never return and whose details are, in many cases, probably false anyway.
Ask no questions, hear no lies
People don't like to share more information than is necessary in order to complete the task in hand. A user presented with a long list of demands for personal information is likely to 'mash the keyboard' or say what they think we want to hear, just to get past the form. We're collecting a lot of information that we think may be needed in the future, but most of it is likely to be false; it's just noise, not valuable data that can be mined for anything useful.
There is little point in us collecting information at a stage where it serves no immediate purpose, particularly if it's only released under duress. We can always collect more information later, as and when we are in a position to justify the request, demonstrate the benefits and actually make use of that information in ways that are immediately visible to the user.
Flip Flop Fitz asks for two pieces of information in order to create an account: email address and password. These two pieces of information allow the member to write reviews, save their basket, save products to a wish list and send products to friends; they can also begin the checkout process, during which they are prompted to provide additional information which is relevant at that point. Demanding billing and delivery details as part of the initial registration would be unnecessary and frankly rude.
Bobblebook collects an email address and password, but it also asks for name, gender and date of birth. These additional details are collected because they are important to the main objective of the service allowing people to find their friends or to meet new people with things in common. Members are then given immediate access to customise their profile and share extra information if they wish.
Balance security and usability
For most websites, a simple email address and password combination is perfectly adequate for authenticating members. By using their email address as a unique identifier we avoid the user having to spend time thinking of a unique username and subsequently having to remember this for future visits.
We should try to encourage users to pick strong passwords without enforcing a complex set of requirements. The average password should be eight or more characters long and contain a combination of letters and numbers. Common words and phrases shouldn't be used on their own as they are vulnerable to automated dictionary attacks. Other than that, insisting on something "exactly twelve characters long with two numbers, a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, no repeating characters and one symbol" is the sort of thing that results in abandoned transactions.
Don't interrupt
So exposing member functionality to non-members is an effective way to advertise the benefits of registration, but it can also introduce an annoying side-effect by luring users into a process which they cannot complete without becoming a member.
If Flip Flop Fitz was to allow a non-member to spend time typing a review into a box on a form only to say, when they press submit, "oh, by-the-way, you'll need to be a member before you can do that", the user will be understandably miffed.
Equally, demanding that a user identifies themselves too soon is a huge barrier to conversion. On Flip Flop Fitz, the process of placing an order is a member-only system because it wants to record and reuse billing and delivery details and record the order against an account. However, the first stage of the order process the basket is something that should be accessible to everyone. We can't insist that visitors create an account just to browse the shop and to drop items into their basket since this is a common behaviour for people comparing prices and often leads eventually to a conversion.
Avoid demanding registration after a user has provided information or completed a task; after they have spent time doing something which they cannot benefit from without then becoming a member. If registration is required in order to complete a process or perform an action (such as writing a review) prompt for that first or integrate it at the start of process. Make sure the user is returned to their previous location or the next stage in the process after completing registration, with any data provided or changes made by the user intact.
It's a balance between exposing functionality without asking for anything in return, identifying the minimum information necessary to process a task in the most efficient and usable way and choosing the right moment to ask for that information.
Take no prisoners
If they create it, members should be able to edit and delete it. This applies to individual chunks of information and to their account as a whole and is particularly relevant to profile-based applications like Bobblebook which rely heavily on user-generated content and personal information. Particularly important is the ability for a member to control who has access to what information.
Each Bobblebook member has a profile which displays their name, age, location, photo and favourite hat, together with a list of messages posted by them and their friends. Bobblebook members can edit or remove this information at any time and have privacy options which control what information is visible to other people. They also have the ability to delete their account completely, on their own, without jumping through hoops or contacting someone for help.
Flip Flop Fitz members can also edit their billing and delivery information at any time. There is no facility to close their own account because of the transactions recorded against it, but this is an understandable restriction considering no personal information is published for other members to see.
In summary
The first thing to consider is whether registration is even necessary. If it is necessary, be sure to communicate the benefits to the user by showing what existing members have been doing and by revealing the features available to members in the UI. If users can see what membership has to offer, the database of members will be populated by people who are genuinely interested. Don't ask for more information than is necessary to complete a task and make it clear how that information is being used. Find the right compromise between exposing features without obligation and asking for information at the most appropriate and least intrusive moment. Keep members in control of their own information.
This blog post was written by Matt
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