If the user doesn’t make it through registration successfully, they unfortunately will not use the valuable content behind the gate. A registration form must carefully address factors of friction, anxiety, motivation, usability and transparency.
Registration form competitive analysis data (Excel)
Insights from competitive analysis data:
- Number of fields ranged from 4-13
- Microsoft and Google have the highest number of fields in their registration forms
- Twitter has the least number of fields in their registration form
- The submit button is used as agreement to the terms and conditions on almost all of the reviewed sites (except Google)
- Almost all of the reviewed sites (except Facebook & Twitter) refer to authentication as sign in
- Facebook and Twitter refer to authentication as Log in
- Only Facebook, Google & Microsoft provide value propositions on their registration form pages
- Facebook’s value proposition airs the most on the side of brevity
- Microsoft provides a longer value proposition but not as impactful
- Google provides the most detailed value proposition with visualizations and supporting content
- Vertical arrangement of fields is the most common layout
- Many sites combine vertical with horizontal when contextually relevant
- Many sites transitioned from field labels beside inputs in 2013 to field labels above inputs or ghosted inside in 2015
- Displaying the active field in 2013 was most commonly achieved by showing the cursor, in 2015 many more sites began displaying a distinct outline around the active field
- First name and last name are requested as separate fields on most of the sites reviewed (except Amazon & Twitter)
- Many sites have begun shifting towards a single password field in 2015 (Facebook, Ebay, Twitter, Yahoo)