Registration Forms Competitive Analysis (2013 & 2015)

The registration form is a key conversion touchpoint for most digital products.

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)

Design is how it works

Steve Jobs

Form and function

In my experience the designs with the best outcomes are based on a foundation of carefully articulated audience personas and scenarios. However, I have witnessed exceptional design outcomes for cases where agility, expert knowledge and intuition have driven results without strenuous research and it’s findings.

Deep understanding of the context surrounding a problem is imperative to produce a successful solution. It’s this knowledge that empowers us to know which details are most important in order to distill the solution to it’s most essential elements. Often the most challenging aspiration of a design may be achieving simplicity as it is tempting to introduce superfluous elements with the objective of creating added value or robustness.

 

Purpose (of my blog)

I’ve created this blog as a place to capture & collate my journey as a user experience practitioner. I believe it shall contain thoughts/ideas about operational excellence, tactical implementation, strategies, projects, competitors and other content along these lines.