SpoolCast Josh Porter Design for Signup Virtual Seminar Followup Podcast transcript for audio available here: [music] Brian Welcome to the SpoolCast, I'm Brian Christiansen. This week we have Christiansen: a special show answering audience questions, following up from our most recent virtual seminar "Design for Signup." During this seminar, we received more questions than we had time to cover, so Jared Spool sat down with Joshua Porter to cover many of the remaining questions. If you were unable to attend this seminar, don't worry, there's plenty in here for you too. And now, on with the show. [music] Jared Spool: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of the SpoolCast. I have with me today Josh Porter, who is from Bokardo Design and he just conducted a fabulous virtual seminar for us called "Designing for Signup." He's also the author of "Designing for the Social Web." Hi, Josh, how are you? Joshua Porter: Good. Thanks for having me back. Jared: I'm very happy that you're here. So, you just gave this really great virtual seminar, and we had a few more questions than we could answer during the seminar. Before we ask some of those questions, I'd like for a second, could you just take the 90-minute seminar and encapsulate it in 30 seconds? [laughter] Joshua: No sweat. No sweat. OK, so the "Designing for Signup" came out of a whole bunch of projects that I've been seeing as an independent consultant and designer where people just had the same problem: they couldn't get as many people as they wanted to sign up for whatever it is they were doing, whether it would be signing up for a web application or signing up for an account when they're buying something. In this presentation, I basically talked about, I think we spend too much time focusing on the specifics of usability and forms, even though - don't get me wrong - those are incredibly important. There's also this kind of other angle we can take it on signup that really talks about the motivations of people. So, when people fail to sign up for something, it's usually not because they couldn't fill out the form, it's usually because they just didn't care enough to. So, I talked about three kind of broad strategies to get people using the software earlier, kind of instantly engaged with your software. And I talked about several tactics to do that. The second kind of broad strategy was to provide descriptions of your service or product in levels so that people who come to the website or who come kind of already knowing enough and already motivated enough to sign up, you just kind of get out of their way. People who need a little more help, provide them with a little bit of information and an opportunity to sign up. And if that isn't enough, if they're still skeptical, then provide them with another level of information and an opportunity to sign up. The third kind of broad strategy was to leverage social influence. I think, there's a huge opportunity to do that more in a lot of products and services - to kind of leverage the experiences of people who are already using the products, to show newcomers what it's like, how they think about it, things like that. Jared: Yeah, it was a fabulous seminar and people really, really enjoyed it. And as I mentioned, we had a whole bunch of questions afterwards. One of the questions we got had to do with the best practices in form design. If you're getting people to sign up, at some point, they're going to have to start filling out forms. And when it comes to encouraging people and persuading them to do so, are there best practices for designing forms that are out there? Joshua: We are seeing some real best practices kind of emerge. As of course you're familiar with, Jared, we're doing research at UIE and the projects I've been working on since then, usability testing covers a lot of issues. There're things like make sure that the email gets to the person, there's a whole list of things you can do to optimize that. Make sure that it's very clear what fields are mandatory. There's kind of a whole list. I gave a whole list of them in the talk. A lot of good best practices are encapsulated in a book by our friend Luke Wroblewski, who wrote a book on just that topic, form design. So, I would point people there first. And kind of start there, design your forms, and you'll get most of the way there. I'm sure there may be several small issues that are specific to the context that you're designing in, so test with a few people. At that point, you'll be most of the way where you need to go. I think, there's still a big kind of fear of just really simple user testing. I talk to a lot of folks that aren't doing really simple user testing. Once you start doing that, you basically will learn on the fly what interesting contextual issues you have in your forms. My basic answer is to start with Luke's book, that's a great start. And then, do a little testing just to make sure that you've got all contextual specific issues out of the way. Jared: Yeah. It's a great technique to just test things, try them, test things, try them. It works really, really, really well. You learn so much about who your users are and what they're trying to do and what your design is all about. So, highly recommend that approach. Joshua: Yeah. One of the things that I'm starting to recommend is actually trying to do your first test almost basically lowering expectations as low as possible. This is for groups, like small groups, start- ups, who've never done it before. Just watch someone sign up. When I do this, I don't get in the details of usability testing, I don't talk about how many people to test, I don't give out any instructions on how to facilitate or anything like that, even though those things are important if you're going to do it regularly. Just sit them down, and then after one or two times of doing that, and it only takes 10 minutes at the most, then in my experience, their opinion of the process changes enough so that then you can easily talk about all the nice intricacies of usability testing if you want at that point. Jared: Right, yeah. I've found that to be very much the case too. There's really sort of - to use the term of "art" today - there's really sort of that OMG experience. When you watch somebody use your design for the first time, it's like, "Wow." It's hard to imagine it could be any more fascinating than to just sit there and watch someone go through it. So, that's absolutely the case. Now, one of the questions we got had to do with where on the page you should have the account login stuff. Where the best placement is. Do you have any sense on if that makes a difference, and if so, where? Joshua: OK, yeah. I guess, I kind of have a mixed answer on this. In general I don't think placement matters nearly as much as what you might call the "visual hierarchy" of the page. So, if you have, let's say, a web page that you want people to sign in on - that's the primary purpose of the page - as long as it is clear and visually strong, it shouldn't really matter where it is. That said, if you have, say, a home page of your site, but you still want people to log into their account from that page, even though that's not the primary purpose of the page, I'm definitely starting to see what I might call a standardization toward the top right-hand region of the page. And I believe this is because when people view pages, they usually start on the top left and kind of read down, just like when we do normal reading, at least in this part of the world in English. So, that's certainly partly a cultural thing. But, in general, I'm seeing account logins start to be in the top right-hand of the page, and I think that's because a lot of sites are putting secondary navigation up there, like maybe your sign-in and sign-out and your sign-up. Maybe help. Maybe a help navigation. That's just kind of anecdotal. In general, I don't think placement matters nearly as much as visual hierarchy, but if you are talking about any sort of standards, that's one that I would point to that's pretty strong at this point. Jared: OK. So, one of the concepts that you brought up is this idea of immediate engagement. Can you remind us of what that is? Joshua: Sure. Immediate engagement is basically the idea that people start using the software as the first things do. It's actually, again, back to Luke Wroblewski, he actually coined something similar, "progressive engagement," a while back. I think, it refers to a similar idea. I simply use the term "immediate" because I think of it as the first thing you do is starting to use the product. There are several web applications that do this really well. For example, Slide.com is a widget creator. You actually create widgets for yourself. And the first thing you do is actually they want you to upload a picture and do some stylization of the widget. And after that, they ask you to save the widget as part of the signup. So, that's a good example of immediate engagement because the first thing you do is actually create the thing. So, that's the idea. Jared: Mary had asked if that applies to tangible products. On an e- commerce site, if you sell tangible products or you have some sort of service, can you still have some sort of immediate engagement idea? Is that really just a web application concept? Joshua: That's a great question. Obviously on e-commerce sites, there are two things happening, in most e-commerce sites. One is, people are purchasing products. And the second one is that the site is trying to get them to create an account so that... Well, there're many reasons why sites want you to create accounts, so you come back more, they can track your information, they can track your purchases over time. All those things. So, there are actually two different things there. We did at least two studies that I remember, Jared, at UIE, where we worked with e- commerce companies and basically found that if you allow people to purchase without creating an account you actually get more purchases, but there are clever ways to then ask people to create an account after they purchase. For example, one clever way to do it is to frame the creation of an account as a way for people to then track the product they're buying better. So, you can track it with shipping, or you can go back and view your bill. You can do things like that. So, that framed as a kind of a helpful service is a way to get people to create accounts. In terms of other online services, without referring to specific services, I think what it really gets down to is, is it possible to give people a taste of the service to gain some value of it before they have to enter a whole bunch of personal information. That's going to be different on a case-by-case basis. In general, there's usually some ways to do that. Give them a sample of this service or let them try it out for free. Things like that are pretty easy to do no matter what you're doing, unless it's something like high-end or a really exclusive thing that people have to sign their life away first. Jared: I could see, for example, providing services like if you're a company - let's say you're, like, Weber Grill. Right? So, you've got all these grills that you're selling. But, there are other things that happen around grilling. There's recipes and there's how to throw a party and there's all sorts of stuff that Weber could sort of add value to that could get people to identify themselves as really sort of part of the "we love to grill" tribe, to steal a Seth Godinism. Joshua: Sure, sure. Jared: You could build an entire signup activity that's around experiencing what it's like to be part of group who really gets into this. And then let them participate that way. Joshua: Oh, yeah, yeah. That's a great point. And actually one person had asked during the seminar about newsletter signups. Newsletters are a great to get people excited about what it is that you're offering, if you're providing value through a newsletter. In the case of grilling, it would be, "Here's our grilling newsletter. We send out grilling tips and tricks every week or every month. Learn to be a better griller and sign up." And then you have to give at least an email to do that. So then, you kind of get the foot in the door and that sort of thing. This isn't deceitful or anything; to get people to sing up for something, you have to be providing value in some way. So, if it's not the ultimate product that you're selling and it's for something smaller, as long as you're providing value like a good newsletter or something, people will sign up for it. Jared: Right. I think, that makes sense. Also during the presentation, you talked about the 9X effect. This was something that was a "Harvard Business Review" article, right? The eager sellers/stony buyers article that came out back in 2000. How does the 9X effect apply to this type of thing? Joshua: The 9X effect, or 9-times effect - I'm not sure how they would actually pronounce it. I think, it actually has real important implications for the way that we view signup. It actually, in my mind, explains why signup is such a hard problem. The way that it does that - and I would encourage anyone to go read the article "Eager Sellers, Stony Buyers." It's an article about product adoption, so it's actually not web- specific at all. And basically the author, John Gourville, talks about how when we often think of someone signing up for whatever it is that we have or adopting our product, we think of them making some mostly rational decision between whatever it is they're currently using and whatever it is that we're offering. So, when we're offering something that's obviously better, if they were rational, shouldn't they sign up for it? Well, Gourville makes the case - and I think it's a really strong case, it's a great article - that there are several kind of unseen barriers at work. One of the barriers that's very strong is cognitive biases. Cognitive biases - for example, there's one cognitive bias called the "ownership effect." And the ownership effect basically says - and this has been backed up with countless psychological studies - that we value something more the moment we begin owning it. And that the act of ownership creates in us a tendency to value that thing, whatever it is - software, hardware, physical objects - more over time as we continue to be owners of it. For example, if you had a coffee cup right in front of you that was given to you by your true love and there was a coffee cup across the table that wasn't given to you by your true love, and they happened to be the exact same type of coffee cup, you would value the one that was given to you. There's a whole bunch of ways to explain it, like we're sentimental, it has history. But, the fact is, is that because we feel we own it, we value it more. So, that's just one example of the cognitive biases that Gourville talks about. He also talks about it from the seller's side - so that when you're selling something, no matter what it is, you think it's worth more than it actually is. So, as a seller if I were to sell you a coffee cup and you were making a consideration between the coffee cup that I was selling you and another coffee cup, I would become convinced that the coffee cup that I was selling you was better than that other coffee cup. So, that's a cognitive bias. And the basic idea behind cognitive biases is that even though we know they're there, they still affect us. Even if I'm aware that the ownership bias exists, I'm still going to value a coffee cup that I own more than one I don't own. These things have been studied for years and years and years in psychology and social psychology, and what Gourville did was he basically found - he did a whole analysis on this. He found that people tend to over-value the products they have about three times more than they should. So, on average, I value the software that I own about three times more that I should. And on average, a seller values the software that they're offering about three times more than they should. Some studies show that it's four times, some studies show that it's two times. But, on average, it's three times. So, what Gourville did is he said, "Wait, if the buyer is over- valuing it by three times and the seller is over-valuing it by three times, that's a nine times or 9X disparity between the two." That would really explain why getting someone to change their behavior from using product A to using product B is so darn hard. It shows we're not comparing apples to apples. We're really comparing apples to apples that you own. I think, it's a great illustration of why this is such a hard problem. So, anyhow, I would recommend to anyone who is listening to read that "Harvard Business Review" article. I think actually it has tremendous value not just in product adoption, but in design and all sorts of fields. Jared: So, if I understand what you're saying here, what it really does is it helps us understand why just because we think we have something that's better, it's really hard for people to just say, "OK, yeah, I'm definitely going to try that." So, if I'm creating a web service or I'm selling products on my site, and I want people to try those products, it's not just a matter of listing out the features and saying, "Obviously this is better than the other thing, so sign up below." Joshua: Right. Jared: There's more to it. Joshua: Right. It's not just a rational decision. It's an emotional decision. And so the strategy that we use to combat it has to be a really strong one. We have to, in some cases, really attack people - not attack people - but design for kind of several angles. Are we making a rational case why what we're offering is better? And could we also make an emotional case? Is that possible as well? Jared: Cool. OK. That makes sense to me. I think understanding that can be very helpful to knowing what you have to do to make this work. And what to look for when you're watching users. So, another question that we got has to do with terminology. Do users have a preference for save or sign up? Or other types of good terms. Do you know if there are certain phrases that work better than others? Joshua: Yeah. I've certainly written my share of copy where I've gone through so many iterations of do you want to sign up, or do you want to join us, or do you want to register? There are actually countless permutations of those things. What I will say is that from my experience, there are several issues that we want to keep in mind. One is consistency of language. So, in other words, if we call something sign up, you don't want to call it register in another place. You want to call it sign up. Sign up in general is a well accepted term. Most people, at least most people that I've seen know what that means. Register is not quite as... Register is a little more technical. It seems to come from kind of another domain. Save is really interesting because it changes the way you think about the information that you've entered. So, for example, if you say hey I want you to sign up for my service to someone, that means you want them to do something they haven't yet done. When you use the term save, that merely means that you want someone to save something that they've already done. So, that's re-framing the activity that you're asking people to do. You're re-framing it into something they might lose if they don't save it. That's a really powerful term. And in cases where you can use immediate engagement and you can have people do something first, where you can gauge people immediately and have them say use a free trial. Or actually create an object if it's a web application or something and then save it, that becomes very powerful. I gave an example during the talk where a developer named Charley Park who creates a site called Pear Budget. He had this kind of red box that was like a warning. It was like you haven't saved your information. Then, he redesigned the site and he changed that red box that was kind of like a warning to a friendly box that said save your information and this is all you have to do. His conversion immediately went up. So, in that case, save and kind of the friendly colors in that design worked better. So, in general, kind of actually back to cognitive biases, when you frame things as a potential loss people will react a little more strongly than if it's a potential gain. That's a cognitive bias called loss aversion. However, you can definitely go overboard with it if you have huge words that say - kind of overstate the case - you will lose and your world will fall apart if you don't do this. That's a little underhanded. But, if it's kind of friendly, friendly language. I think, tone is really important. You can't really evaluate whether to use save or sign up unless you're doing hardcore A/B testing. But, in general, if you frame things as a loss, then that tends to be effective. I would trend towards sign up over register. But again, consistency is an issue. You want to make sure that as you write the copy for your site or whatever it is you're building, that the actions you're asking people to do are always called the same thing in the many places that you mention them. Jared: Right. So, would it be fair to say - because I was thinking of this while you were talking - sign up is basically an initiation, whereas save is a closure? Right? So, sign up feels like it's at the beginning of a process. Save makes it feel like you're finishing up a process. Joshua: Yeah. There's a really kind of interesting subtle difference, isn't there? Jared: Yeah. And so that distinction would frame the whole package differently for people and it's like, "Oh, OK, yeah. I understand why I need to put in my email address so I can save this." That makes sense. Whereas sign up, I'm not so sure I want to sign up. I mean, this is neat, but I'm not sure I need to sign up for it. Joshua: Right, right. And that again I think could have been really applicable on some of those e-commerce projects that we worked on. We probably didn't talk about it in those terms back then, but we definitely saw - at least I remember one or two that we worked on, Jared - where we would tell people or we would work into the design save your information for later. And that seemed to work pretty well at the time if I remember. Jared: Right, right. Yeah, no, I remember. We were doing this check out process and people were reluctant to sign up. But, when we had them put in all this information like their credit card number and stuff and then we said if you want we can save this for you all you have to do is give us a user name and a password. And then, you can come back and it will be easy to do the next time. A lot of people took advantage of it and they felt OK, these guys are cool, I'll put my information in and it worked really well. Joshua: It almost sounds like you're doing them a favor at that point. And really you are in many cases. Jared: Right, right. So, it's just being clear about what the benefits are and making sure other people know. But, it's also closures are easier for people to deal with than initiations - I think, it's the lesson here. Well, this has been great, Josh. This has been very helpful and we've gotten through a lot of the questions. So, thank you very much. Joshua: You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Jared: OK. And I want to thank everyone who's listening for spending the time with us again and thank you for encouraging our behavior. We will talk to you again soon, take care. [music]