Comments on: Online community best practices: Effective signup process

By: Online community best practices: Effective signup process | UX Booth

Online community best practices: Effective signup process | UX Booth — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:26:01 +0000

[...] community best practices: Effective… Community ResourceOnline community best practices: Effective signup process http://briancray.com/2009/11/13/signup-process-online-community-best-practices/This article focuses [...]

By: Unni Krishnan

Unni Krishnan — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:31:30 +0000

Really agree to Chris Taylor’s comments…apart from the point of sending plain text passwords to the confirmation email..there should defienetly be forgot password option which should really fetch him the password..otherwise the article is really great…thanks for the post..

By: Techdivine

Techdivine — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:40:31 +0000

Awesome post

Keep them coming

Be Well

Techdivine

By: Effective signup process | Focus After

Effective signup process | Focus After — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:23:51 +0000

[...] Your signup form may be the most crucial part of your online community. You should be doing everything you can to insure an easy signup process that makes the user feel safe. via briancray.com [...]

By: A Day In The Browser Of… « Martijn Verver schrijft.

A Day In The Browser Of… « Martijn Verver schrijft. — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:07:53 +0000

[...] Effective Signup Process Ik werk bij een social media bureau waar ook interaction guru’s werken. Een artikel dat mij wijst op de vier elementen van een effectief community signup process ga ik zeker even lezen. Al was het maar om een discussie aan de lunchtafel te doen kantelen:) [...]

By: Brian Cray

Brian Cray — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:44:58 +0000

Luke: Yes. http://briancray.com/2009/07/27/eye-tracking-studies-influence-redesign/

By: Luke

Luke — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:45:30 +0000

I agree with the sentiments posted by a few already that plain text passwords should not be sent in an email. I believe this is part of the reason for depth of the Twitter security breach, when someone gained access to a Twitter employees email account and was then able to find other passwords.

If you give me an easy to find link to reset my password which will send an email and as long as the email will come quickly with a link (that will expire) to reset it, I am happy.

Otherwise great article.

Also I’m curious about the form fields and labels aligning vertically as opposed to horizontally. Brian did you do some A/B testing or eye tracking research on that? Just curious to know if there are any stats about the particular suggestion.

By: links for 2009-11-16 « Köszönjük, Emese!

links for 2009-11-16 « Köszönjük, Emese! — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:05:14 +0000

[...] Online community best practices: Effective signup process This article focuses on providing new members with an effective join/signup process. Although some of these principles may seem obvious, I’ve gone through plenty of membership signup forms that still suck. So hence the post. (tags: webdesign ui signup forms community) [...]

By: Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:02:15 +0000

> Passwords can be sent the first time from the $_POST info before they are MD5′d and added to the database. What are your thoughts on that?

I don’t think there’s a need to send the password in the confirmation email, as the user has only just typed it in. They are unlikely to forget it so quickly, especially if you’ve dne the “confirm password” thing to make sure they typed it right.

Of course, sometimes people go back to signup confirmation emails to get their details, but I would guess this is pretty rare. Much better to use a “forgot password?” feature, and make this prominent in the confirmation email.

So, the signup confirmation email should be like a “welcome pack” which gives people all the information they need to get started, and confidence they’ve done the right thing. Here’s an example which covers the main points (for a fictional events/networking website):

Hi Bob, thanks for signing up with XYZ.com!

You can log in at any time at http://xyz.com/login using these details:

Username: bob
Password: (the password you entered when you signed up)

If you ever forget your password you can reset it here: http://xzy.com/password. If you get stuck when logging in contact our support team using the form at http://xyz.com/support.

So, where are you going to start?

The first thing you might want to do is fill in your XYZ.com profile: http://xyz.com/profile. Fill in your location and we’ll even tell you about XYZ.com events happening near you! Just visit your profile page to get the latest information, automatically filtered for you: http://xyz.com/bob

Then join in the conversation by linking your online accounts: http://xyz.com/aggregate. This means that anything you post at Facebook, Twitter, your blog, LinkedIn (and many more websites) will automatically show up on your XYZ.com profile page.

You may also want to post your own events at http://xyz.com/announce From here you can send out invitations, check who is attending, and add files for people to download.

There’s loads more happening at XYZ.com, check out the events list at http://xyz.com/events and get meeting people!

The XZY.com Team

P.S. If you get stuck, remember you can contact us at http://xyz.com/support. We’re here to help.

I think an email like that is a good thing for people to have in their inboxes – although of ccourse this information should also be shown to them on-page when they sign up to get them started.

By: Matthew MacSuga

Matthew MacSuga — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:02:06 +0000

I agree, passwords should not be sent in emails. Any other person that gains access to that users email, now has their password if the user doesn’t delete it (most don’t).. think Hotmail, Gmail, etc. Bad idea all around.
Forgot password feature via links is a much better idea if the user forgets than to have it in an email.

- Matthew (@csharpbydesign on Twitter)