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We are doing a Mobile App only sign up as we are not launching the web application immediately.

We need to capture as much information of the user to give them a personalized service

We had planned to capture the following data from them during Signup

  1. First Name
  2. LAst Name

  3. Email Id

  4. Password

  5. Birthday day - Date Picker

  6. Gender - Spinner

  7. City - Spinner or get Location via GPS

  8. Mobile Number

  9. Profile Photo

For some reason i feel the signup rate will be affected. So can some one suggest how i can do the same and get the user to give the following data even may be just after signup

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  • If we've answered your question, you can select the best solution so that if anyone comes across the same problem in the future, they know the course of action.
    – dnbrv
    Feb 7, 2012 at 18:44

5 Answers 5

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I think the best way is to get the minimal amount of details required to create an account, for example just an email address and a password.

Once the user has invested time in creating an account and has logged in for the first time, you can then prompt them to enter and complete their profile (which will contain all the other fields).

Having a sign up form that suddenly requires a lot of details can be quite daunting and a turn off for users.

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  • thanks for the reply. my only concern is since its on mobile we dont have the real estate to tell the user we need more information or show a percentage bar to fill in more details to complete the registration.
    – Harsha M V
    Oct 28, 2011 at 8:55
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    Are the pieces of data other than the email and password unconditionally required, or could you get away with having gaps in some of those information? If you can get away with some missing information, you can have the user create an account using their email and password. Once they log in for the first time (or if they have not filled in all the data), you can have a reminder that asks them to complete their profile.
    – F21
    Oct 28, 2011 at 9:02
  • thanks i guess that makes sense.. will just add Name to the sign up so i can address them personally :)
    – Harsha M V
    Oct 28, 2011 at 9:41
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    Letting people fill things in later is great; progressive engagement. Stack Exchange first got my openid and a username and that's about it. As I started to actually use the site I quickly filled out the profile
    – Ben Brocka
    Oct 28, 2011 at 11:57
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    @HarshaMV - Don't think of a mobile app like you do a website. On devices, people are expected to get screens that pop up (assuming they're not ads, of course) and various dialogues/alerts. You also have the option to put a little badge of some sort on your profile button that calls attention to it and prompting the user to investigate further. There are other options besides cramming more (transient) words onto a small screen.
    – Shauna
    Oct 28, 2011 at 13:44
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I think you're onto a loser with all those fields. Signup forms must die as Luke Wroblewski says (http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/SignUpForms_10052010.pdf)

Depending on the platform, and I'm thinking about iphone and android, you ask for location but the phone can provide this automatically! your app should default to user's current location but allow him or her to set a new location if desired.

Passive registration: collect details as the user interacts with the system (https://jottit.com/) Let the user use the service with the minimum of fuss.

Do not use spinners for lists that do not cycle naturally; for a binary choice such as M or F a spinwheel is wrong, radio will do

As a user, if you asked me what my mobile phone number was on a mobile app I would be profoundly angry, but I have no data or reference as to whether this is subjective opinion or objective

Summary:

let users use the app with the minimum of fuss

use phones hardware to automatically detect location or other -temporal- information

do not ask for information that is not relevant to the functioning of the app

do not use widgets for the wrong purpose

allow passive registration

c

refs: NNgroup mobile testing and research 2010-2011 http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/SignUpForms_10052010.pdf https://jottit.com/

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  • Alternatively, iOS, at least, has the binary "switch" button. I've seen some apps use it for the Male/Female question. It does, however, (by nature) omit alternatives (such as "prefer not to answer"), which has been of growing concern to some groups.
    – Shauna
    Oct 28, 2011 at 13:47
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    yeah, I was going to put that as a caveat but lost it along the way...
    – colmcq
    Oct 28, 2011 at 13:49
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Two questions I have are

  1. Why do I (the user) need to be supplying all this info for something I don't even really know that I'm ever going to use again - therefore just let the user have the app, if I like it I'll be more motivated to provide this info later.

  2. Most, if not all of this data could be collected by integrating facebook or twitter login apis so why go to all the effort to collect this standard set of information already entered by most elsewhere?

The fewer hurdles a user has to jump the more successful your likely to be.

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Repost from my answer to On Android, how do you design a very shallow navigation?:

One possibly worthy alternative to list- or button-based navigation leading to separate Login and Register screens would be to combine Login and Register into a single activity. This aligns well with the notion that on mobile devices, you want to minimize the amount of data entry users need to perform (i.e. limit your registration flow to bare essentials). Several apps already do this successfully.

On this single screen would be four form elements: Email and Password fields, and Login and Register buttons. Both buttons would be disabled by default. As the user begins typing their email address, Register could become enabled. If she selects Register here, an account is created and a temporary password is emailed to them. If she begins typing a password, Login could become enabled. If she selects Login and there's an auth error, consider displaying a message to the effect of "Did you want to sign up now?" If she selects Register with both an email and a password entered, created an account with those credentials.

Some other points:

  • Don't forget to provide a 'Forgot Password' mechanism.
  • Don't bother with asking to re-type the password — users can always fall back on your 'Forgot Password' mechanism.
  • Consider prepopulating the email text field with known account email addresses on the device, to further lessen the burden of mobile text entry on the user. Android provides an AutoCompleteTextView that may serve well here.
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Loads of form data usually just turns a user off from even bothering to sign up for a service, on mobile, you should make the service as minute as possible, only asking for the basics. Then maybe when they get on their computers, you could prompt them to fill in their data step by step.

Alternatively, you could satisfy the data required with Facebook's Connect API?

Good luck with your project!

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