At the end of an account setup process does there need to be a confirmation screen?

Question

I'm currently working on a site that has a 5step account setup process. The user sets up their account post registration. I feel there should be a confirmation screen at the end due to the amount of important information the user is inputting. This might not be necessary as I haven't seen the user receiving confirmation at the end of set up on other sites, usually you set up and get on with it. However, if I were to have a confirmation at the end I have a couple of questions.

1. The account setup only has one mandatory step the rest the user can fill out when they like. Would the confirmation screen appear once the user has completed all steps even if they don't complete the setup all at once?

2. Usually confirmations consist of one page. Should this be the case for a 5step process to replay all info on one page?

Answer 1

Could this information be changed later? If "yes", the confirmation screen can be omitted. Otherwise (or in a case the information is important for normal operation and should be carefully checked before submission) it's a good idea to show up a summary and allow user to go back to change something if needed.

It's actually about the importance of the data. If it has critical meaning (i.e. this information is required for normal operation) you should add a notice about its importance and provide feedback if something will go wrong (like failed delivery, etc).

I think that you may try to split the setup to "complete registration" procedure (for mandatory step) and "company profile" which has a less important data. So you will need a confirmation for "complete registration" only and avoid it at "company profile".

Answer 2

You could "hide" the confirmation part of the confirmation screen by calling it "welcome" screen:

• You would print "Hello AAA, welcome to XXX" in large, friendly letters.
• Next, repeat the input the user provided in the previous steps.
• Further below on the right, you would have a button labeled "Start using XXX" which essentially confirms/closes the hybrid welcome/confirmation screen.
• On the bottom left, a button "Revise input" (or alike) would allow the user to go to the previous steps to change his/her input. Alternatively, provide a "Cancel" button to cancel the registration process all together.

The point is to not explicitly ask the user for confirmation of the data, but assume that he/she would see any mistakes and go back to revise the data.