Last week I read over Richard DesLonde's What is the most minimal sign up process possible?, which introduced me to the idea of a sign up process which requires email address input followed by an email confirmation before any other data gets collected.
Since then I've been thinking about the pros and cons of this approach and whether I should make use of this on sites I create myself.
Before even getting to the email input, most sign up processes involve the user giving a desired username and/or their forename and surname followed by a password (and password confirmation). Due to the time it takes waiting for an email to be sent through and having to click on a link within, and as someone who is fairly easily distracted by other things, I often reach the email field and find myself doubting whether I should actually sign up at all, however as I've already entered some information I feel like I should push on.
So my question is simply this: to ensure users don't leave the sign up process, should I implement an email-first system or should I at least require some basic user information before getting to that part?