Site invites and verifications

Question

I'm in the process of designing how the 'User 1' of 'Site A' can invite 'User 2' to the website. The solution I have involves 'User 1' going into their dashboard and clicking on a button that opens a modal, where they enter the name and email address of 'User 2' who then receives a site generated email.

My question is this:

When someone first signs up to a website, they receive a verification email to verify their email address. When someone is being invited through an email that's been generated by the site, should they receive a verification email later on given that they have already clicked through from their email account?

What is the true purpose of this email, and when does it need to come through?

Answer 1

I don't think they should get another verification email, you already verified that their email is theirs and it works, because they received the invite, otherwise the invite would have been lost and never "redeemed".

Answer 2

I would allow invited users to use another e-mail address then the one at which they received the invite. It's something that isn't done often unfortunately, but there are lots of people using separate e-mail addresses for registering on websites. Plus, I like the idea that a user is free to choose how he/she registers, even when it's an invite-only service.

Proposed solution

Perhaps you could prefill the e-mail address field in the sign-up form by default using the e-mail address from the invite. A user can then change that e-mail address. When the e-mail address used to register is the same as that from the invitation, no verification is needed, else you can require e-mail verification.