Ordering of an Eligibility Funnel during application onboarding process

Question

I am designing an onboarding/registration process for a mobile app/service that has fairly restrictive qualification requirements.

Over time, these requirements will be come substantially less restrictive, but our MVP will only provide functionality for a small subset of users.

My question is composed of a few parts:

1. Understanding that all users will eventually be able to benefit from this application/service, does it make most sense to alert people as soon as we realize they don't qualify, or do we let them finish inputing everything and then tell them?
2. Depending on the answer to Part 1., Is it better to order the form such that you ask the most general (least restrictive questions) first, or should you filter out non-qualifying users as soon as you know how to reach them once they qualify?

For the process as I currently have it, please refer to this flow diagram:

Answer 1

As you will already have the mobile number, go for the most restrictive questions first in order to prevent frustration and avoid a negative experience on the first contact with the company/brand/product.

At the point of the 'not qualified' notification, then you could ask if they would like to be notified when they qualify. This would workaround data protection issues (not sure where you are based, but you will probably need consent to contact/use their data), and let them know that it is not 'over yet' at the same time :)

As per 'valuable market data', you would eventually get it when the user fully qualifies. I know the business might keep putting pressure on data capture but you need to balance whether the experience would be bad enough for them not to want to hear back from you/move on to competitor - you would then have the data but not the customer!

Answer 2

It seems as though the main objectives you have are to get users into the system with the hope that when the product will support them, they will actually use it. So, my advice would be to:

1. gather the absolute minimum amount of information required to create a user (perhaps username/email/mobile number and password)
2. begin with most restrictive questions and let someone know as quickly as possible that they do not yet qualify

I believe this is a good option is because it allows you to get the user onto the system so that you can notify them when they are able to use the product, but it doesn't make them answer questions that they don't need to.

Hope this helps!