There’s almost always reasons, or benefits, for visitors to register at a site such as expediting checkout, participating in a community, leaving a comment and accessing premium content, but these benefits aren’t always clear or well communicated in a way that compels people to create an account. And since we know that the majority of people dislike registration forms and setting up new username and password combinations, we can’t assume they’ll want to take action on a site without receiving some value in exchange.

The Registration Value Exchange

We address this very challenge and opportunity in our new interactive Prezi slideshow titled Reasons to Register Online: Increase Registration Conversion by Giving More Than You Get. In addition to best practices, we include real-world examples from brands doing a great job of communicating the reasons people should register at their site, and added a bonus checklist of recommended steps to point you in the right direction. You can check it out right here:

We’re pretty excited about our first Prezi, so let us know what you think and whether we should do more of these.

Image by @Rantz

My apartment building has several important doors. The front and back doors to the building, the door to my laundry room and the storage room. Fortunately, I have a single key that opens all of these doors in the same way. Can you imagine how frustrating it would be if I had to use a different key for each entrance?

In my previous blog post Five Most Common Mistakes in Social Login, number two was inconsistent registration flows. After reviewing hundreds of implementations of social login, I’ve identified this problem as far and away the most common, and needing of attention. Inconsistent registration flows are a problem because they lead to confusion for your site visitors, which could cause them to leave your site.

If your registration process looks and behaves differently across different points in your website, you can lose as many as 50% of your new registered users.

Many marketers have a habit of thinking about registration as a check-box on the website feature list. Registration is actually really difficult to do well, and when it’s done poorly it can:

• kill an otherwise effective marketing campaign by discouraging people from completing a download or registration call to action on your website
• cause shopping cart abandonment because your checkout process is too hard, long or confusing
• cause a customer to decide not to return to your website because they couldn’t get what they want in the first place

Marketers need to partner with their UX and technology teams to ensure that the registration, sign in and checkout processes on your website are easily understood, easy to use, and operate quickly and efficiently.

The image below illustrates what happens when registration flows aren’t thought through. These are all from a single website. If the user is logged in, they don’t stay logged in from page to page. The site’s commenting login is completely different from the main site login, and the checkout process has two different buttons that lead to the same place.

Site-wide registration and sign in

On entertainment, media, and news sites, site-wide registration usually sits at the top of the page. Quite frequently there is no call to action inviting people to register there, but web designers and marketers feel a need to put the registration link because of “best practices.”

The first thing that is needed in site-wide registration is a clear call to action that explains two to three benefits for registration. Yamaha does a great job of this with the modal overlay when their page loads.

Ideally, registration and sign in should look nearly identical, with the exception of the registration process possibly asking for a password. With social login, you can even use conditional logic to indicate the remaining fields that they need to complete after you pre-fill data from their selected identity provider.

Commenting, forums, and chat sign in

It is very common to use third-party tools for interactive website elements. Many people fail to realize that these can be registration points that are the first step in getting a site visitor on your mailing list or into your marketing automation flow.

Third-parties build registration functionality into their interactive tools to make using them easy. When someone clicks Log In within your commenting section, they should be routed through your main website registration flow so the data goes into your database instead of or in addition to the commenting vendor’s database.

Backplane is an open-source technology that enables interactive elements to easily interact with each other and your primary site registration process. The resulting user experience is one point of registration for all technologies on your site, along with one user profile in your database. You can see a list of Janrain partners who use Backplane here.

eCommerce checkout

It is very common for ecommerce websites to think of their site registration and checkout flows as two distinct entities. In some ways this makes sense. Checkout is where all of the attention goes, and any disruption can potentially cost millions of dollars. Even as they are increasingly using social login for engagement experiences, online retailers have been somewhat slow to implement social in their checkout flows because of this sense of caution.

In order to unify registration flows, it makes sense to implement the same login or registration options as the rest of the site. As a bonus, social login is proving to be very valuable for commerce marketers. L’Occitane recently showed that social login users have nearly 11% higher average order value (AOV).

Contests and sweepstakes

Contests and sweepstakes can drive a lot of traffic. Giving away the right product can get people excited and willing to give you their contact information. Take it one step further and put contest entrants into your registration database and opt them into your mailing list.

By creating an account for contest entrants you make brand, content and experience engagement seamless. There is often a post-contest glow for new entrants where they view a brand favorably. Encouraging them to comment, share, and otherwise participate deepens engagement with your brand, encouraging long term loyalty.

7 UP’s Every Bottle Wins campaign is a great example of how to use social login in a contest, and it has the added benefit of appearing inside a Facebook campaign page.

Lead generation forms

We are seeing Janrain clients roll their lead-gen pages into their registration flow as well. This is commonly accomplished by putting user data into the user database after the lead gen form is filled out. Janrain actually published a guide on how to integrate social login with Salesforce landing pages.

Once someone has given you their information in return for a download or registration, there is no reason to gate additional engagement points, and many benefits for you both to make it easier for them.

Just like having a single key for all of the doors in my building, working to integrate all of your registration points into a single cohesive flow makes things much easier for your customers.  Doing these sorts of integrations is certainly becoming more complex as websites are being developed with many moving parts, with more technology from a variety of vendors. Pay attention to keeping your user experience easy and quick, and consistent if you want to keep your campaigns effective, improve conversion rates, and keep customer loyalty.

Where have you seen a registration experience done well?

Back in 1998 when the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) was enacted — in what some readers may think of as the age of digital dinosaurs — children could watch Barney on TV, but they sure couldn’t pay him a visit on the PBS kids website via their parents’ iPads, or extol his cheeriness on their Facebook pages.  Now, of course, they can.  With the intent of protecting children online in the ways they use the Internet today, including through mobile devices and social networking sites, the FTC recently updated its COPPA Rule.

COPPA applies to the operators of commercial websites and online services that are directed to children under 13 or that know they are collecting personal information from children under 13.

To address the ways in which children’s information can now be collected, the COPPA Rule expands the types of personal information that can’t be collected without parental notice and consent to include:

• Geolocation information, photographs, and videos and audio files that contain a child’s image or voice;
• Any user name that would permit direct contact with a user online, such as an email address, an instant message user identifier, a VOIP identifier, or a video chat; and
• Persistent identifiers, such as IP addresses and mobile user IDs, if they are used to track children over time and across websites. Where the collection of personal information is used “for the sole purpose of supporting the website or online service’s internal operations, such as contextual advertising,” however, COPAA’s parental notice and consent requirements do not apply.

In another significant change, COPPA liability has been extended to websites and online services directed to children even if they don’t collect personal information for themselves but play host to ad networks and plug-ins like Twitter’s “tweet” button that collect personal information for their own use. In addition, the operators of plug-ins and ad networks with actual knowledge that they are collecting information from websites or online services directed at children will be required to meet the parental notification and consent requirements.

To strengthen the protection of children’s information, the amended COPPA Rule requires operators to keep children’s personal information only so long as necessary to meet the purpose for which it was collected and to make reasonable efforts to release children’s personal information to service providers which are capable of maintaining its security, integrity, and confidentiality and of deleting it securely and assure they will do so.

Although there are other important changes that need to be taken into account, the updated COPPA Rule provisions take effect on July 1, giving covered operators several months to implement any operational and other changes necessary for compliance.

Read the FTC’s lengthy discussion of the recent COPPA Rule changes and the revised rule itself.

We work with many organizations that operate under the constraints of legacy, homegrown registration systems. These often require significant time and resource investments to maintain, augment or revamp to ensure that sites are collecting richer, and more accurate, profile information from their registered users.

We were the first to introduce a hosted registration solution for websites back in 2010. With our latest product release, we’ve made it even easier for our customers to rapidly deploy a comprehensive user registration solution packed with features to help ensure data quality, integrity, and maximize sign-up rates.

Here is an overview of just a few of the features supported within our next generation user registration solution, already deployed by global brands such as Mattel, Fox News, Cox Media Group, Dr Pepper, Whole Foods, the UK’s Channel 4 and others:

Customizable Data Collection Forms and Workflow

The new solution makes it easier to deploy customizable data collection forms for registration, newsletter sign-ups, polls, surveys, contests or promotions, or extending registration beyond your site by embedding forms within a branded social network presence. Dr Pepper, for example, has embedded registration forms as well as social login into custom Facebook tabs and applications to develop a deeper understanding of its fans.

Our solution also includes built in email confirmation workflows to take the hassle out of validating user identities upon sign-up.

Inline Field Validation

Our latest release has made it easier to take advantage of features that ensure data quality, such as inline field validation, dirty word filters and terms of service (TOS) acceptance. Validate email address or postal code formats in real-time, verify age or password requirements, and build integrity from the data you collect at registration.

Password Management and Reset Workflow

Our user registration solution enables you to deliver customizable password reset emails right to your user’s inbox, and handles password management and secure reset flows on your behalf.

User Profile Pages

Deploy configurable user profile pages that include name, email, demographics, photos, interests, subscription preferences and more. The solution helps build community engagement by empowering users to set individual fields in their site profiles as either public or private.

Conditional Workflows

We’ve built a new feature that allows sites to dynamically trigger new fields or flows based on previous inputs to a form, or existing profile data stored. Conditional workflows enable websites to collect richer data about their users by employing progressive profiling.

Mobile Web Optimization

These days, as much as 30% of web usage occurs via mobile phones, making it as critical ever for websites to offer optimized registration flows on mobile and tablet devices.  Our user registration solution enables customers to dynamically resize registration forms and user profile pages to provide an optimal mobile and tablet web experience for user registration and profile management.

Analytics Integrations

We’ve added a powerful new JavaScript API that empowers deeper insights about conversion funnels and registration.  The solution allows customers to easily integrate registration and login events into web analytics platforms such as Adobe SiteCatalyst, Coremetrics, Google Analytics and Webtrends.

Improved Speed and Performance

Lastly, our user registration solution is faster than ever.  We’ve made several performance enhancements to improve response times for all user data collection forms, profile pages and field validation rules. The new version of the solution abandons any use of embedded iframes – instead, all registration forms and profile pages render via HTML, CSS and JavaScript elements that are served from within the client.

The team at Janrain has been hard at work, and we’re very excited to bring the next generation of our industry-leading user registration solution to you. As always, your feedback is welcome.

Click here to download the full infographic [PDF].

Click here to download the full infographic [PDF].

Important Stats

• 86% of people may leave a website when asked to create an account | Click to share
• 50% of people dislike creating new passwords | Click to share
• 60% of people have more than 5 unique passwords to remember | Click to share
• 40% of people use the Forgot Password feature at least once a month | Click to share
• 88% of online users admit they have lied on form | Click to share
• 2 in 5 people would rather solve world peace than create a new password | Click to share
• 2 in 5 people would rather scrub a toilet than create a new password | Click to share
• 77% of online users prefer social login | Click to share
• Facebook is the preferred social login provider of choice | Click to share

Embed Code

<img src="http://janrain.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/how-to-solve-the-online-registration-challenge.png" alt="How to Solve the Online Registration Challenge Inforgraphic" width="600" /></p> <p><a href="http://bit.ly/registration-challenge">How to Solve the Online Registration Challenge</a> – An infographic by the team at <a href="http://janrain.com">Janrain</a>

A lot of work is involved with building and maintaining a registration system.  From all of the front-end development work associated with creating registration screens and forms as well as user profile pages, to the back-end work associated with ensuring data quality and managing workflow.  They say that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and believe us – neither are robust registration systems when built from scratch.

The challenge for brands that try to do so is that most are not in the business of registration systems.  Therefore, it is a distraction from a company’s core competency and costly to devote IT resources to building and maintaining one.

Planning for Success:

Quickly Create Customized Registration Screens that Match Your Site’s Look and Feel

With the exception of your home page, registration screens serve as the “front door” of your site.  When using a hosted registration system, they need to be easy to create and deploy, as well as customize to match your site’s look and feel.  Your hosted system should support registration and profile management screens that are written and easily deployed via JavaScript and not rendered via iframes.  Screens rendered via JavaScript possess faster performance and response times, and are more easily customizable either by editing the code or injecting CSS styling.

Drive Mobile and Tablet Usage with Responsive Design

There is nothing more annoying than visiting a site on your mobile or tablet device and encountering screens that are akin to peering at an ant colony – there is a bunch of tiny stuff on the screen, but you can’t really tell what’s going on down there.  If you are vexed by text that is microscopic, then ensure that your hosted registration system supports responsive design.  Registration and profile management screens should dynamically adjust to different form factors on various mobile and tablet devices without any work on your part.

Improve Data Quality with Comprehensive Back-end Tools and Workflow

Data integrity is critical for any successful online business.  Your registration system should support a comprehensive set of tools and workflow out of the box, such as password management and reset logic, email verification workflows, in-line field validation, CAPTCHA spam prevention, dirty word filtering, COPPA flows and terms of service acceptance.

Put Users in Control of Their Data with Public and Private Pages and Fields

User profile pages are an excellent way to foster community on your site.  But some people are more introverted than others.  Give users control over the visibility of their profile and let them toggle individual fields on their site profile to be displayed as public or private, depending on their preference.

Case Study

Universal Music Group outsourced its registration system to focus web development efforts on building more engaging music artist sites.  In doing so, Universal Music Group has been able to rapidly deploy site registration screens that are custom-branded to match the look and feel of each music artist site.  In addition, Universal Music Group is building community engagement through the use of profile pages that allow music fans to specify public and private fields and make their presence heard on an artist site.

To learn more about how to effectively utilize user registration and other technologies, check out our Definitive Guide to User Management.

As we look back on the past two weeks of Olympic events, one thing is certain: people everywhere craved information. We passionately wanted to know how our country stacked up in the medal count, whether our favorite athlete won her event, and how our team was performing.

Thankfully the Internet was flowing with updates, scores and articles on the events that kept us up to date…or motivated us to track down a live stream.

Many of our Janrain customers were part of this information flow, so we wanted to take a few minutes to recognize and congratulate them for helping to make the Games special for us all:

FoxSports

During the games laptops, tablets and smartphones were getting up-to-the-minute details from FoxSports.com.

When sports fans create an account on their site, they can comment on stories about their favorite athletes and share articles with their friends in social networks or via email.

Since they launched their 2012 Olympic campaign across their site, FoxSports experienced an increase in new accounts created with social login, posts to social networks and referral traffic back to their site.

Visit London

When millions of visitors come to your city over a two-week period of time, there’s a lot of hotel, transit and event information put in high demand. And VisitLondon provided the desired details, and then some.

Through their site, VisitLondon helped visitors make the most of the facilities, venues and events that London has to offer, delivering an experience that will keep tourists coming back time and again.

The National Post

When Canadians visited the National Post’s website, they not only got all the updates, but also had the ability to create public profiles that fostered a sense of community with others who shared their interests. As they commented on articles, they were able to interact with others participating in conversations online.

Janrain is proud to have played a role in supporting the 2012 London Olympic coverage through our great customers mentioned above, and many others such as Bicycling.com, The Sun, Newsweek and Runners World with a streamlined way for fans to access and interact with content and the event coverage.

And the countdown to Sochi has begun!

Building a relationship between friends is the same as building a community online. Social profile data is a valuable asset to companies wanting to build a stronger relationship with their constituency. While this data will not completely sidestep the audience courting period, it does give companies a better overview of who is visiting their sites, how they like to participate, and where to drive more traffic for better engagement opportunities. Companies just starting to delve into collecting social data should keep a few questions in mind:

1. What information do I want from my audience?
2. Why do I want this data?
3. How will I use it once I have it?
4. When is it appropriate to ask for certain permissions?

The reality is that these registration forms are a huge obstacle for visitors to your site. A whole 82% of U.K. consumers admit to leaving or avoiding a site all together when faced with all of those required fields. And of those that do oblige, 78% admit to giving false or incomplete data.

So, what is the answer? How can organisations grow their consumer or member base and still capture the profile data from new users that facilitate improved personalization efforts online?

Janrain commissioned third party research with U.K. consumers to inquire on these very topics. We wanted to understand their perceptions of the online registration experience, and their preferred alternatives. Watch the video-on-demand below or download the research report to discover how to improve your online conversion rates.

Most publishers and media organizations are facing these challenges head on and exploring new ways to engage with their audience and nurture those relationships online in ways that were prohibited just a few years earlier.

The National Post in Canada is a great example of a publisher growing their business as a result of leveraging new technology. Owned by Postmedia Network, the largest media publisher in Canada with 14 newspaper publications and over 50 destination websites, they came to Janrain to help increase readership and to engage with their online audience.

Inviting Readers To Join The Community

Across their sites, Postmedia encourages readers to interact with their content by making the first step incredibly easy: login using an existing social or email identity from Facebook, Google, Twitter, or other provider. They know that visitors to their site don’t want to create an account where they have to remember the user name and password; they want to quickly sign in and take their desired actions of commenting, sharing, etc.

Postmedia knows that social login is five times faster than traditional account setup, and that people want choice in providers: not just Facebook. Across Janrain media customer sites, site visitors choose their Facebook identity to log in with 43% of the time, and others like Yahoo! and Google around 19% of the time each.

Once a reader is logged into one of their properties, Postmedia has eliminated the need for them to login again, or create an additional account as they visit other web properties in their ecosystem by deploying single sign on.

One of the benefits of logging into the site upon arrival is that a reader can comment on articles, and then share this content to their social networks. Many of our customers benefit from social referrals at 13+ return visits to the shared content each time a reader sends a link to their friends.

Put Out The Welcome Mat

Each time a community member returns to a Postmedia site, they are welcomed back by name and encouraged to sign in using the social identity they previously used. In our own research conducted by third party, Blue Research, 55% of people indicate that they’re more likely to return to a site that recognizes them, proving that putting out a personalized welcome mat adds value to the user experience.

Profile Management Made Easy

When a reader registers with a social identity, their information including first and last name, email address and preferred username are immediately brought over from their social profile. One of the important benefits of social login is that it expedites the registration process by pre-populating the data fields you want complete, so that people can quickly confirm the data with one click and get back to reading the content.

In order to create a sense of community on their sites, Postmedia encourages their audience to complete profile pages which can be private or public, as selected by the reader. The individual profile pages allow the reader to link their multiple social network identities to a single account on the site, and supplement their profile with any additional information they want to share with others.

Connecting social identities to their profile also helps keep Postmedia’s database fresh and current. Readers can click a single button on their profile page and automatically refresh their site profile with updated data from their social network. The data we keep in our social network profiles tend to be the most accurate reflection of our personal information, even more so than what we provide when setting up a new account, so collecting this continually updated information is key to database marketing efforts.

The Rewards

With content being produced at rates never before seen in the history of the written word, and technology innovating at lightening speed how we consume content, media organizations must continue to look for new ways to stand out, connect with an audience and grow their base. Those that leverage new technology to build and strengthen reader relationship, while making it easy for people to view and share good content, will lead their industry and enjoy long-term loyalty from fans.