With the opportunity for a new customer registration activation campaign on the cards, we assessed the current customer sign-up experience and found it serviceable, but lacking in a number of ways including:
- It provided a somewhat uninspiring experience
- Several usability flaws added unnecessary challenges to the process
- The flow wasn't flexible enough to support additional functionality or content if required in future initiatives
Armed with challenges to solve and best practice research I proceeded to design with a goal in mind:
HMW provide a more inspiring and flexible sign-up experience without negatively impacting usability.
After a round of divergent ideation I had a range of concepts for different registration flows and patterns. Because these tasks are so critical (and potentially blocking) to the app experience I decided to leave nothing to chance and developed three functional prototypes for usability testing.
With functional prototypes and clear task-based usability testing, I was able to leverage unmoderated testing to validate and compare my concepts with 30+ customers recruited via Askable in just 2 days.
To achieve this I leveraged Lookback and Axure prototypes. Axure allowed me to build prototypes with dynamic flows and live form elements complete with validation. It also allowed me to provide task and feedback prompts to ensure research participants stayed on track and we didn't miss out on any qualitative feedback.
Selected findings
These are just some of the findings that informed design iteration.
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Testing showed a strong participant preference for concepts that broke the registration process into smaller more digestible chunks. This was especially obvious when compared to the benchmark original experience which had all forms on a single page
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Customers appreciated a more friendly, personable approach to UX copy.
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Concepts which attempted to reduce steps by showing the log in form or a smart email field designed to path users to either log in OR register were shown to be more prone to error or confusion
We addressed the final finding without negatively impacting existing customers by providing explicit choice via buttons for fresh app installs and bringing the log in form to the forefront for existing installs.
Shortly after the release of the new log in and registration experience, something happened that proved the value of our design approach:
The team responsible for business customer engagement reached out to see if we could identify business customers on sign up.
Our new registration flow which leveraged multiple steps and progressive disclosure meant we could very easily include a checkbox prompt and add a new screen specifically for business customers. This dedicated screen meant we could also capture rich details such as business type and ABN to further support business engagement activities.
