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I'm running a niche dating site and I'm working on improving our conversion rate, which is not bad (about 15%), but can always go better. Our registration consists of :

  1. user registration step 1 - user enters email and chooses password
  2. user validates email
  3. user fills in profile (2 pages of info)
  4. profile complete = a conversion

I'm losing quite a few people on step 3 (about 40% of people who complete step 2 don't go on to complete their profile).

I'd really like some ideas what I can do to : 1 - I have the email addresses of people who stopped at step 2. What can i do to entice them to come back and complete their profile ? I tried a competition (iPad competition, like everybody else :)) but that didn't work very well.

2 - What can I do to reduce the loss of people between steps 2 and 3.

I've attached images showing the pages of step 3

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3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

Three things that immediately spring to mind are:

  • You're asking for a lot of information. Do you really need all of that information to register? Can you gather it incrementally post-registration?

  • You're not giving any cues to the user how far along they are in the process.

  • Banner ads that take people away from your site are not something I'd be showing on a registration page...

My guess is that the first issue - the amount of information - is the biggest problem. But some A/B testing should let you know for sure.

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hi there, thanks for the feedback - I've actually cut back on the amount of registration info that was required before, the problem is if I really lower the barrier to entry, I attract all sorts of undesirables. I will try allowing people in and then letting them fill their profile data post-registration, and until they do they cannot contact other members, etc. I have been considering removing the banner ads on the reg pages, I think i will do that. – Sherif Buzz Oct 9 '10 at 13:37
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You have contradicting wishes, "I attract all sorts of undesirables" and "I want more people to fill my form and register". Just remove most of the questions and advertising on registration page. You can always ask more questions later. – Ross Oct 9 '10 at 18:45
Great point Ross, I know I can't have it both ways. – Sherif Buzz Oct 9 '10 at 22:20
up vote 1 down vote

I agree with Adrian that the amount of info looks daunting. Also that the banner ads draw the eye much more than the actual registration.

The other thing that occurs to me is that people may give up on the unstructured questions (Profile headline and About yourself). If they don't know what to write and are not highly motivated, they could opt out here.

You could try:

  • having hints or instructions to help people decide what to write
  • have a pull down menu of generic statements that people can use and modify if they like
  • have an example of an effective headline and description to give people some inspiration.
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Thanks Susan. I've actually removed the ads, and it has made a different of about 3% immediately in conversions. I'm a bit against the generic statements (other sites use them) because then you end up with a site full of more or less the same profile. Same with the examples, I tried that for a while, and about 50% of people just copy-pasted the example as their profile. Frustrating. Humans are annoying :) – Sherif Buzz Oct 11 '10 at 19:39
Wow! 3% - that's great. I can see your point about generic statements & examples. Could you test whether the unstructured questions are the problem by taking them off the rego page and asking people to fill them in once they have registered? (Maybe when they revisit the site) – Susan Jones Oct 12 '10 at 12:13
up vote 1 down vote

I wouldn't ask for a profile right away. If someone wants to fill the profile you can provide a link to do it, which I'm sure you do anyway. Since your profile is a lot of selects you can show one select per page as the person browses around. You can even start to ask that before the user enters an email address and registers.

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the ask for one every now and then is a great idea, negates the "uff yet another dating profile to fill in" feeling. I moved email adress first because that way I have something to contact people by and try to lure them back if they don't complete their profile... – Sherif Buzz Oct 11 '10 at 19:37

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