Adding email verification was best decision
Hi all!
I've been working on my company for just about a year now, and recently added email verification. I went back and forth between avoiding friction on signup, and it was the single best decision.
We used to get tons of fake users who signed up and actually cost us money, but we significantly reduced it. As a result, we also have a clear sense of who our users are, which was something we struggled with.
I wanted to share, because I figured a lot of other hackers are considering how to reduce friction, but at the expense of your own servers or not having a long term relationship with signed up users.
Thanks for sharing, Lenny! This is interesting because yesterday I got a feedback email from a potential user that decided not to try the product just because it required a signup. This really made me consider removing the registration requirement in order to try the product.
In my case, a user doesn't represent a high cost, but I get your point about "knowing who your users are".
So, do you think that assuming no cost overhead, it would still be a good idea to ask for registration? Ie. did you ever measure how many of those users actually ended up converting?
It's worth asking if the person who said they wouldn't sign up would ever be a potential paying customer. My guess is that a user who is not willing to sign up is significantly less likely to ever consider purchasing.
If all you want is feedback, then it might be worth avoiding the friction, but if you want to supplement product holes with manual support, then you should try to force higher-touch interactions.
Well said, thank you again.
If you do want feedback/active input, I strongly suggest you signup for pioneer.app - if you aren't already. Its hands down the best community of active builders you can be part of.
Wow, pioneer looks like a fantastic resource, how come I had never heard of them? Anyways, I just signed up! (thanks!)
What are some of the costs you're incurring? We don't have email verification for our signup but do have some scripts that go over to remove stale users (didn't really finish the setup flow).
In our case, we process video for users. More importantly, the sales cycle for us involves being in communication with the buyer and their boss. If you want your user signups to represent something compounding, and not just transactional, then the valid email address is important.