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Does asking for "Bank Country" and "Processing Currency" scare people off?

My team has run into a dilemma.

We've improved how many people signup (submit first name, last name, email, and password) for Cheddar, our billing API, but at the next step, I notice about 1/3 of users drop off.

Here's a screenshot of the onboarding page where users fall off.

@armen provided some amazing feedback about the iPhone screenshot potentially being the problem (we need to update it to a new iPhone), and I'm working on changing that now. However, I'm wondering if need to make some other change.

Does asking people for their bank country and processing currency "scare" people into thinking they'll have to pay for a service sooner rather than later?

We've seen our conversions jump by emphasizing that you don't have to pay for our billing platform until you want to start charging your customers, but I'm wondering if the bank country and processing currency questions make people think the opposite.

Am I missing something? Is there something else in our copy that you think would deter someone from continuing the onboarding process?

Wes

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    Hey Wes, thanks for tagging me! The huge drop off on desktob compared to tablet and mobile is shocking. In my mind (and experience) I'd expect the opposite with "looky-loos" cruising on their phones and people with purchase intent being on desktop.

    How different does the layout look on mobile vs. desktop?

    For the bank country, you could get one of your front end devs to sniff out the IP address and prepopulate the country field. One less thing to fill out.

    Better yet even something like "It looks like you're in <country>, is your bank in <country> too?" then a y/n. The negative having an attractive dropdown to correct.

    I'm glad to hear that your conversions jumped when letting customers know that they don't pay you until you get paid yourself!

    Could you avoid asking these banking questions until they've had a sale? And just keep whatever funds in ESCROW? Might be opening a can of worms by doing that, probably a question for your legal team.

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      The drop-offs were on mobile, not desktop. Sorry if that wording was confusing! So your expectations about the looky-loos are accurate--people on their phones seem to just browse and not continue the process.

      For the bank country, you could get one of your front end devs to sniff out the IP address and prepopulate the country field. One less thing to fill out.

      Better yet even something like "It looks like you're in <country>, is your bank in <country> too?" then a y/n. The negative having an attractive dropdown to correct.

      A lot of great suggestions here to make the process more seamless. Thank you!

      Could you avoid asking these banking questions until they've had a sale? And just keep whatever funds in ESCROW? Might be opening a can of worms by doing that, probably a question for your legal team.

      I like the creativeness of that idea. However, payment processors, merchant accounts, and the complexities/legality of trying to do something like this where you act as an escrow ourself would probably be a nightmare with current payment standards. 😬

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    At the risk of suggesting something you may have thought of... did you try moving those questions to the next page, see if the drop off moves with them?

    Do they have to commit at that point? They might not have decided in what currency they want to bill yet, or might want to bill in multiple currencies...

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      Oh hey, Graham!

      At the risk of suggesting something you may have thought of... did you try moving those questions to the next page, see if the drop off moves with them?

      That's ideally what I want to do, but wanted to post on IH first to get feedback before burdening our two developers. We've been working on some big updates recently and I've been trying not to interrupt unless I absolutely have to.

      Do they have to commit at that point? They might not have decided in what currency they want to bill yet, or might want to bill in multiple currencies...

      They don't have to commit at that point and we can bill in multiple currencies at the same time. Maybe the easiest solution is just adding some copy to that page explaining that and seeing what happens, and later, moving the questions completely.

      Thanks!

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        We really must stop meeting like this.

        Maybe you can just axe those questions during sign up, but appreciate that later code might expect those values to be there. Might be a simpler change, though. I think in general, the more questions you ask during sign up, the more drop-outs you get.

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          We really must stop meeting like this.

          😄

          I think in general, the more questions you ask during sign up, the more drop-outs you get.

          Definitely.

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    This comment was deleted 8 years ago

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      Thanks for the questions, Ace. It took me a little bit of time to dig in via Google Analytics, but I should have most of the answers.

      Country and device of dropoffs

      Drop-offs: 82% desktop, 16% mobile, 2% tablet.

      If I compare that to non-drop-offs, the mobile and tablet users go away. IE, It looks like this is proportionally a bigger problem on mobile, for sure.

      Where the dropoffs are coming from, search, email list, etc, etc?

      Compared to non-drop-offs, it's proportionally the same. I don't think this is a cause.

      What page they are on when they then register, ie home page or pricing page?

      Mostly the home page.

      If there is any lead scoring occurring to see if it is the low scorers whom are dropping off.

      We don't have any lead scoring right now.

      Bank country and processing country. The ask does appear to be too soon

      Yah, I think it's probably coming back to this. We put it there due to our relationship with our payment processor, and our team agrees that it's an unfortunate move. Answers to those questions slightly change how you flow through the rest of our onboarding process. Ex. If you select certain countries, you won't see some of our payment processors that don't support that country.

      Could be the two-step process

      Yea. We could risk decreasing conversions at the previous step by making it all one process to test.

      Could be tyre kickers who upon realising it is two steps can’t be bothered

      Always a possibility, definitely.

      What was the baseline benchmark when the first version of the registration process was rolled out, in terms of questions asked, number of processes?

      We actually used to have a longer onboarding process. First you would submit your name and email, and at the next stage create a password, etc. This part has remained the same for as long as we've had analytics.

      Even product and website could be too soon. They could be considered the foundational things a customer has to do, so I would look into having that as part of the contextual on-boarding on the platform itself.

      That's an interesting point. Maybe we start with the "tracked items" and pricing plan bits before asking them that information. Good idea.

      Thank you for all of this feedback and questions, @AceK. It's really pushed my thinking in a lot of ways for what the issue could be. I think overall, our onboarding needs to change. The process might not make complete sense, and we should experiment moving those questions back when our devs aren't as busy.

      Cheers!

      Wes

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        This comment was deleted 8 years ago

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          As for the on-boarding, what do the majority of users do when they first use the platform?

          After submitting the form on getcheddar.com/signup and create their first product (on the page we're talking about), they usually create a pricing plan, then select a payment processor to use, and then create an API login.

          Does that answer the question?

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            This comment was deleted 8 years ago

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              Thanks again for your help, Ace. We'll have to completely revamp our onboarding process sometime in the near future. I changed some copy until then.

              Now onto increasing traffic...

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                This comment was deleted 8 years ago