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Look at it from a business perspective: What do you gain from having an e-mail: - usually nothing, unless you send your users spam. What do you lose from having an e-mail: - around 10% of your potential customers. (the number probably varies wildly from site to site) - People who lose their password can't get into their account, unless they choose to provide an optional e-mail adress. To me that is a pretty clear cho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, for example uniquely identifying users.
You can do that with a username....
- validation (to a reasonable extent) that a user is who they say they are
- enhanced security for users
The whole war on sign up forms and the like is far overblown imo. If your users are going to have even a moderate level of ongoing interaction with your site (especially if your site has social aspects to it) it is necessary to include some form of identity verification.
I, for one, would think quite poorly of a company that allowed someone else to sign up for an account using my email address.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can do that with a username....
True however then users have to think followed by get frustrated dreaming up a name. They already know their email address. And unless they already signed up its probably not taken.
I think that the metrics support this view as well.
Two huge reasons that activation emails are worthwhile: - validation (to a reasonable extent) that a user is who they say they are - enhanced security for users The whole war on sign up forms and the like is far overblown imo. If your users are going to have even a moderate level of ongoing interaction with your site (especially if your site has social aspects to it) it is necessary to include some form of identity v…
Look at it from a business perspective: What do you gain from having an e-mail: - usually nothing, unless you send your users spam. What do you lose from having an e-mail: - around 10% of your potential customers. (the number probably varies wildly from site to site) - People who lose their password can't get into their account, unless they choose to provide an optional e-mail adress. To me that is a pretty clear cho…
All your users have it-- have you thought about when your users might like to be notified about new activity relating to them? (opt-in, of course)
Now, how you collect this email is also extremely important. The best way to collect emails is through double-opt-in. User first requests to receive messages from you (a checkmark during the signup is sufficient) and then they confirm the subscription when they receive the email. Why is this important? It prevents people from claiming that you're a spammer. If you follow this procedure and if you keep these records (i.e. dates, IPs etc), you can defend your email when you get spam complaints from other postmasters. It is CRITICAL that you followup on these spam reports since you can easily get blacklisted on all of the email services and your emails will never be delivered. If you use email list services (like Aweber etc),they require you use double opt-in and won't allow you to add an email without it. I like these various email contact services since they deliver emails to inboxes of pretty much all of the email service providers and they fight every spam report on your behalf.
So yeah, I understand the need to have an easy signup but you should also think ahead. My suggestion is to start with no double opt-in and add it later on as your site grows and you start receiving spam complaints.