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Activation emails

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Activation emails

#41

Post by antirez »

Every day we loose something like 30% of users just because of activation emails. We can't change this since we have a partnership that it is currently forcing us to take the verification email but I'll not include any kind of a priori verification email in my next applications.

A decent way to handle the problem is to add the field in the profile and tell the user to fill the field in order to get notifications and to recover the password. It may be a good idea to display a warning in the profile if there is no verified email address for the account. The best way to make sure the users will actually enter their email addresses is to do something very useful with notifications and/or reports.

Re: Activation emails

#42

Post by brlewis »

jasonlbaptiste wrote: post #12

Integrate clickpass :-)

Did that. Not all their email addresses are verified. At some point they'll have a secure way of passing on the information that a certain address is verified, but for now I have to verify them myself before sending other mail.

Re: Activation emails

#44

Post by mixmax »

huhtenberg wrote: post #40
mixmax wrote: post #3

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…

An ability of directly communicating with your users has a very positive effect on a valuation of the company. One thing is when you have N million User IDs, and another - N millions emails. Also if you are running a service with termed licensing, an email communication is how you drive the license renewal process. This sort of communication does not qualify as spam, because it is more of a service reminder rather th…

I see your point, and of course you are right that it drives your valuation upwards if you can engage in a genuine conversation with your customers.

I was referring more to the sign-up stage though, where you tend to lose a lot of potential customers with obligatory confirmation e-mails.

But if you can get the conversation going after the critical sign-up step, you should by all means do so.

Re: Activation emails

#45

Post by eibrahim »

I say don't use them at all. If your users are giving you fake emails then they don't really care too much about your service and are just testing it out, so why not let them test and play around and minimize resistance, maybe they will like it and end up adding a real email address or even subscribing.

Re: Activation emails

#46

Post by swombat »

Perry wrote: post #4

In my opinion the more hurdles you present the more users you drive away. There are legitimate reasons for introducing hurdles like requiring registration, requiring activation e-mails, etc. Ask yourself whether the benefits of activating outweigh the potential downsides. If you're requiring activation e-mails to prevent bots from signing up, how significant of an impact will those bots have on other users? On a foru…

Agreed. There are a number of cases where a valid, authenticated email is a requirement to use the system (for instance, when other users will be using that email to find and link to you). In those cases, an activation email is unavoidable.

Daniel

Re: Activation emails

#47

Post by piers »

I really like the idea of the soft activation, but for this site a working email address is pretty important (I think at the moment - of course that might change).

I also like the suggestion of the "you're not registered - here's the form with bits already filled in" style login.

Thanks for all the suggestions, and keep 'em coming!

Re: Activation emails

#48

Post by xirium »

Ativation emails are an outdated idea. It only takes one service to freely give away email addresses to make an activation email quite moot. The theory is that a genuine user can confirm sign-up using an out-of-band channel. So, if you want an account on a website then you confirm this action via an email. Some web based email systems get you to confirm via SMS. However, there's two problems with this practice. Web surfer != email user. Secondly, the out-of-band channel is open to abuse. For example, email or SMS details being sold to spammers.

A better approach is assume abuse and counter it with transparent levels of trust. This forum is close to ideal. Some counter that the existance of accounts themselves invites a futile game of whack-a-mole with people abusing trust. Others argue that it is a concise method to undo damage.

Regardless, you should allow users to do as much as possible without creating an account or giving an email address. If you don't then someone else will.

Re: Activation emails

#49

Post by webframp »

I think the point of the A List Apart article was to get your visitors involved before requiring a full sign up. Show them your app is actual valuable and useful to them before you require any commitment on their part. Once they're engaged a small sign-up form or an activation email is no longer a hassle.

Re: Activation emails

#50

Post by khangtoh »

We stopped using activation email since the beginning. For simplebucket we took a different approach. By directing the site's usage strongly tied to a user's valid email address, we don't have to have activation email.

To upload their photos and later to admin those photos, our users have to go to this "secret url" that they will receive when they first upload their photos.

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