Give Your Users a Puppy: Prioritize Delight to Maximize Your Conversion Rate

Many years ago, Toolbox No. 9 was renovating the UX/UI on a fundraising platform that was facing a common challenge: low signup rates. In a flash of inspiration, our lead UX designer made a suggestion that ended up changing how I think about user experience ever since.?

Instead of starting with the usual email and password registration forms, he recommended the platform begins by letting users customize the landing page’s colors and branding first—before we asked for anything personal.

We rolled it out, and the results were incredible. Signups nearly tripled.

The idea was simple: we gave users something delightful first. They got to play and see how their personalized fundraising page would look before being asked for a username and password. That small shift in the order of experience, prioritizing delight first, completely transformed engagement.

The "Keep the Puppy" Analogy

This approach reminds me of the "keep the puppy" principle. When you foster a puppy long enough, you’re unlikely to give it back. The same thing happens with users—if you get them engaged and emotionally invested in your platform early on, it becomes much harder for them to walk away. Just like falling in love with that puppy.

What is your puppy?

1. Identify the Most Delightful Part of Your Experience What’s the most engaging or rewarding part of your platform or experience? Sometimes it’s something as simple as a bit of personalization—like letting users choose a theme or seeing an interactive visualization of their data. Other times, it might be giving them a small gamified reward or an actionable insight in exchange for a tiny piece of data entry.
2. Move Delight to the Forefront Can you move that delightful moment earlier in the process, before asking for anything like a signup? It’s about creating a positive emotional reaction right away, so users feel a connection before they even start filling out forms or giving out their data.
3. If You Don’t Have Anything Delightful… If there’s no part of your platform that brings immediate joy or engagement, it might be time to hit the whiteboard. Consider this upfront engagement as an essential part of your product roadmap strategy. If you can’t delight a user within minutes of their experience with you, then you are missing opportunities to separate from your competitors and convert new customers. You could be wasting a considerable amount of time and money filling the top of your funnel, only to see viable customers bounce.

If you want users to stick around, give them something they can react to emotionally before you ask for anything. Delight first, commitment second—and who knows, they just might keep your puppy.