A short tale of a great sign-up experience with an app - Robinhood
Equity markets are not doing their best at the moment, so I wanted to try out an app that would let me place trades without charging brokerage. My husband recommended Robinhood as an app that he uses. On his recommendation I downloaded the app and had a pleasant signup experience which can be broken down into 4 themes/best practices -
1. Be easy on the eyes - Phone screens are bright, especially for early morning eyes and that's exactly when most traders check the stock prices. Apps that use bright colors and stark contrasts can be appalling for when you are adjusting to light after spending 8 hours in the dark. Robinhood uses color themes and contrasts that are easy on the eyes and therefore I will use it as my go to resource for checking stock prices, first thing in the morning.
2. Address the concerns upfront - As an investment app without an affiliation with an established financial institution, consumers may be wary of providing sensitive information like SSN, bank details and the high value currency of marketing - the email address. Robinhood does a great job of putting those fears to rest by providing a short blurb at each step explaining why they are asking for those details (like government regulations) and what they will do and not do (very important!) with that information.
3. Set expectations - Indefinitely long wait time to complete a task is a turnoff and most people abandon a website and process within an app if it takes too long. Robinhood sets expectations by letting the users know, how long a process can take. For example, specifying wait time for adding funds based on the bank they are connecting to (BoFA can take up to 60 seconds). 60 seconds is better than waiting indefinitely, right?
4. One thing at a time - There are multiple steps to sign up with a broker and if you want to upsell and cross sell the users, educate them and drive the right behaviors at this stage, you will unintentionally spook them into deleting the app!! Patience. Wait for the onboarding phase. In Robinhood, each sign-up step is represented by 1 screen just that has 1 simple call to action along with the associated blurb (see point 2) and nothing else. Keeping it simple and real.
As a delight, at the end of the sign-up process, I also got to scratch a virtual card to uncover my mystery stock that I got for signing up as a referral. Again, nothing big but it added a fun element to the whole process and I am already looking forward to using the app to have a great user experience through out my entire life cycle as a consumer.