The Art of Registration Pages, Opt-In Practices, and Welcome Emails

Dave Walker pointed out a very interesting blog post called "Ecommerce Registration Usability Tips." The author(s) analyzed the registration procedure of eighty seven online retailers. One of my pet peeves is sites that don't allow you to use your email address as a user name--he found that only 13% do. Surprisingly, only 1% of the sites required Captcha completion--I thought that was very low. The post also analyzed how many pre-checked opt-in email: 57% did so. Finally, the post examined welcome emails--the ones that you get after you register. All three posts are very interesting reads for any company that requires registration. In case you missed them, here are my thoughts on the similar subject of fighting friction.