Designing for Sign ups - Guidelines and Copywriting tips

Here is a great slideshow prepared by Joshua Porter, Founder at Bokardo Design, for a talk given at Webstock, 2009, in Wellington, New Zealand. This is a great presentation, wish there was audio, but there are a lot of great screenshots, so you will probably want to go through them manually.

View more Microsoft Word documents from Joshua Porter.

Winning Sign up Copy Writing:

1st place:
Header: 30 day free trial on all accounts
Subheader: Sign up takes less than 60 seconds. Pick a plan to get started!

2nd place:
Header:30-day free tiral on all accounts
Subheader: Pay as you go, no long term commitments, no hidden fees. no surprises

3rd place:
Header:Start a highrise account today
Subheader: Pay as you go, no long term contracts. no hidden fees, no surprises

4th place:
Header:30 day free trial on all accounts
Subheader: "Surprisingly useful" "Exceeded our expectations," "Simply brilliant," "Beautiful & elegant"  - our customers



Summary:

Sign up is not about filling in forms. It's about motivation.

1. Practice Immediate Engagement
   Get people using your software (or service) as quickly as possible
   
   
2. Write to reduce commitment
   Copywriting is the easiest, fastest way to improve your sign-up process. Write copy that suggesting sign-up is a breezy thing, not a serious matter that's a life-long commitment.
   
   
3. Provide levels of description
   Describe the benefits and features in increasing depth. Different peple need different levels of description depending on how much motivation they already have. 
   
   
   
4. Leverage social influence
   Let the undecided people observe the action of current users. Use the influence of others to help convince people that this is right for them.

Comments

[LandingPage Designer]

Can anyone share their testing results on Sign up copy? I'm always curious to know.