Introduction

Fastly's sign up form is the first entry point for the product experience. I collaborated with the Lead Product Designer and Product Manager to create a frictionless sign up experience for mid-funnel prospects. The Web Engineering team and I were responsible for crafting the final experience and ensuring that it met project requirements.

We successfully delivered a more frictionless sign up by accomplishing the following:

1. We can provide reliable dynamic, real-time feedback for all form fields to prevent user error, especially for password creation.
2. The sign up looks visually consistent with the Website and Product Experience to provide a cohesive interface experience.

We weren't able to deliver and entirely frictionless sign up due to conflicting organization needs. Check out the full story below.

Envisioning a "frictionless" sign up form experience

I participated in an on-site brainstorming session and started asking questions like: "Is it fair for us to ask for a prospect’s job title, company, and phone number before they know what we are going to do with it?"

We strived to make a fair exchange between gathering a prospect’s information and offering a high-quality trial experience.

Phasing out priorities

We initially proposed various ways to gradually ask for their information as they experienced the product. However, we ended up needing to immediately prioritize securing a prospect’s information upfront in order to address Sales and Marketing needs. Ideas around minimizing the amount of form fields had to be tabled for a later phase.

We now had to focus on providing smooth, real-time feedback on all of our fields.

Customers desired proactive form field feedback

The main piece of feedback we heard from customers was that they found it painful to create a new, secure password because there was no real-time feedback before submitting the form.

Preventing user error with real-time feedback

Prospects are now able to see their real-time progress in creating a secure Fastly password.

Identifying job roles to help Sales and Marketing profile prospects

Prospects are also now able to self identify their job roles—helping Sales and Marketing get more granular data on their target audiences.

Flagging errors to increase form submission success

Error states were further refined to make it clear what prospects needed to correct.

Conversion rates have increased by 8%

For the first calendar year that this improved sign up experience was shipped, GA4 has recorded an 8% increase in conversion numbers.