Lazy Registration on the Web: Best Practices

Question

I first encountered the concept of lazy registration the Ajax Patterns site, where they define it as accumulating "bits of information about the user as they interact, with formal registration occurring later on." I'm looking at doing something similar for my website, but I'd like to know a little bit more about best practices before I start implementing it. My site is about web development, but general best practices are great too. How have you implemented lazy registration on your sites or projects? Where have you seen it in the wild? What do you like or dislike about it?

Answer 1

I say this not as a person who has designed such a site before, but as a person that might visit that site. :)

With that said, the thing that I would be the most concerned about is knowing what kind of information is being collected about me. And I think that there should be an option to opt out of collecting the information and instead entering it all during formal registration.

But other than that, if it makes registering for a website easier, I'd be all for it. I leave 9 out of 10 sites that require me to register to do stuff.

Answer 2

One way that I was thinking about implementing this is when users leave blog comments. A common Wordpress format is to allow site visitors to comment as long as they leave a name and an email address. If I followed a similar pattern and then after they submit their comment, ask them if they would also like to register by having username and password inputs right there, with their email pre-filled in the email address input. There would also be a message saying that if they choose not to register at that time, their email address won't be saved (other than in association with the blog comment). If you think of something to add to this, leave a comment.

Answer 3

Use OpenID.

I hate it when I have to enter the same data over and over again, and to think of new passwords because you (read: the website) likely store them as plaintext.

Oh, and please don't require me to give you a fake email.

Answer 4

Have a look at this vid, a very good overview of the lazy registration pattern: http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2009/03/16/signup-forms-must-die-heres-how-we-killed-ours/