views:

132

answers:

6

I wanted to open up the topic to discuss ways to encourage or incentivize users to fill in information in a user profile on a website, such as skills, location, organization, etc. More information in a user profile can give a website an improved capability for its users to search, network, and collaborate.

Without bugging users to fill in their profiles (ie - via annoying e-mail reminders), what other ways have you guys come up with to encourage user input?

+3  A: 

I find the Stack Overflow concept of badges or some other kind of reward hook very useful for this kind of thing. You could of course limit access to features also based on information in the profile.

plod
Learn from the recent trends in gaming (and SO) - add an achievement system, and let filling out the profile satisfy one of them.
Kache4
@plod - well the promise of a badge has certainly incentivised you to give us a detailed biography ;)
APC
swings and roundabouts APC had i not had a badge would I have even gone so far as I did.
plod
+1 for the answer, and plod. I watch that daily with my daughter :)
Tim Post
Thank you Tim, nice blog added to my feed reader :)
plod
+1  A: 

Make filling in this information a benefit for the users. For example, "if you fill in your location, we can filter search results based on that information."

It's all about making the user get perceived benefit from doing an action.

Matthew Jones
+1 from me, though your example would make me more reluctant to fill out location ;) I dislike spamming and that example would lead me to expect it.
ChrisF
A: 

Exposing the benefit, in some form of feedback is a really good way to go - show your users that they have gotten something out of it.

Trophies, or some sort of social effect ("45 users have filled in their profile, will you?") are good ideas.

Ink-Jet
Trophies will just end up with a lot of junk data, see this profile: http://stackoverflow.com/users/52443/welbog , who earned a badge for it. NB, I'm not criticizing his profile, in fact I think its really funny, I'm just pointing out that people can put anything in a textbox to earn a reward. The best approach is to make people want to put in data that the system can actually _use_, which means showing them how you intend to use it, field by field.
Tim Post
+1  A: 

Linking to a privacy policy that is devoid of legalese and doesn't cause the user to navigate away from the forms to fill out their profile usually helps. Additionally, marking any field that will be public with "Viewable to everyone" in addition to marking the rest with "Private" will also help. Whenever possible, make the private fields optional.

E.g for every field, let them expand a container that explains how the data in that field will be used, in plain language.

A quick search will turn up a ton of controversy surrounding Facebook, Google and more regarding privacy. Make sure the form adequately puts out fear fires.

Additionally, limit the number of questions, make sure the tab key works as expected, etc, etc.. but that's all general usability.

Tim Post
+2  A: 

I have noticed that a simple graphic image (showing percentage complete..some thing like a battery icon on the cell) next to the username ( to the user) with a hover text (your profile is x% complete - click here) works.

schar
I really like this idea. I know LinkedIn does this, but do you have any other examples?
mattdell
Multiple sources.For example. Stackoverflow.com has indicator(you have 91% acceptance rate) which encourages people to look at what that is and what are the gains of accepting an answer for their question.We all agree that most people are aware of the subtle things. Any thing forced onto them would be ignored for sure.Google support profile has an indicator(progress bar type) that shows how much is left to progress to level2. [edited to add this]
schar
http://i.imgur.com/DPvIb.gif : A screen shot of google help in case you don't know about it.
schar
A: 

Another option is to show the user a "percentage completed" bar of their profile (like LinkedIn does, called "Profile Completeness"). Many people will feel the need to get that bar up to 100%.

Substance G