At Open Investment, I put a lot of effort into optimising the registration process. The questionnaire was overwhelmingly long for the user, so I revamped it and simplified the data entry process. To begin with, I arranged the fields for passport details in the same order as they appear in the passport, to make it easier and quicker for users to enter the required information. In an effort to make the form more compact, I reduced the length of some fields, having first checked the actual data lengths used by 350k users. To do this, I asked an analyst to create a histogram, and based on the data obtained, I determined the optimal field lengths.
Before
Take a look at the conversion rate for this stage of the registration process before I made any changes to the design. Only 1,546 out of 2,323 users managed to complete the questionnaire, which amounts to just 66.5%.
After
As well as optimising the forms, I resolved the data conflicts that had previously arisen due to the option to re-upload a passport photo at this stage (in my new workflow, everything relating to the passport was handled at the previous stage). I also removed the automatic data completion feature using State Services and made logging in via this service (explaining its benefits) the first step in the registration process – this also helped to avoid conflicts between recognised and manually entered data.
I put a lot of work into the copy to give even an inexperienced user a sense of confidence. This is evident in the replacement of phrases such as ‘risk profile’ with ‘additional information’. I even managed to reduce the number of questions in the risk profile and demonstrate the legality of this approach to the lawyers.
Following the redesign, 4,225 out of 5,090 completed the questionnaire, representing 83%. As a result, the conversion rate for this step increased by 24.7%. You can read about how I optimised the previous and subsequent steps in separate articles.
