I have recently signed up with this wonderful social media website Sphinn.com which aggregates news and articles on search engine marketing and social media landscape. The site has got excellent content and an active community.
However, while signing up, I got confused (for a while though) on the signup page.
The point of confusion is the disabled "Create user" button at the bottom.
The concept is that the user need to verify the availability of username (compulsory) and validity of email before the "Create user" buttom becomes active. The problem with this approach is that:
- By doing this, the webmaster has put the onus of verifying the username and validity of email on the user and is stopping him from moving ahead in the signup process.
- Above all, it is not in line with the general user experience in most signup forms, thereby resulting in a learning curve for its users.
- People may not like to learn a "new way of doing thing" for something as simple and one-time activity as signup with a service.
The user initiated verification can be an additional benefit and can be provided as a feature to improve user experience, but not at the cost of disabling the "Create user" button and verifying it at the site of form submission.
It seems sphinn.com is based on a popular script called pligg.com. If the signup form comes from that popular open-source social media script, this usability flaw needs to be fixed in more than one website 🙂
Abhishek