Jeff Atwood has a great post on his blog called ‘Reducing User Friction’ in which he talks about counting the number of steps needed to accomplish a goal in your application. He also mentions Reddit about having one of the smoothest signup processes around. I completely agree. I remember the first time I tried to sign up there, I almost felt let down that I hadn’t been forced to jump through 17 hoops and check 4 boxes about being over 13 and promising not to sue if I got a hernia from web site overuse. OK, that’s not true – I was seriously blown away.

Simplifying our signup process is something we’re very focused on at Judy’s Book. We currently require an email activation link to be clicked before you can proceed and we’re looking to streamline this significantly. Reddit is a great example of what’s possible. If you know of any others, I’d love to hear about them.