Ask HN: Users who register but never use your web app | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Users who register but never use your web app

10 pointsmatt110 comments

I've been analyzing the activity of users who sign up for my web app, Preceden, a tool for making timelines, and I'm not sure what to make of the folks who register but then show absolutely no activity after that.

For my app, about 25% of the people who register never add an event to their timeline. While I might be able to improve this with some A/B testing, my feeling is that these folks are not the type who will ever be very engaged in the app regardless of the changes I make.

For context, according to a report by RJMetrics, 40% of Twitter users never send a single tweet [1].

What type of people make up this 25% and how hard should I go after them?

[1] http://themetricsystem.rjmetrics.com/2010/01/26/new-data-on-twitters-users-and-engagement/

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I've found misinterpretation and usability to be the most common causes. Eg. the capabilities are not clearly mentioned and so users sign up and see what can be done with it. And then decided that its not worth it. Or users sign up and the interface is not intuitive enough to guide them through the steps of what they need to do. Simplifying things helps a lot in these cases.

For Tarsnap, I see:

* 9.6% of account-creations (submit valid form to /register.cgi) do not result in accounts being created.

* 28.5% of people who create accounts (including confirmation) don't deposit any money.

* 7.5% of people who deposit money into their accounts haven't actually used Tarsnap yet.

Most of the confirmation failures are from overcounting registrations -- e.g., someone forgets their password before they get the confirmation email, so they re-register with a new password.

Anecdotally, it seems that most of the never-add-money people fall into the "interested but not enough to pay money" category -- i.e., they're just poking around, and they'll keep poking around until they have to pay, but they were never likely to pay for backups.

The pay-but-never-use group is the one which bothers me the most, but the issue here is generally one of procrastination -- they know they need backups, and they're willing to pay to have backups, but they just haven't gotten around to setting it up yet. That said, I've noticed accounts like this suddenly come to life months later, so I think there's hope that most of these will eventually have some usage.

Do you have the emails of the users? Why not just ask them directly? Sure only a small percent will respond, but it might be able to give you some direct insight into why people aren't using it more rather than you trying to guess.

A lot of people just sign up for things poke around and leave. 25% doesn't sound like anything to be worried about.

Great idea -- I do have their email addresses and I can email them. I was worried it would be creepy "Why didn't you use my web app?" but it could be valuable if tactfully worded: "What did you think of the service? Any recommendations?"

Also, why doesn't 25% sound like something to be worried about? It seems like a lot to me.

If you don't want to be creepy you could also word the email as a more generic request for feedback like "if you don't use the app why not, if you do what do you like about it" to make it seem less like you are tracking them although I'm not sure how that would affect the response rate. I think if people know they are being asked their opinion for a reason rather than a blanket request for feedback they will be more likely to respond.

As for the 25% I don't really have anything to base that off of, it was just my impression based on how I use sites (I'm one of those that signed up for twitter and never tweeted). If I hear of a site that sounds interesting, but I have no use for their service, I still might create a login and check it out just to take a look.

Decide if you want to contact them "personally" or as a group. The following is a rough draft of what I might right of I wanted to contact them "personally"

"Hi, While doing some analytics I noticed that you registered but never used our product. In order to improve PRODUCT, I was hoping you could answer a few questions so we can make sure that what we offer is as closely matched to what people are looking for as possible. <questions>"

It's all in the way you phrase it...

It's most likely a set of users who expected something and did not have a good first user experience with your product. Maybe their expectation wasn't matched, they were confused, or they were just browsing. But that's all conjecture, you need to find out from those 25%. Only they can explain their behavior.

Learning about your customers should be top priority. I would definitely follow up with those 25% via a very friendly email, as mentioned in previous comments. Don't be surprised or upset if very few of those 25% reply to your email (would you - for a service you abandoned?). Good luck learning!

I would look at what happens when a user signs up. Do you send them a nice e-mail that says "Thanks for signing up, give it a try!" and encourages them to try? Or is it just a 'Thanks for signing up, click here to confirm your account."

This makes a big difference.

I've noticed that one of the competitors to our startup sends an e-mail 1 week after the user registered saying "Hey, have you tried it yet?!" etc.

It sounds like you're requiring users to sign up too early. Why not try to figure out what information they can only get by signing up and giving that to them up front? It doesn't add to your numbers, but it may lighten your memory load.

If you don't already, how about switching users into a wizard-like mode immediately after signing up?

Basically say something like "Let's help you add your first event," and give them short, simple steps.

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