Q&A: Why Aren’t More People Signing Up for Our App?
This is the first in a series of articles I’ll be sharing about common questions we receive from CEOs and CTOs in highly regulated industries and beyond. While every brand and platform has nuances, there are some common throughlines. As always, your mileage may vary, and if you want detailed analysis for your unique situation, that’s what we do. Drop us a line.
Why aren’t more people signing up for my app/software?
You’ve put in the hard work and launched something new–a mobile app, a web SaaS product, or maybe a portal for your customers to log in. You had reason to believe this would succeed. You spoke to people in your target audience who all smiled and said it was a good idea. They may have even requested it. And now you’ve invested significant time and capital only to get a lukewarm response. It feels like you’ve spent all day getting dressed, spritzed, and coiffed for the prom, and now your date is late and you’re fidgeting in a pair of uncomfortable shoes, wondering if you’re about to be stood up.
The answer usually isn’t that your product is bad, but that the signup process is leaking users at predictable points.
There are some common reasons your prom date (aka audience) might be slow or reluctant, so let’s break it down. We think of a signup (1) as a single action, but in reality, there are several actions, all of which have to come together to yield a new user. A breakdown at any step means a lost signup.
Is there a leak in your signup process?
One of the most obvious sources of trouble in the signup process is failing to anticipate that people don’t complete all of the steps in a single session. The metrics vary with the industry and specific context (B2B SaaS product? Mobile app? Free? Paid?), but you’re looking at anywhere from 4%–30% conversion in a single session. That means, at best, two-thirds of those who start won’t complete. Some of those people (around a third) can be wooed back with further messaging.
But does your flow allow for that?
Let’s look at a common situation: I see a delicious-looking ad on Instagram and decide to sign up for an online course that promises to teach me to make sushi like a pro at home. Armed with an array of overpriced specialty ingredients, I’m ready to get my nigiri on. I start to sign up, getting as far as entering my email, but my dogs decide they need to go out RIGHT NOW. I put down my phone to let them out, only to have them bark furiously at some existential threat like a person walking on the public trail behind our house. By the time I get them back inside, my session has timed out and I’m annoyed, so I decide to save it for another day.
The next day, I’m hungry again and see another ad for the same class, so I decide to finish signing up. I click and it starts me into a new signup, only to tell me I can’t use my email because it’s already been taken. Cue rage and vows to never click on this stupid company’s stupid ads again (2).
This is solvable simply by giving users a way to recover a partial signup. The patterns for that vary, but providing that safety net—along with some targeted messaging for abandoned signups—can increase results by 20–35%.
Think of it as giving your “prom date” a cell phone to call in case of issues. Prioritizing the backup plan helps your signup flow succeed.
Do you have enough of the right kind of messaging?
I alluded to it above, but in addition to process issues, many brands underestimate how much messaging is required to get their audience to take a Big Action such as downloading an app or signing up for a new account. The average American adult downloads about one app per month and sees 4,000–6,000 marketing messages per day. While not all of those messages are pushing an app signup, it gives us some sense of the ratio of incoming messaging to actions taken. It is, in a word, high.
A Big Action means we’re asking the user to disrupt their flow. Clicking a Like button in an app someone is already using is a small action. Downloading an app and getting through that first login (Will I have to create an account? Will it be a pain? Will they ask me 17 questions about my preferences?)—that’s a Big Action.
Users have apprehensions about Big Actions. They require time and energy. To overcome user apprehension, you need a few elements:
Reassurance that it won’t take too long or be too onerous. This can be verbal (“Sign up in 3 clicks”), visual (a stepper or progress bar that shows a manageable number of steps), or social (quotes from users who say it was easy)—along with clarity about whether a credit card is required.
A clear hook. In most situations, people sign up to obtain a specific benefit they want right at that moment. They may appreciate all the other features and benefits you offer, but the carrot that gets them to take action is the promise of that one thing. It may not be the most enticing feature to you, but it’s important to your potential user in that moment. In an insurance app, it might be downloading the ID card. Figure out what this hook is (there may be more than one) and build specific messaging around it.
Repetition. Because your hook is specific, it’s only interesting at the moment the person needs that particular carrot. If I don’t need my ID card today, I’m not motivated. But the moment I do need my ID card, it’s unstoppable. The key for the brand is to continue repeating the message (ideally only to users who haven’t signed up) so that when the need and the carrot overlap (for example, the moment they need their ID card), the platform is top of mind.
Combining those elements helps give your “prom date” the confidence to show up and meet your platform.
Can you protect against cliffs?
Many signup processes have a cliff. This is the point in the process where you ask the user for a more significant commitment and see a corresponding drop-off. You can think of it as trying to ask your prom date to go steady or be exclusive or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
Common cliffs include the payment screen, choosing a plan, or providing detailed demographic or preference information beyond the normal name and email address. When someone drops off the cliff, what they’re telling you is that, in that moment, your platform asked them to give too much compared to what they were getting.
To solve this, examine your cliff: does it need to be there? There are two ways to remove it:
Remove the cliff permanently. Maybe you don’t need to collect the cliff-inducing information at signup. Perhaps someone on your marketing team became overzealous about data gathering for another initiative. Your signup flow is not the place to put a lengthy survey. We’ve helped clients in situations where various departments had added requirements over the years, and they had never been re-examined. Even slimming down a few unnecessary fields can make a difference. Users have a keen sense of smell regarding brands asking for data they don’t truly need and are quick to punish perpetrators by abandoning signup flows.
Delay the cliff until they’re more invested. In some cases, removal isn’t possible but delaying it is. At what point do you really need that information? Can you get a basic login created first and ask for more information later? The reason this works goes back to the adage we identified earlier: a cliff means your platform asked users to give too much compared to what they were getting at that moment. If you can’t change what you’re asking for, change the moment at which you ask it so that what you’re offering is more enticing. For example, does a user really need to fill out a complete profile just to get on the platform and poke around? Or can you save that for the first time they’re going to interact with others? This can have a dramatic impact on signup conversion rate—we’ve seen double conversions.
The most common example of delaying the cliff is a free trial. The credit card payment is the cliff, so the brand decides to delay that until the user has more experience with the platform and therefore the “give” and the “get” are more balanced. The nuance here is whether the card is required to sign up. Not asking for the card at all in the first signup creates more initial signups and generally better net numbers, but be prepared for a 50% cliff when the free trial period is over and you ask for the card. This is also not an appropriate choice for some platforms where the company would be giving up too much value even by allowing a one-time free login. In those cases, free trials aren’t viable and you should not offer them.
However, there’s another option I alluded to earlier: can you give the user a feel for the platform without requiring a full signup, while still protecting any secret sauce you wouldn’t want to give away to the world? For example, years ago we designed and built a platform called HomeDitty, which matches musicians and hosts to crowdfund a house concert. A critical concern of the user when signing up is whether they’ll find musicians to match their taste, or hosts in the area of their tour, depending on whether they’re a host or a musician. We created a feature where the user could view anonymized profile information without completing a full signup so they could assure themselves that there were enough options that met their needs. Since it was anonymized (no band or host names or contact info), the data was protected, and web scrapers, competitors, and tire-kickers couldn’t harvest it.
Regardless of the method, finding a way to skirt the cliff can pay major dividends for your signup success – and your prom success.
Have you optimized for your form factor(s)?
I see brands get this wrong all the time. Think about your app or software. Is it something people will use primarily on mobile, desktop, or both?
If you need someone to take an action on a mobile device, the entire flow needs to be optimized for mobile. A prime example of a mistake here is a signup flow that uses Instagram ads (primarily app-based) and then leads to a flow that doesn’t offer mobile wallet pay. Or it might be software intended primarily for desktop use, yet running mobile ads that lead to a less-than-impressive experience in the signup flow. This creates big red flags for users.
If it makes more sense for your audience to sign up on a desktop device, optimize for desktop—understanding that it’s hard to keep mobile users out entirely, so you probably still need to provide a quality experience or some detailed messaging around why it’s desktop-only. Again, think about every step. Mobile wallets aren’t as useful on desktop (some users may be signed in that way, but a large proportion aren’t). Do you have other options to make payment easy, such as PayPal?
Just like you don’t want to arrive at prom and find that the concession stand requires cash and you only have debit cards, don’t make your users fumble for the right method of payment in a critical moment.
Don’t get stood up for the prom
Getting signups right is just the first step in building long-term adoption and loyalty. Every decision you make in the signup flow communicates something about your brand—whether you’re trustworthy, thoughtful, and user-focused. Think of it as laying the foundation for every future interaction. Start strong, and you’ll see the impact not just in conversion rates but in retention and advocacy down the line. Get the flow right, and you won’t just have a prom date — you’ll be on your way to a partner who sticks around long after the dance.
Notes
From here onwards in the article, I’m going to say ‘app signup’ to avoid having to repeat a lengthy description–in this I include mobile app downloads, web app signups, etc. We’ll get into nuances involving paid and free, trials, etc. later in the article.
Yes, as a tech person I know I could get around this by doing a password reset or contacting customer service. But that’s irritating and not something many users would be willing to do.