While building a website you either have, or will, face the point where you have to design the acquisition funnel. Your web app is ready for prime time, you’ve poured everything into the development of your idea and you are convinced that you’ve created something valuable that your target market will love once they finally get their hands on it. In essence, this thing will promote itself.

That may sound naive, but many many web entrepreneurs expect this kind of success. There are many great startups out there, and yet many sit undiscovered and unloved because they have failed to communicate their value - they have a poor acquisition funnel.

How To Test Your Acquisition Funnel

I am currently testing my funnel in my own startup. The core product is complete, and works well. Before I begin to aggressively promote my app, I’ve started creating small, closed acquisition tests - and unfortunately the first few tests have been a huge disapointment. At first I was shocked, and couldn’t overcome my own developer’s hubris. My app kicks ass, I use it every day - how could people not see how valuable it is? My design is very simple and uncluttered, and I’ve created a demo video to show people how to use it, so why aren’t people completing my registration form?

I started out by drawing more attention to my registration button. I have an online marketing background, so I’m very familiar with tweaking my call-to-actions for the past 5+ years. I created a large, attractive “click here” style registration button and tried again with another sample of traffic. The results were ok, I did see about a 10% increase in registrations, but once these users registered, they still did not make full use of the service. In fact, many registered and never set up the service - they left and never returned. It was very frustrating.

At that point, it became obvious that I was approaching the problem in the wrong way. Optimizing conversions is no longer as simple as tweaking the visibility of my call-to-action. I started to analyze what data I had from my traffic tests, and found that my visitors were actually interacting with a free version of my web app that I’d made available through the homepage, but not with my registration form. I increased my tracking and found that my visitors did seem to enjoy using the free tool (even returning to use it later), and likely didn’t see the reason to fully register. I now have some information I can use to help solve my problem.

A Possible Solution: Gradual Engagement

I know my customers like to use the free version of my product, so I started to think of a way to combine the feature they are already using with the registration process so that after using the free tool, my customer only had to enter their contact information to complete their account setup. It was great timing to come across an article by superstar interface designer Luke Wroblewski, Principal Designer for Yahoo. Entitled “Sign Up Forms Must Die”, the excerpt from Luke’s forthcoming book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks discusses what Luke calls Gradual Engagement, or the process of only users for registration information as it is necessary, rather than forcing them to hand over their information up front.

Luke starts with an example of Jumpcut.com, which allows you to edit a movie in your browser, and only asks you for sign-up information once your movie has been created and you wish to distribute the result. He continues to profile Geni.com, which asks you for your email address, and then creates a username and password for you while you immediately begin the process of creating your family tree. Luke describes:

Once again through the process of gradual engagement, you learned what a web service does, and you did it without an explicit registration form requiring you to fork over a lot of information.

This is exactly what I was looking for, and I have now begun to redesign my acquisition funnel based on gradual engagement. While my visitors use my web app to make simple queries, I have begun to save their information so that once their action is complete, I can present them with the opportunity to activate a fully configured account simply by creating a username and password. The idea is that by this point, the customer has experienced the value of the tool and is now ready to create a full account to take advantage of all of the features of my web app.

Remember, This Is Gradual Engagement, Not Rapid Engagement!

One last point I’d like to make is that the process must be clear to the customer, especially once I am ready to create an account for them. I remember visiting a website in the past which tried their own form of gradual engagement, and appeared to log me into a fully functional account without ever asking me to create a username and password. I was very confused as to whether I had registered and how they were able to create an account for me, and ended up accidentally leaving before I had a chance to complete the setup, and lost my data.

Done correctly, gradual engagement accomplishes two goals for you - your customer learns how to use your product while they create their account. At then end, they have already become an active customer.

For more articles by Luke Wroblewski, check out his website.