Recently, I had the pleasure of going through the registration processes of 20 different eCommerce sites. The sites I chose are all well known with revenue in the millions of dollars so I expected them to have this minor part of the online shopping experience down to a science.  I assumed the majority (if not all) of the signups would be seamless as well as intuitive and that I would be looking at best practices instead of scratching my head over the mistakes.

I was dead wrong.  

Before we dive into avoiding the mistakes I found, let’s briefly discuss what’s so important about user registration. The biggest reason to get this step right is that it provides you with user information even if they don’t buy anything.