Abstract
Introduction
Experiment
Results
Discussion
Conclusions

Acknowledgements
References
Appendices
Credits
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Logins & Passwords - What Users Want

Conclusions

Impact for practitioners

The most important aspect of this experiment for practitioners may be the subjective questionnaire. After all, the main goal for these companies is to get user registrations. It doesn't do them any good to spend millions of dollars on advertising to get a user to their site and then not get a registration. Error rates in logging in and slow registration times play a role only after a user has registered or has already begun the registration process. Thus, it is important to see what a user prefers and what a user wants and expects to see when they begin registering for a site.

Suggestions for future researchers

Future researchers should look into finding the optimal amount of information a user would be willing to enter into a form vs. the reward offered for filling out the form. As stated in the introduction, companies cannot afford to keep enticing users with special promotions in order to get the valuable registration information of the user. A study that could determine the optimal balance between the information requested and the immediate payoff could pay dividends for the requesting company.

The presentation of the information requested should also be tested. It would be interesting to see how many people are turned away from a long, single page form and how many are turned away from the multiple form approach. Would the users be more willing to signup with a multi-page form if they knew how many pages the form would be ahead of time? Or would letting the user know that there were three pages to fill out be a deterrent? We feel that a study of this would be very helpful for any registration-based web site out there.

Refine the theory or develop a new one

The collected data does not support the hypotheses. Although there were differences in the completion times that supported our theories, they were not statistically significant. As for the error rates, it would take a lot more testing to find results that accurately either supported or contradicted the hypothesis.

Department of Computer Science: Direct questions and comments to the student editorial team