This article is to discuss outstanding design principles to enhance the social networking site registration conversion rate by comparative analysis of the social web site home page .

In general, the user registration conversion process generally consists of the following components:

•     Attractive home page contents.

•     Simple and fast registration process.

•     The effectiveness of friends search and invite mechanisms.

•     User guide which attracts user attention .

This article will explore the first component : Attractive home page contents. We will take  following 5 social networking sites as example to analyze:

•     Social networking: Google +, Facebook,, LinkedIn

•     Blog: Tumblr

•     New media social networking sites: Twitter

Prior to this, let us think about what is the value of the home page content?

In my opinion the greatest value is to provide the reason for new users to join. Psychology and economic theory shows that human beings generally seek cost minimization and revenue maximization. To convince the new user registration, the site should be committed to improving the perceived value, while reducing the cost of users to join the investment. Specifically, what should we do?

Brand value statement with a brief service description

Brand Slogan is generally used to describe the site. Users can easily access information if you put keywords on the homepage and they can quickly understand the services provided by the brand..

For example: Google + page

Facebook page:

Design Guide:

•    Thinking about what is valuable to users. Not telling the user what can be done here, but guess why user should be here.

•    Using bold keywords, typesetting wrap or parallel structure, these all can make Slogan easier to be scanned and the information easier to be read.

•   Visually make the Register button  closer to the Slogan, this can make the user trigger follow-up events.

•    Using value-oriented guidelines instead of function-oriented guide lines, focuing on  user's goals.

•     Additional icons and information graphics can enhance the readability of the page

What else?

The brand statement is certainly friendly to users, but the actual registration is to allow users to fill out the form. At this point, the page does not require the existence of too many useless things. On registering, the focus is quickly filling out required fields and click submit button.

Latest Tumblr page gets rid of the Slogan which makes the task even more clear, intuitive, It seems the processing of registration is really simple thing, also it appeases the revolt of the user's anxiety and habitual.

Tumblr latest registration page:

Tumblr old registration page:

There are some other good design, for example, LinkedIn:

Twitter:

Summary:

Good home page design provides multi-level reasons for new users to join your site , it makes a preliminary contribution to enhance the site registration conversion rate. During the registration process, designers need to ensure that this process should be quick and easy, then users may tend to try more in-depth service even if they do not determine exactly what benefits they would get.

Reference : http://sd.csdn.net/a/20120416/2804612.html