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Comment by smugma | Hacker News Reader

I had three minutes, clicked tutorial and got a modal asking me to sign up.

Left the page.

We hear you and we do want to make it possible to try the tutorial without signing up for an account. We're working on making that possible shortly. I'll update here when that's possible

EDIT: this should work now. Just click the new button that says "Skip signup and let me try it out first"

I didn't even get three minutes; as soon as the page opened, I couldn't do anything without signing into Google or creating an account. Closed the tab.

Ugh fine I’ll take the bait. If you all don’t want to create an account, don’t expect to try anyone’s products! It doesn’t even make sense from a software perspective: A spreadsheet needs to belong to a user. You can’t edit a google doc or sheet without being logged in. Sure, they could create a sandbox demo of their product that works without an account, but that’s kind of an unreasonable feature expectation to thrust onto every website.

"Sign up to save" is a quite common pattern these days and what I would suggest they are doing here as well.

Jupyter online test page, no login: https://jupyter.org/try-jupyter/retro/notebooks/?path=notebo...

Online python REPL, no login: https://replit.com/languages/python3

Another generic online REPL service, with pandas example, no login: https://onecompiler.com/python/3x7an28pr

ReactJS online playground, no login: https://playcode.io/react

You can still read the tutorial without getting a Google Account, and that can be more than enough to get a feel for the product. At least enough to decide if you want to get a test account.

Here the Tutorial is Login Gated. That's just going to turn people who are curious and have 2-3 min to look at it, away.

I already had a google account when it came time to try Google Docs.

I'm not going to make a new account somewhere just to demo what they offer. I have to be convinced before I enter my personal info

Modern problems require modern solutions. I keep a separate gmail id just for this. Also I signed in using gmail and redirect didn't work in firefox.

Don’t studies show that you have to make users do something that requires friction to boost conversion? Otherwise they’re not valuable leads

With pay-per-use services propping up around AI, I'm sensing that asking users to sign up before trial will become inevitable.

1. Is this a HN only phenomenon or is there a significant drop-off in general because of the signup requirement?

2. If the drop-off is general, how are you planning to handle AI pay-per-use credit tracking without signup?

I think they are referring to the fact you can’t even try it without signing up. I don’t think people mind signing up and paying if they feel they will use it.

So much stuff is released every day, I don’t want to be bothered creating an account and giving my info to everything on the internet. Give me a good demo and if I’m interested I’ll sign up.

Thanks for letting us know. I won't even bother clicking on the link.

I hate email signups as much as the next guy, but the truth is...if you find their value proposition so weak that you won't even enter an email address or click through a Google login button?

Then maybe you're not who they want as a first customer anyway.

Perhaps this is just successful self-selection, rather than merely a user-hostile behavior?

no this is just user hostile and a bad sales funnel. Even Googles Tutorials are not login gated, however it expects you to get a 14 day free account to test Google Apps if you want to do the practice material.

Show what you have, then gently nudge people in to the sales funnel. Dont body slam them in to i.

It doesn't do a verification flow on the address provided, so you can just use <randomstring>@sharklasers.com or similar to try it out.

same, what a sad tease.

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