How We Increased New User Registration 27%

I don't think 5-8 fields is as huge a barrier to sign-up rates as you might have initially believed. I believe that friction starts to occur on somewhere around 10+ fields.

Here's a couple of other theories as to why your new approach works better:

Commitment: When you initially ask for JUST an email address from a prospect, it's kind of like starting a conversation with someone by saying "Hey what's your phone number" without even caring to ask for their name and a proper introduction. Basically their email is the most valuable piece of information they have to give you, and immediately going for it sends the wrong message. Presenting them with a full form (that includes their name, company, maybe a job function) conveys that you really care to know about them and sets the expectation that they will get something useful out of any interaction with you.

Convention: I've encountered more signup processes where the request for contact information is front-loaded. It's simply what internet citizens are more accustomed to. In fact some users may have thought that by giving you their email address, they were done, and didn't even carefully review the "verify your address to proceed" email. They probably just waited for something more and simply gave up when the next step didn't magically present itself.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Your old flow is like you go to a bank and ask for opening an account, they get your address and tell you we will mail you the forms to fill out the required information. Not many people like to change the context to finish something. I think these types of design flaws are well known that they should have been prevented in the first place.

> The user can login and merrily start building.

I'm surprised that this step was still in there in the new version of the flow. Why not set the user as logged in automatically after registration?