The Web is a task-based medium. People go online with an objective in mind and a wish (not always granted) to complete that objective. For a website, users’ goals are the number one priority. If the user can complete his or her task, then they may be happy and come back. If the task cannot be completed, then it usually means a lost user.

For a long time, the registration process on websites has been a hindrance to letting users complete their task. Until Amazon came out, users could not do anything before they registered, resulting in many lost opportunities for websites. Indeed, without a teaser into what users can get, these usually do not want to create a profile. The rule is “show me what I get and maybe I will create a profile”. Creating a profile is a trade off, where the user is trading personal information against a (usually free) service.

So, Amazon came and now users could start looking for books online and only create a profile at the check out time. Everything got solved right?! Well, not really. Many websites still fail to integrate the registration (or login) process well. This usually means that users who did not register reach a stage where they have to register. Upon creating their profile, they have to restart their process from scratch or more often extra steps are added to their initial task.

There the simple usability concept is “remember the user’s task”. An example of a good experience I just had this morning (thus this post) is with DocStoc. I went there looking for a document. I found it and upon clicking the download button, I got sent to a registration page. At this stage, I pondered. Is what DocStoc offers enough for me to provide me personal information. I thought so at that time and went on to create my profile.

After two pages filling data, I saved my profile and the document I requested got downloaded automatically. Creating my profile, added a few steps to my task, but in this end did not affect my original task.

Common Sense many would say… yes, but oftentimes common sense is exactly what websites lack.