Skip sign-up entirely and create a hidden anonymous account instead

Jelte Liebrand… right? That's a friction point and no denying. Do I put in any email even if I've got federated accounts like Facebook or whatever? It's still a friction, and for some people, that is a problem. So as an experiment, we went, "Well, what if we just don't have those? What if we just skip that entire step to just go through? We'll create an anonymous account under the hood and let you do what you need to do. We don't actually need your details."

Jelte LiebrandThis is another aspect that we should probably pick up at some point. We don't do any email marketing. I hate it, and so I've killed it, and I've just thrown it away. Well, that's a side point. So we did this anonymous account, and we did it as an experiment like we do everything. And initially, the results were through the roof. It was amazing. It's like, "Oh my God. This is night and day. This is going to be so good." And then, we rolled it out to 100%. The success rates started to drop a little. It's like, "Hang on. It doesn't make any sense."

Jelte LiebrandAnd ultimately, long story short, we ran it for quite some time. It caused so much grief, so much customer support issue because while people are on one side going, "Well, I want privacy and I don't want my details there," they actually do want an account. "I have multiple devices. I've got it on my phone. I want it on the iPad, but now, how do I sync the two if I don't have an account? How do I log in? I need to log in. Surely, I need to log in." And it's just no end of grief, and ultimately, the uptick wasn't as good as we thought it was due to some metric issues that we found in this region. So yeah, anonymous accounts is a big topic on our virtual whiteboard, and internally, people have scars from it.

David BarnardAnd a great example too of so many tests that you think at a 10% or in one particular region that you are experimenting in, the numbers look good, but then once you roll it out, you need to keep an eye on those numbers because they don't always pan out the way you think they're going to.