Designing for the Social Web

Chapter 4. Design for Sign-up: How to motivate people to sign up for your web app

	“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
	--ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPERY

In a theoretically perfect world, the people who try your software for the first time have unlimited time on their hands: they hear about your web application, they go and find out more about it, and, discovering how valuable it is, they sign up for the service immediately. They appreciate the time and energy you’ve put into your work. The end result is a real, valuable connection between the maker and user.

In practice, however, we’ve got about eight seconds to make that connection. ...