Please confirm your email address

[starpilot]

Using the imperative wording "please confirm" suggests the recipient must take an action, rather than passively receive information. This reminds me of a Mac OS X Human Interface Guideline:

"Use a verb or verb phrase for the title of a push button. The title you create should describe the action the button performs—Save, Close, Print, Delete, Change Password, and so on."

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserEx...

The difference between "Email confirmation" and "Please confirm your email" is like that between "Ok" and "Save."

[MatthewPhillips]

These are the types of stories I like to see on the front page of HN.

[yycom]

Isn't this just obvious though?

[ez77]

Indeed, but in this case I wish I could upvote it without saving it.

[um3shg]

+1

[latitude]

That's my post there. It'd be very interesting to compare email confirmation rates. I am running on a private mail server that is configured according to all possible spam filtering guidelines and yet I am still at only 82%. I wonder if these 18% is just people overwhelmed with emails in their Inbox or if there's still some issues with being mis-categorized as a spam.

Anyone else cares to share their numbers?

[moonlighter]

No scientific data here, but it sounds to me that 82% is pretty damn good. You'll never reach 100% because there'll always be folks who sign up and then simply don't follow thru. I know I'm guilty of that. It's like handing out Broadway show flyers... just because I take one doesn't mean I'm going to actually buy tickets to see the show.

[jcampbell1]

You should be able to get to 95%. On the form there is no indication that an action is required after entering my email address. I also see a generic "support" as the sender in gmail.

[jcampbell1]

I am consistently running around 75%, with subject line "Confirm your email address". I am going to change it to "Please confirm your email address".

I send the confirmation emails through Google's email servers (Google Apps).

update: If I break it down by domain, I see gmail->80%, yahoo->70%, and hotmail->66%.

[dennisgorelik]

What's the best wording for email body with confirmation link?

Currently I use:

====

Please open this link to confirm your email:

http://www.postjobfree.com/a.aspx?k=c3d26a0fc5d145cf88898a92...

This link will expire on: 8/19/2011 10:29:11 PM EST.

====

Thanks for the tip about subject for email confirmation!

In the past I was using "Link to confirm your PostJobFree email", but your new version with clear call to action ("Please confirm your email address") should perform better.

[larrik]

If you are looking for confirmations... perhaps a percentage just didn't use valid emails? Possibly accidentally?

[prawn]

What about:

Next Step: Confirm your email address

Thinking along the lines of how "Follow me on Twitter" tests better than "If you liked this blog entry, please follow me on Twitter." Just give people a direct order. "Next step" might make it clearer that they're not yet finished with the process?

[revorad]

Are you going to email old subscribers (who didn't confirm) a reminder with the new subject line?

[philfreo]

Are you tracking emails that bounce? Or people that have whitelists of who can email them? Then there's the people who always send signups to a special yahoo signup address they rarely check. You can probably do a little better than 82%, but I doubt you'll ever beat 95%.

[Liu]

Does simply seeing 82% vs. 50% enough? Shouldn't there be some significance measurements added to it? If you had only 6 people in this experiment maybe it is just a statistical error...

[EGreg]

We had a cool thing. We let the user use our site once, but to "activate their account" and set up a password, they had to click the link in their email. Otherwise they would be reminded next time they tried to sign in (without a password)

It gave people an incentive to verify their email!

Check out blurts.com and qbix.com for examples

[rickmb]

I remember a talk by Terry Chay in which he showed that adding a smiley to the subject (don't remember the project) dramatically increased the response.

Little details can make such a big difference.

[cema]

This is surprising to me. I would expect that I would more easily mis-categorize such an email as spam (than the one without a smiley).

[acangiano]

For AnyNewBooks.com I have the following thank you page: http://anynewbooks.com/thank-you/

And the email I send has the subject: "Please confirm your subscription"

Between the two, the message is fairly clear. Yet, I still receive emails from novice users once in a while, who aren't familiar with the concept of "confirming" a subscription. Usability isn't easy.

[cyhperpunks]

Not to detract from your nice design, but wouldn't something like this be more effective?

http://i.imgur.com/d98aC.jpg

That is, downsized screenshot, with graphics drawn on top. I think the original looks too much like a real window.

[MicahWedemeyer]

Nor will it ever be perfect. No matter how friendly you make it, there will always be people who deftly dodge every piece of helpful info or design you throw at them.

[sudonim]

We use the Devise gem https://github.com/plataformatec/devise and the default subject line is: "Confirmation instructions". I can't say anyone on our team thought to change it. Good clear language like "Please confirm your email address" would be great to have as the default in gems like devise

[duck]

I think it totally depends on your subscriber base, but with Hacker Newsletter I've seen about a 95% success rate. I have always used the default MailChimp subject which is "Hacker Newsletter List: Please Confirm Subscription".

[resdirector]

I use usertesting.com. You get a ten minute video and audio of testers using your site. These types of small (aka big) problems are weeded out pretty quickly.

Can't rate them high enough.

[pkamb]

This always bothered me about SEOmoz's new public analytics button on all their blog updates.

The button says "Post Analytics". That makes me think "send analytic to SEOmoz". But what they really mean is "view this blog post's analytics".

[joshu]

This is good. I wish more people would talk about email praxis because it seems like voodoo a lot of the time.

Do we even really need to confirm email addresses?

[moeffju]

Yes, at least in Germany, you have to show that the user confirmed their email, or risk a cease and desist when you mail them otherwise. Some lawyers send those for fun and profit.

[cpeterso]

You might also consider adding a web bug image to your confirmation email. If the user loads the confirmation email's HTML, you know it is a real email address even if they don't click the confirmation link.

Admittedly, it might be someone ELSE'S email address, but they could manually unsubscribe from your mailing list later.

[moonlighter]

Using image links 'calling back home' isn't reliable, because email clients have options to prevent such images from being shown automatically, especially if those emails might be considered spam.

[nupark2]

Admittedly, it might be someone ELSE'S email address, but they could manually unsubscribe from your mailing list later.

That's half the point of verifying e-mail addresses. Doing this is likely to engender significant ill-will in anyone who is an unintended recipient of your e-mails.

[moeffju]

For one, I don't know of any client that still loads remote images without confirmation, much less 1x1 tracking images.

Secondly, if I can sign someone else up without their knowledge and get you to send then unsolicited mail, you're risking legal problems.

[Tilleul]

78 comments so far, and not one mention of technical writing. I have to admit that I almost never hear about hiring or contracting with tech writers in early-stage startups. But it might be a worthwhile idea.

I'm a tech writer, and I hope that not too much self-advertising for my first post here.

[trustfundbaby]

I bet the one with the title "Email confirmation" was going to spam folders ... I've seen a lot of spam with that exact title when I'm cleaning out my gmail spam folder