How To Get Users To Fill Out Their Profiles
Using a reward system for beefing up profile information.
ReadWriteWeb wrote a great post discussing Eight Ways to Get Users to Fill Out Their Profiles at social networks. They talk about a few innovative ways some sites are encouraging users to beef up the content in their own profiles.
However, they missed out on what I think is the best way to get users to complete profiles.
This is simply a reward system where certain features of the site are not accessible until more information is added.
Plurk.com does something like this where you must increase your site ‘karma’ to customise your page. But it need not be this convoluded.
For instance, before you are able to message other users privately, you must enter your location details. Or until you have added your profile photos you can’t see other users’ profile photos.
You can keep this quite linear by saying [adding this profile element] = [gaining access to this site feature] or keep a profile completion progress bar that has to hit a certain percent to allow a new feature.
Make it fun and worthwhile.
Tags: social network, users
