Google Analytics and my Login / Registration page.

Just thought I’d share some interesting (well, for me anyway) analytics data from my app Chesspresso. The app requires the user to register to play. They can either use Google Plus authentication, Google authentication or standard username based authentication. The registration process is very lightweight…

[ol]
[li]Authenticate via Google or enter their email address.[/li][li]Enter a username (default uses the bit before the @ of their email)[/li][li]Select a country.[/li][/ol]
Here is the results from the past 2 weeks (the real data goes into a bit more detail, but unnecessary for this post):

[ul]
[li]33.7% completed registration with Google authentication.[/li][li]28.6% Looked at the login page and left without even clicking a single button.[/li][li]11% completed registration with Google Plus.[/li][li]5.9% completed registration with their normal email.[/li][li]20.8% clicked the first button, but changed their minds about registration during the next 2 pages (writing their username or selecting a country from a list)[/li][/ul]

So out of everyone who visited the login page, 50.6% successfully registered, and the rest didn’t. Now I need to know how much of those 50.6% actually turn out to be ‘users’ end up taking time to understand the app and playing.

Chesspresso is a correspondence chess app, which means that instead of playing 1 game in 1 sitting, you play many over a long period of time. I believe one of my main issues is that people don’t really understand the concept behind the app, and are just looking for possibly a standard game of Chess against an opponent. But what I’ve learnt is that it’s very dangerous to assume something without facts when you’re thinking about your app. I’ve previously made MANY gut instincts and spent time modifying the app based on them, and leading to no improvement. The above 50.6% was 34% just a few weeks ago after spending time understanding what pissed the users off.

So it’s a tip I guess… Write down the questions you need answered, and answer them with Google Analytics. If you’re attempting to understand your users without real figures and just gut instinct then you’re wasting your time.