Does 2FA have to ruin the new user experience - and what's the alternative?
One of my least favorite product-led experiences - and recommendations to improve it
I’ve spent the past 8 years leading PLG teams. So naturally, I hate talking to sales reps unless I absolutely have to. I prefer to use a product on my own terms.
I want everything to be frictionless. And because I spent multiple years building/testing new user onboarding flows - I pay close attention when I sign up for new tools.
Recently, I signed up for a free trial of a $29/mo photo editing software and had a really weird experience.
It reminded me how important the user experience is in a product-led environment.
Do it well, and you’ll convert more customers and brand advocates. Miss the mark, and you’ll create detractors.
Here’s the background:
My wife and I are in the process of selling our home. We’ve lived just outside of Boston (in Medford) since 2016. We love our home, but with a 3 year old toddler (and another on the way) we’re bursting at the seams in our current spot.
We’re ready to move to the ‘burbs, but we haven't had any luck finding a new home in the current housing market. My Dad and Stepmom have been also looking for a new home - to downsize.
We’ve always joked that we’d buy their home, if the timing worked out. And recently, it did! We’re officially buying their house! We move in early January.
It’s pretty weird to buy your parents house. But the pros (of not having to bid against an army of strangers) far outweighs the cons (living in your parents house).
Anywho, to get our home listed, we needed photos for the listing. We have some good photography equipment at home. So I made the (probably crazy) decision we’d take them ourselves.
If you follow me, you may already know I’m into woodworking and DIY projects. I usually prefer to do things myself - photography included. But I figured we should get our images edited and color corrected to help them look more professional.
After doing some research, we learned there’s a few options to get your pictures professionally edited:
Pay an editor
Pay an editing service/agency
Edit them yourself
I found a photo editing software that comes with human editors - for a small additional fee. It seemed like a no-brainer. I signed up for the trial.
The sign-up process: my experience
I’ve signed up for hundreds of SaaS products. I don’t think much about sharing my email and creating a password. Most signup flows are quick and easy. This product was too.
This product had a 2 part signup form. On the first page they asked for my email and password (pretty standard).
And on the 2nd part, they asked for my phone number and some other information.
I expected the phone number field to be optional. It wasn’t. So I used a fake number. 999-888-7777 is my go-to number for these types of situations.
Here’s why I didn’t want to give my real number.
I don’t have an official “business phone” and I don't like giving out my personal cell phone to strangers and/or brands. I get a ton of spam calls already.
It wasn’t clear what they needed my phone number for.
Because of (#2 above) and the other questions on part 2 of the signup form. I assumed it was for their sales team to call me after signing up.
I don’t need another sales rep calling my personal number. I know how to get in touch with them if/when I need their help 🙂
I definitely don’t want to be getting calls. And as someone who’s worked in growth for the past 8 years, I know it cannot be profitable/efficient for sales to be calling every new account for a $29/mo plan anyways.
I was asked to verify my account… twice (in a row)
Pretty standard 2FA experience. They emailed me a code to verify my email.
I entered my code and clicked continue. I expected to begin the product onboarding flow.
But what happened next surprised me…
Directly after verifying my email address. I was asked to verify…again. This time using my phone number 🤔.
I was surprised by the experience. I haven’t seen two different forms of 2FA being required before even seeing the product once.
But I was stuck. I couldn't enter the code because I had just given them a fake phone number in the signup flow.
And I definitely wasn't going to sign-up again using my real cell number. I still didn’t trust that I wasn’t going to get a call from a sales rep after the fast.
Ultimately, I was annoyed by the user experience.
The whole situation was strange. I just wanted to see how good the editing software was. I had no problem paying $29/mo if it was decent. But as a user, this friction point had me stuck.
I never got to see the product.
I closed the tab. Went back to Google. Found another product (one of their competitors that had a similar product) signed-up and purchased a paid account that same day.
The importance of two-factor authentication
I wrote about this situation on Linkedin and received a few comments on my post from folks explaining 2FA to me - or trolling me for not understanding.
Although, I’m not a cyber security expert, I am pretty familiar with 2FA - and it’s impact on the signup process for product-led businesses.
During my time at Wistia, we (like many businesses) struggled with spam monitoring and bot detection. We eventually implemented a great tool called E-hawk that helped us filter out our bad signups - without impacting the process for everyone else.
I still recommend E-hawk all the time.
But I had never seen 2 different forms of 2FA required (in a row) to sign up for a new tool.
Rupak, shared a comment sharing a good explanation why this company likely made this decision and explained how important SMS (vs email) verification is - which was really helpful👇
My goal isn’t to tear this company down
Tear-downs aren’t really my style. I very intentionally hid this company’s name and any identifying information from this post.
I wanted to illustrate how important the end-user experience is in a product-led world.
What users really think
How they act
How quickly they make up their minds
And how (seemingly) small decisions can have larger downstream impacts
In a product-led world, users are balancing many tabs, messages, and competing priorities. If they can’t quickly get set up and experience the value of your product, they will move on to the next.
And for product-led companies, it’s nearly impossible to re-engage a new user that has decided to move on before experiencing any value.
That initial experience is everything.
I’ve learned that lesson the hard way. Our growth team surveyed accounts that signed up, but never activated. Our goal was to learn why they didn’t engage so we could build programs to:
Re-engage those accounts
Create better onboarding systems for future accounts
But after emailing tens-of-thousands of users, we got 4 responses. That’s not an exaggeration.
And it makes sense conceptually. They never got any value from the product. So why would they take time to read and/or respond to our emails?
As an advisor I’ve seen similar challenges trying to re-engaging dormant accounts. It’s really tough.
Here’s what I’d do differently:
Reassess the need for phone verification
If the core reason for phone numbers is to prevent fraudulent sign-ups via 2FA verification, could a spam/bot prevention service like E-hawk solve that problem without introducing all the unnecessary friction?
My prior experience tells me that it probably can.
If they absolutely do need to collect phone numbers:
I would add micro-copy to the signup process that explains WHY they need your phone number - and what it’s used for. That would at least reduce some of the friction from the experience.
Something like this:
Otherwise I would stop asking every new account to enter their phone number.
Incorporate account segmentation early-on.
Instead of a phone number, ask users about their expected usage. Then customize the product (and go-to market) experience based on their answers.
For example: you could ask new accounts how many photos expect to edit each month:
Accounts that enter a small number (less than 30/mo), let them self-serve.
Accounts that enter a larger number (30-100/mo), let them self-serve, but build in moments where they can connect with a human (if they have questions or want help).
Accounts that enters a really large number (300+/mo) create a 1:1 product-led sales experience by asking to explore high-volume discounts, set up a custom SLA, and other enterprise features they'll probably need.
Removing the friction and implanting personalization and segmentation would create a better user experience, higher activation rates, and more customers/revenue in the longer run.
Because forcing everyone down the same path doesn't work.
Especially when that path is full of friction.