Ask HN: How many times do users mistype their password on a registration form?

lucumo · on March 23, 2009

I can't tell you about the password, but we had a registration form which asked for the e-mail address. You could actually read the e-mail address (like normal) so people could easily see and correct their typos had they bothered.

The thing is, they didn't. The e-mail address is used for activation and we had huge numbers of unactivated accounts. I don't have the exact numbers any more, so this is from memory: when we added another e-mail field and checked if they were the same, the number of unactivated accounts halved.

Currently, the number of unactivated accounts is consistently between 10% and 20%, so that should give you an indication on how much it saved us.

I can only assume that for passwords the problem of typos is worse, since you can't proofread.

aristus · on March 23, 2009

It's not just the % of people mess this up. It's the cost of correcting each error. If 99.44% of people type their password correctly and remember it later, but the remaining 0.36% waste your time with support calls, it's a bad idea.

noodle · on March 23, 2009

in my experience, typically, the registrations that have you type in just one copy of your password tend to also send you your password back in the registration email to verify.

if you're dealing with financial processes, though, i'd suggest sticking with the double password field and not emailing a password.