Confirmation fields lead to abandonments

Email and password confirmation fields are the leading cause of abandonments on the sign up form. Zuko (formerly Formisimo) observed over a two-month period that their password repeat field was responsible for over a quarter of all the people that abandoned their sign up process.

Along with a few other changes, they were able to improve their “Sign Up” page conversions by 55%, and decrease by 24% the number of corrections made in the “Confirm Password” field.

In addition to annoying customers by making the type the same thing twice, confirmation fields don’t even work.

Mistakes get copied

When confronted by an email confirmation field, 60% of people don’t bother retyping it. They just copy their email address and paste it in the confirmation field. As such, any mistakes made in the first email field are repeated in the second field, defeating the entire purpose of the field in the first place.

If you have to use a confirmation field (which isn’t recommended), at least disable the paste functionality.

Better solutions

Show the password

By removing the password confirmation field, you should then allow users to see the password they’re typing so that they can verify it before submitting the form. This can be done with a “SHOW” text or icon button inside the password field.

Send a confirmation email

Instead of forcing shoppers to retype their email, you should send a confirmation email to the provided address. A delivery confirmation will prove that the email address is not made up. You could also include a link or buttons for users to click on in order to confirm that it is actually their email address.