Member-only story
Last week, our support team called me that the we were having a lot of zombie customers, who had signed up with us, but never able to receive any emails. That said, I looked up our database and then found some email addresses were obviously incorrect. As we don’t allow the email address to be changed after sign up, a customer could be stuck forever if the customer didn’t get the email right in the beginning, regardless of being deliberately or accidentally.
Refactor
After knowing the issue, the first thing I did is to refactor the current sign up process, which is as follows:
In the process, we use a regex to check if the input email is legitimate or not. However, this check can’t guarantee the email is valid.
Things we can improve
1. Send a welcome email upon sign up. This is an simple solution and easy to implement. However, it doesn’t solve the problem ultimately, as the customer needs to wait for their email to come and sign up again should there be a typo.
2. Send a verification code to confirm. Although it seems a proper solution, it’s not ideal. Firstly, it would add costs to acquire customers, which is what our business partner wants to avoid. Secondly, customers would likely leave if the…