Hi all, usual disclaimer that I’m the furthest thing from a developer, but I look after a community forum that uses Discourse (Pro Plus plan), and I’m doing my best to learn. This is very much a ‘ELI5’ situation, I’m afraid.
I need some guidance on implementing a post-signup popup form, if that’s a thing?
The problem: We currently ask optional demographic questions (age, cancer type, location etc.) in the signup form itself, and it’s creating friction. Our users are dealing with serious health conditions and we want to make signup as straightforward as possible.
What I want to do: Show a dismissible popup form immediately after signup with these optional questions. Key requirements that I’ve identified so far:
Appears once after signup (not on every login)
Users can dismiss it without completing it
Never shows again once dismissed or completed
Saves responses to custom user fields if they do fill it in
Questions:
Is there an existing component/plugin that does something similar I could use or learn from?
Should this be a plugin rather than a theme component?
What’s the best way to persistently track dismissal?
Any obvious ‘gotchas’ and pitfalls with this approach?
Thanks for any pointers! And do let me know if I’m overcomplicating this - I want to make sure I’m taking the right approach as such a newbie.
I don’t know any theme component that shows a pop up after sign up, but it should be possible, and you could check some of the user’s stats to show it only to new users (maybe a reading time of 0; I don’t think “seen” works).
I was wondering if a personal message sent to the user might also work. There are some options on how to send users a message once they join. I’d need to check which one works best for this case.
With User Field Prompt component, the information could even be entered directly in the message.
Not a technical reply, but from a UX perspective: if the questions cause friction during sign up, I will guarantee that a popup appearing the second you finally “get in” is going to be even more unwelcome.
Oh, this is interesting for me. You’re ahead of me (I’m still setting things up) but I also run a support community and was planning on adding a whole lot of user fields to the signup form. But I hadn’t thought about the friction element!
I might have to rethink my approach, and leave those fields off the signup form, but find a way to invite people to fill them in « later ».
Two ideas I have for this:
we’re going to have « instructions » for new members: do x, do y, boxes we invite them to tick (metaphorically) to get ready to fully participate in the community. This could be one of them, which could be rewarded as a badge or by putting the member in a group (profile questions done!) — which could be a condition for access to some aspects of the community, or simply a practical way to identify members who might need some encouragement or support to respond to those questions
I have looked into using automation to send members periodic personal messages (auto-responder style), starting from their sign-up date. So maybe one of these messages, a few days after joining, is about filling in that part of the profile, why not with the User Field Prompt component @Moin mentioned, and perhaps in combination with the badge/group condition above to avoid nudging members who has already done it.
