registration - What is the most minimal sign up process possible?

I want to let my users get to using the website as fast as possible, so I want to have as minimal a sign up as possible, using progressive profiling to get information later if they want to disclose it.

Basically my two goals are:

1. Get the signed up


2. Get them using the site ASAP

This is what I have come up with so far:

It's very simple:

1. From the home page, click "sign up"


2. On sign up form, simple enter email address and click submit (you are emailed a confirmation email at this time)


3. A new page asks you if you want to go to tutorials, or get started right away


4. You either watch tutorials or you get started using the website


5. Later you can go to your email and confirm your account by going to the link in the email and creating a password for your account.

It seems to me this is the simplest signup that gets you started using the website with the least amount of effort from the users.

Can this be simplified? Are there other tried and true minimal sign-up models?

I want as low a hurdle as possible for getting users signed up and using the site. I can get information about them later (first name, etc.)

Answer

Stripe.com (a payments processor) offers an even more "immediate" sign-up process - they allow you to skip it all together. Any guest can begin using their dashboard and begin customising settings, testing mock transactions and making customer profiles before entering any sign-up information. No username, password or email. It's only when you want to go live and actually use the system to accept real payments do you need to create your account.

Several other sites I have used before utilise similar flows: allow guest users access to as much of the platform as possible, even saving settings between sessions with cookies, before requiring any personal information. More work for the developer, but a much faster and "invisible" process for potential users.

EDIT:

I agree with Rumi P. that your first goal isn't really to merely get the visitor signed up, but to get them coming back and actually using your site - of which signup is an important step, but not goal. A basic flow might go:

1. Home page promotes the call-to-action "Begin" (or somesuch), or "Signup"


2. Begin takes visitors to a version/mode of your site as capable and complete as you can possibly make it before any long-term persistance is needed. This serves a few other purposes: a) a consequence-free introduction to your system (so much effort is put into pre-signup marketing, such as screenshots, etc., why not make your actual site the promotion), and b) an incentive-building time, where visitors have the chance to create their own content, and therefore, reason to return.


3. Remind the visitor they need to signup before their newly-created content can be saved.


4. Long-term persistance is made by signing up, and you can begin a normal signup flow, taking the user back to their existing content (or allow them to clear it and start fresh).

(I removed introduction/tutorials from your flow because you can really insert them anywhere - any complicated/sensitive/sensational features can have contextual help links right in with content, etc.)