user research - What is the best approach to design registration page

I have seen users (including me) who get frustrating registration page and eventually decide to quit the site. (To be frank few of my friends left registration due to annoying captca verification) As I am in a process of designing a kind of social site for which user needs to login to perform certain action. I don't want my users to quit site just because it is either too complex or require more information. The other side of story is that I do need more information from user. Now my question is that what is the possible details I can keep on my registration page to make it comfortable to the user to easily jump to the main site and then how can I capture the remaning information?

Answer

My general tips would be:

1. 
   

   Question whether you really need all the information you're asking for.

   
   


2. 
   

   Ask for as little information up front as possible. Not the minimum that your site needs to run as a business - but the minimum that the user needs to continue at this point. You can collect the rest later on.

   
   


3. 
   

   Explain why you need the information to the user. Don't just say "E-mail", explain with "So we can let you know when your purchase ships".

   
   



4. 
   

   Allow the user to enter subsidiary registration information later on. Look to sites like LinkedIn that nudge users with "Profile 80% complete" and other messages.

   
   


5. 
   

   If you really, really cannot avoid a long form all the usual long-form advice about breaking it into self-contained chunks, showing status/progress, etc. apply.

   
   


6. 
   

   Investigate options like logging in with facebook / twitter / linkedin / google+ / openid / mozilla persona. But please test them with your users first. I have regularly seen these cause problems as well as help (especially open ID - which I've never seen help overall). The general advice would be to only offer options that are related to your product (e.g. Tool for handingly social media followers? Twitter login a no-brainer). But test early and test often.

   
   


7. 
   
   

   Do you need registration at all? It's a question that sometimes needs to be asked. Again - do test.