Tactics to Get lots of information from newly-registered users

[edfryed]

Ciao Mozzers!

I'm currently looking at revising a clients signup process. We need to grab lots of information to populate their profiles with higher-quality content.

Some ideas so far:

Facebook Connect - grabbing information from Facebook profiles (a few clicks for users)

Use multi-step/paginated signup form (with progress bar), perhaps using jQuery to show the next question once one is finished

More shorter, specific questions > fewer longer questions

I've been looking around for examples of pages which need to capture lots of information, and like what Quirky do, but has anyone got any other awesome examples or ideas for helping capture more information?

[schindyguy]

Theres a lot of available APIs on infochimps. One possibility is

their IP demo API -- http://www.infochimps.com/datasets/digital-element-ip-intelligence-demographics

their geo API stuff --  http://www.infochimps.com/apis/geo

Also another data provider like Rapleaf can help get a lot of info from just an email address. Send them the email over the API and return as much profile info as they have on the individual.

If you can get them to give up google credentials or linkedin, then you can access contacts, etc.