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Many websites use submission forms to gather information on potential clients, aiming to convert viewers into buyers or subscribers. More recently, self-serve and product-led growth (PLG) companies have mechanisms that allow users to sign up for their services right from the website.
Despite modest average conversion rates (2%-5% per Mailchimp; 0.62%-4.20% per HubSpot), even a one percent increase through optimized signup or information collection forms can significantly impact overall conversions.
Progressive profiling is a strategic approach to achieve this, making prospects more likely to become long-term users and customers. In this blog, we’ll cover:
What progressive profiling is and how it improves user onboarding
How it reduces form friction and builds user trust over time
Why it matters for modern SaaS and PLG teams
Ways to implement progressive profiling seamlessly with Descope
What is progressive profiling?
Progressive profiling is a UX-friendly approach to collecting user data gradually throughout the user journey, rather than all at once during signup. It helps improve conversion rates, reduce friction, and create more personalized user experiences.
In practice, progressive profiling enables apps to gather only essential details during account creation, then progressively request additional information as users engage further. This gradual collection process creates a more natural and less intrusive onboarding experience, making users more likely to share accurate information over time.
Form analysis experts reveal that approximately 68.32% of page viewers initiate forms, and 65.99% complete them. The challenge is getting them to start. When signup forms appear quick and low effort, users are more willing to engage. Progressive profiling builds on this principle.
How progressive profiling works
Once a user creates an account, they’re gradually asked for more details. This enhances user benefits and provides businesses with improved segmentation and predictive insights.
For example, during first-time signup, a user might be prompted for just basic information like:
First and last name
Email address (for magic link or OTP authentication)
Later—after they’ve engaged with the product or completed key milestones—they can be prompted for additional information such as:
Phone number
Industry
Company name
Job title
Company location
Number of employees
These follow-up prompts can appear within the app, via email, or through contextual pop-ups that trigger based on user behavior. The sequencing and timing depend on the user’s actions, engagement level, or tier within your product.
The specific mechanics of progressive profiling will vary by use case. However, some essential pillars are present in most deployments. These include, but are not limited to, the following:
User-initiated data collection
It’s critical that users willingly provide information about themselves from the initial interaction. Rather than being bombarded with forms when they enter the app or website, users may not receive requests to sign up or provide information until they trigger them with a specific action.
For example, users ideally should not be prompted for a “sign up or login” pop-up until they attempt to access a premium feature or gated content.
Dynamic form field displays
These displays respond to user-provided information and actions within your site or product, influencing the appearance of subsequent forms. Conditional logic determines when forms appear and what data they request, ensuring the experience feels personalized and relevant.
Conditional logic also determines which specific forms are present and why.
For example, users on the free tier of a PLG product should be prompted for credit card and payment information only when they try to access a premium feature.
Smart logic forms
Beyond baseline conditional logic, smart logic forms use contextual data and metadata (like user preferences or past interactions) to dynamically personalize each prompt. As data accumulates, this enables hyper-personalized onboarding and segmentation throughout the user’s journey.
Data integration and storage
Collected information seamlessly populates into connected CRM platforms, allowing for scheduled outreach and analytics. Depending on the user relationship, information about preferred contact methods can also be collected and integrated automatically.
Critically, data is also safeguarded in compliance with applicable regulations. Required data privacy notices can be sent out in the event of a change in data use or a breach. User-facing dashboards can be configured to allow for changes in consent or other requests.
Automation
Progressive profiling is most effective when supported by automation. Processes for generating form requests, quality control, filing data, and acting on it can be configured to run in the background. By analyzing form filling and navigation statistics, you can determine the most opportune times to prompt users for information, then run a script that triggers according to those conditions.
All these mechanics either run on or are improved by automated workflows, increasing productivity and personalization.
Advantages of progressive profiling
Progressive profiling improves customer acquisition and retention by building trust and confidence before users are asked to share detailed information. This leads to superior user experience and time savings for everyone involved.
Getting leads into and out of your form quicker is the best way to fill forms. Then, follow-up questions allow you to nurture those leads and convert them into adopters and customers.
Why form completion time matters
Across industries, the average time to complete forms (02:37) exceeds that of abandoned forms (01:43). This ratio varies in different sectors, emphasizing the importance of swift interactions, particularly in B2B and software development tasks.
However, this ratio is heavily impacted by high-leverage use cases like government, property, and legal services, where the completion times are generally double, triple, or quadruple the abandonment times.
In software and SaaS environments—the most relevant category for developers—the pattern reverses. The median completion time is 01:22, but abandonment takes 08:30. This speaks to failed user attempts at completing the form before dropoff (e.g. failed password login attempts).
Efficient form-filling accelerates lead conversion, with follow-up questions used to nurture leads. Progressive profiling supports this by keeping early interactions short and intuitive, which encourages completion and continued engagement.
Why user interest in form filling matters
Another easy-to-overlook benefit of progressive profiling is its impact on users’ emotional connection to a brand or product. When users are prompted to provide personal information upfront, they may do so begrudgingly—or choose not to do it at all.
But when users are given the time and space to familiarize themselves with your website or app before providing their personal information, they are more likely to be comfortable doing so.
This slower, trust-based approach not only increases completion rates but also improves data accuracy — since users are voluntarily sharing information they believe will enhance their experience.
To summarize:
Get users in the door.
Gain their trust and show the value of your product or service.
Ask them for more information.
Use automation and context to make every prompt feel timely and relevant.
Tips to implement progressive profiling
Progressive profiling begins and ends with UI design. Regardless of your specific platform(s), the first step is to reduce user friction while still capturing meaningful data. The goal is to design an experience that feels natural, secure, and purposeful.
Here are five practical ways to do that effectively:
Allow limited access before requiring signup
Consider eliminating the requirement that users sign up for an account to view content. For example, visitors might be able to view a limited scope of content before they are required to make an account (e.g., the New York Times’ daily article limit). Allowing partial access builds curiosity and trust, increasing the likelihood that users will register once they’ve already engaged with your product.
Keep initial signup simple
If an account is necessary, reduce the information needed to generate one. You might enable account creation with just an email address (authenticating the users via OTP or magic link). Then, consider what information you need and at what points in a user’s journey it becomes critical.
Ask for additional data only when it’s relevant
If something like the user’s industry or field is essential early on to get them oriented to your product, ask for it shortly after account creation. Tying data requests to user context prevents fatigue and helps you collect higher-quality information.
Delay nonessential questions until later
If other factors (like their location or number of employees) are relevant at later stages of the sales funnel, delay prompting for them. Send a follow-up email or configure a pop-up that occurs after the user reaches a certain milestone or stumbles on a particular piece of content. Spacing out requests ensures users remain focused on exploring your product rather than completing long, unnecessary forms all at once.
Integrate progressive profiling with authentication
Progressive profiling should work closely with your authentication and identity management system, whether it’s built in-house or delivered through a third-party vendor. A dynamic progressive profiling system integrated into users’ login experience further enhances trust and seamless UX when interacting with your app or website.
Drag & drop progressive profiling with Descope
The easier progressive profiling seems to the end user, the trickier it is to implement in the backend. Robust progressive profiling needs lots of tweaking and experimentation as well as ironclad process logic on “when” to ask “what” from the end user.
Descope is a drag-and-drop customer authentication and identity management platform. Our no / low code workflows help customers easily add signup, login, MFA, and any other user journey touchpoint to their apps. Progressive profiling can be enabled by simply creating user-facing screens with the desired questions and “dropping them” into the auth workflow.
You can also use user journey A/B testing to experiment with different progressive profiling approaches—such as varying the order, timing, or number of data prompts—to identify which flow drives the highest engagement and conversion.
Sign up for a Free Forever Descope account to see progressive profiling in action (we use it right here on our website signup)! If you have questions, schedule time with our team of auth experts.
