Goodreads
A four-step wizard with a visible progress bar.
Landing
Offers Amazon, Apple or email signup, with a seasonal banner.
Create Account
Name, email, password, re-enter password.
Verify email address
A one-time code is sent by email.
Getting Started 1: find friends
A progress trail starts: Find friends, Reading goal, Rate books, View recommendations. Offers a Gmail contact import. "Skip this step" is available.
Getting Started 2: reading goal
"How many books do you want to read this year?" Also skippable.
Getting Started 3: favorite genres
The tracker already reads "Rate books", and genres come first. Checkboxes. The button reads "Select at least one genre to continue".
Rate books you've read
"Rate 20 more books to get personalized recommendations." A running counter shows 0 rated.
Recommendations
With zero ratings the page says there are no recommendations yet. The empty state shows the cost of skipping.
What stands out
- The only product that names every step up front.
- It asks for a lot of effort (20 ratings) before recommendations work.
- Skipping that effort leads to an empty page.
Captured 7 October 2026 on web with a made-up persona. Screen counts exclude landing page and first feed.