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Besides the security and usability problems others mentioned, I also highly doubt it will improve confirmation conversions. One thing that helped us improve co

Besides the security and usability problems others mentioned, I also highly doubt it will improve confirmation conversions. One thing that helped us improve confirmations -- we A/B tested it and confirmation rates increased ~8%: send a 4-digit confirmation code rather than just a link. It's easier and more familiar on mobile, especially if you see the code on the push notification, so don't even need to open the email. I suspect it's less likely to land as a promotion email in Gmail, because of the code/semantics. It's quite a fun experience as well in my opinion. It seems like more work, but entering 4 digits on the same open tab is easier and nicer experience than clicking on an email link. There are some security considerations. A short code can be brute-forced, so you need to rate-limit the number of guesses.

t0mas88 4y ago
I've seen similar numbers on an ecommerce site. The theory there was the people may be on a device where their email isn't logged in. So doing that and then clicking your link is a lot of work and could run into even more hurdles like Gmail 2FA popping up because they don't use that device frequently. While the 4 digit code is easy enough to read on their phone in a notification and then type into the other device.
hollerith 4y ago
>send a 4-digit confirmation code rather than just a link. The wording is unclear, so I will ask for clarification: Does the improved email contain both a 4-digit code _and_ a link (URL)?
- gingerlime 4y ago
  Yes. both a link and the code.
simlan 4y ago
Agreed. Usability on mobile is best with the short codes. Even 2 FA is fairly efficient that way as long as the messages are designed to show the code in the preview.
ozim 4y ago
Not having a link in email is important. I believe most of the times email from my systems go to spam because there is a link in it. I don't have any hard data but I can imagine that if email contains link it will be checked by more rules in heuristic checks. If there are no links - most likely it is not spam.
- gingerlime 4y ago
  in our case we included both a link and the code and saw an increase in confirmation rates. If I recall we reached over 90% conversion rates. For a B2C niche service, I think that’s pretty high. I somehow doubt removing the link will improve things further, but it might be interesting to test in future.
- indymike 4y ago
  > email from my systems go to spam because there is a link in it. This spam filter is broken. A personal email with a signature that contains a blog would be a false positive.
  - ozim 4y ago
    Well that is not a full story. But if you have a link in an email it will go through couple of other checks for sure, where it might be considered SPAM. If there are no links bunch of checks will be skipped. That is my reasoning, I am not configuring any spam filters on my own.

t0mas88 4y ago

I've seen similar numbers on an ecommerce site. The theory there was the people may be on a device where their email isn't logged in. So doing that and then clicking your link is a lot of work and could run into even more hurdles like Gmail 2FA popping up because they don't use that device frequently. While the 4 digit code is easy enough to read on their phone in a notification and then type into the other device.

hollerith 4y ago

>send a 4-digit confirmation code rather than just a link. The wording is unclear, so I will ask for clarification: Does the improved email contain both a 4-digit code _and_ a link (URL)?

gingerlime 4y ago
Yes. both a link and the code.

simlan 4y ago

Agreed. Usability on mobile is best with the short codes. Even 2 FA is fairly efficient that way as long as the messages are designed to show the code in the preview.

ozim 4y ago

Not having a link in email is important. I believe most of the times email from my systems go to spam because there is a link in it. I don't have any hard data but I can imagine that if email contains link it will be checked by more rules in heuristic checks. If there are no links - most likely it is not spam.

gingerlime 4y ago
in our case we included both a link and the code and saw an increase in confirmation rates. If I recall we reached over 90% conversion rates. For a B2C niche service, I think that’s pretty high. I somehow doubt removing the link will improve things further, but it might be interesting to test in future.
indymike 4y ago
> email from my systems go to spam because there is a link in it. This spam filter is broken. A personal email with a signature that contains a blog would be a false positive.
- ozim 4y ago
  Well that is not a full story. But if you have a link in an email it will go through couple of other checks for sure, where it might be considered SPAM. If there are no links bunch of checks will be skipped. That is my reasoning, I am not configuring any spam filters on my own.