# Feature Friday: The Logged Out Experience

By [Continuations](https://continuations.com) · 2012-10-19

feature friday, foursquare, logged out, experience

---

Most startups spend all their time on optimizing the experience for registered and logged in users.  But what about those who come to a site through a link?  Or right to the home page by either typing the company’s URL or more likely searching for the company name. Most companies spend very little time on this which is a mistake because it is the top of the user acquisition funnel.

Companies that get the logged out experience right can get a lot of mileage from that.  In particular showing immediate content and only then driving users into either registration or app download seems to work well.  [Pinterest](http://pinterest.com/) did a great job with this both for deep links and for the homepage.  [Instagram](http://instagr.am/)’s deep link pages are fantastic – you see the photograph but the second you want to take an action (e.g. heart) you are driven into registration.

I was thrilled to see [foursquare](http://foursquare.com) earlier this week launch [a logged out version of “explore”](http://blog.foursquare.com/2012/10/15/reinventing-local-search-for-everyone-get-the-power-of-foursquare-explores-personalized-recommendations-now-without-signing-up/) giving immediate utility to anyone coming to the home page.  Venue pages, such as the one for [Union Square Ventures](https://foursquare.com/v/union-square-ventures/4a17665af964a52056791fe3), also have a strong calls to action now for users who are not logged in.  This is a great way of activating the top of the funnel.

![Enhanced by Zemanta](http://img.zemanta.com/zemified_e.png?x-id=e284974b-873a-48d2-9e0b-a8b7a989ea2b)

---

*Originally published on [Continuations](https://continuations.com/feature-friday-the-logged-out-experience)*