This is the half of Documents your customers experience, and it is the half that determines whether agreements get signed.
No account, ever
The recipient clicks a link in their email and signs. There is nothing to install, no password to choose, no account to verify.
The link itself is the authorisation. It is unique to that person and that document, which is why forwarding one matters and is covered below.
This is not a convenience feature, it is the whole design. Every step between somebody and a signature loses a proportion of them, and account creation loses the most.
Why the steps are separate
Three screens rather than one, and each separation is doing something.
Identity before the document means the consent is given before reading rather than bundled into the act of signing.
Review as its own step means the document is genuinely presented, not shown as a thumbnail beside a button.
Confirmation last and alone means signing is a deliberate act. A single control that both displays and executes is a control people press by accident.
The three steps
Identity
They type their full name and agree to sign electronically.
That consent is not decoration. Electronic signature law in most places rests on the signer having agreed to transact electronically, and this is where that agreement is recorded.
The name they type is recorded alongside everything else, so a mismatch between it and the invited name is visible afterwards.
Review
The document, in full, exactly as it will be executed. The fields they need to complete are highlighted so nothing is missed on page four.
They can read the whole thing. That sounds obvious and is the step some tools skip in the name of speed.
Confirm
One deliberate action to sign.
Separating review from confirmation is intentional. A single button that both shows and signs a document is a button people press by accident, and an accidental signature is worth nothing to anybody.
What the signer sees first
The email carries the sender's name, the document's title and a single link. No attachment and nothing to install.
The page opens directly on the document. There is no landing screen, no marketing and no sign-up prompt, which is deliberate: everything between arriving and signing is something to remove rather than something to add.
Several signers
Where a document needs more than one, each gets their own link and signs independently.
In parallel, everyone can go at once, and the document sits in partially signed until the last one is done.
In sequence, the next link is only issued once the previous person has signed, so nobody receives a document out of turn.
What is recorded
Who signed, the name they typed, when, from what address, and what they were shown.
That last part matters more than it sounds. The record captures the document as presented, so a later argument about what somebody agreed to is answerable with evidence rather than recollection.
Reading it before signing
Recipients occasionally ask whether they can keep a copy before signing. They can read the whole document on the page, and the executed copy reaches them afterwards.
Where somebody genuinely needs to circulate it internally before signing, the honest answer is to say so and give them time rather than to press. A document forwarded to three colleagues and signed a week later is a better outcome than one signed hastily and disputed later.
Links are personal
A signing link belongs to one person. Forwarding it means somebody else can sign in their name, and the record will show the forwarded circumstances rather than nothing, but it will not have prevented it.
If the wrong person received the document, cancel it and reissue to the right one. Do not ask them to forward it.
When a link expires
Documents have a validity, and an expired link stops working rather than silently continuing.
The recipient sees that it has expired. The sender reissues, which produces a fresh link. Nothing is lost and nothing has to be rebuilt.
What signing does not require
Worth knowing so you can answer confidently when a cautious recipient asks.
No account. No app. No card details, ever. No document download to sign, though a copy is available afterwards.
If anything claiming to be one of your documents asks for a payment or a password, it is not one of your documents, and that is worth telling customers who deal with you regularly.
Helping recipients along
Most signature delays are not reluctance, they are ordinary inbox failure.
Tell them it is coming, and from which address.
Say what it is in one sentence. "The services agreement we discussed, two signatures, about three minutes."
Check the viewed state before chasing. Somebody who has not opened it needs a nudge; somebody who opened it twice and did not sign has a question, and those are different conversations.
Ask on the phone if it has been a week. A single call resolves most stalled documents, and almost none of them are about the document.
Stronger identity, when you need it
The ordinary flow establishes that somebody with access to a named email address signed, having asserted their name and consented.
That is proportionate for most commercial agreements and it is not proportionate for everything. Where more is warranted, a document can require additional checks before signing.
The trade is real: every additional check reduces the proportion of people who complete. Apply it to the agreements where the stakes justify it, rather than everywhere as a matter of policy, or the policy will quietly cost you signatures on documents that never needed it.
Declining
Not every document sent is a document that should be signed.
Where somebody disagrees with what they have been sent, the useful response is a conversation rather than a signature, and the sender sees the document sitting in viewed rather than getting a false completion. Chase it as a question, not as an oversight.
On a phone
The signing page works on a phone, which is where a meaningful share of signatures happen, usually within minutes of the email arriving.
Worth remembering when designing templates: a document that needs careful reading of a dense schedule will be read on a small screen, and that is an argument for putting the important terms where they can be found rather than burying them.
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