Question: As part of a registration form I am building I need to, at some point, differentiate between whether the user is a 'student' or 'professor'. I've seen this handled in two different ways and was curious if anyone had any thoughts or research on the benefits/downsides of each way.

Two separate sign-up buttons on homepage

[www.lore.com](http://www.lore.com) and
[www.piazza.com](http://www.piazza.com)

One sign-up button, then two choices as part of the sign-up flow

[www.schoology.com](http://www.schoology.com)

The first method is one less click for the user but can potentially make the homepage more confusing with two call to action buttons next to each other. Also, with the first method, you couldn't just have a single 'sign-up' button elsewhere on the site, you'd have to provide two 'sign-up' options at all times.

Answer: 
As long as you are not capturing different attributes for different types of users, don't give a different sign-up links. If the attributes you are capturing are almost same, then no need to give two sign-up links.

A fitting example of different sign-ups for different type of users would be www.iwriter.com where you can sign-up as publisher and advertiser.
I would say that it depends on what you are doing with the distinction.

For example - if the product that the "professor" gets is substantially the same that the product and benefits that the "student", and you're asking for the same information on both, then I'd stick to a single sign up button.

If the professor is getting a different kind of product, or if the value that the professor gets is from the same product is very different from that of the student, then separate sign up forms may be more effective. 

For example you could trickle copy highlighting the value that the professor gets on the professor sign up page. Ditto for the student.

Depending on the value of the different customer types to the business it might also be of value to have separate sign up forms so you can track and optimise the conversion funnel for each group separately.