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If your goal is ease of use for the end user to maximize sales, then you could reduce the friction some while still gaining most of the benefits. As was mentioned before, don't make the verification required to process the transaction, but rather do it after the fact. There's really no need for the user to enter a code, most places just send a link with a unique code in the URL. User clicks the link and the email is verified. Show the user a notice on login that their email needs to be verified still, and possibly lock out their account until verification is complete after some time. If it were me, I'd probably have a process such as: User selects a subscription type Gather account & payment information Create account, send verification email Let the user access what they paid for. After 3-7 days, restrict the account if the email is still unverified. That works around potential email delays and gets the user to their content the quickest. You could do the double email field as an additional measure to try and catch people fat-fingering their email. In most cases though the user will probably enter it correctly, get the verification email, and click the link on their own time without issue. If the user does fat-finger their email (intentially enter an invalid one) they will get their content for a while, but then have to correct the problem. Allow a user to change their email if their account is restricted due to no verification. Depending on the level of security you want, maybe require the password as well to re-start the verification process. A third option to minimize end-user friction would be to let them use something like google, facebook or twitter to login instead of creating an account. A lot of people prefer that these days as it's one less account/password to have to remember. I know I personally am far more likely to hit the 'Login with Google' button than I am the 'Create an account' button.

That all depends on the person. Some will be fine, some won't, others will we be somewhere in between. To be honest, you'll never make everyone happy. The best you can do is try something and see how things go. If you're not getting the results you want, you can always adjust. Depending on how big your audience is and how much time you have for testing, you could develop 2 separate options of the sign-up process. One would require the users to validate the email address. The other would skip the validation. You could then use A/B testing to see which option results in more website signups. More information about A/B testing can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A/B_testing

Use exec.