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Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

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Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#71

Post by simonh »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #15
blntechie wrote: post #11

This is so common nowadays that for many sites I have the direct login page bookmarked. It indirectly implies that once you sign-up, the company stops caring about you. At-least for me.

It implies that because it’s literally true. Not a complete loss of care, but it makes sense to hide the sign in button because users who are already signed up are already invested, and less likely to abandon the service. The front pages main job is to grow the company by attracting new users, and a sign in button for users who aren’t going anywhere anyways gets in the way of that.

Inconveniencing either current or prospective customers never ‘makes sense’. It’s not like you have a fixed amount of inconvenience you have to distribute.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#72

Post by emilsedgh »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #63

A couple of frequent mistakes with signin which are usually caused by junior product owners/ux persons not reflecting on what they are doing and blindly copying what they believe is the way to do things. - Having confusing language and poor differentiation between the sign in and sign up form. Symptom, users start filling in the wrong form only to realize their mistake. - Separating the password from the email field…

> Separating the password from the email field with an extra mouse click sucks if you are using a password manager.

If I understand correctly, the reason behind this pattern is SSO.

Most websites are gaining SSO capabilities. Before asking for your email/user, they don't really now if you're gonna login using password, or you should be redirected to an IdentityProvider.

I'd be happy to know if there are better patterns here but I think password managers should get a bit smarter and work with this trend.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#73

Post by alpaca128 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #21
hellotomyrars wrote: post #6

Semi-related: The trend of the not having a log in button and only a sign up button, requiring multiple clicks just to login. I get that less friction for a new user is better being the thinking but I truly hate having to go through multiple pages just to sign in. What happened to having sign in/sign up being on the same page? Seems the simple and easy, as well as lowest friction way of splitting the difference betwe…

I'm sure UX research shows that the login button is seldom used on a particular site, therefore not that important. Why seldom used? Because you stay logged in for a long time. Is UX bull on this issue? Maybe, but if you are logged in for a long time, and then you come to log in when you've been logged out, it might be that you accept the lousy experience on this issue because you actually want to use the site... all…

UX research also shows that one of the most important things is consistency. Internal consistency as well as consistency with other websites the user is familiar with.

99% of sites don't have so many features and sections that they'd need to omit some of them from the landing page. But for some reason they think replacing UI elements with screen-filling fancy animations and a lot of empty space inbetween is somehow a good thing. I never saw any upside in this.

I have a short attention span and am easily distracted, and modern UI trends are catastrophic from my perspective. I don't care about a fancy "hero area", just give me a menu bar that stays in the same place and gets me anywhere I need.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#75

Post by egeozcan »

emilsedgh wrote: post #72
jillesvangurp wrote: post #63

A couple of frequent mistakes with signin which are usually caused by junior product owners/ux persons not reflecting on what they are doing and blindly copying what they believe is the way to do things. - Having confusing language and poor differentiation between the sign in and sign up form. Symptom, users start filling in the wrong form only to realize their mistake. - Separating the password from the email field…

> Separating the password from the email field with an extra mouse click sucks if you are using a password manager. If I understand correctly, the reason behind this pattern is SSO. Most websites are gaining SSO capabilities. Before asking for your email/user, they don't really now if you're gonna login using password, or you should be redirected to an IdentityProvider. I'd be happy to know if there are better patter…

Honestly asking, what's wrong with "Password (Leave empty if you're using {Name of SSO}): ____"?

If you are going to tell that may confuse users, I think not having a password field is already confusing the other half, while also not being password-manager-friendly.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#76

Post by nickjj »

I'm surprised so many folks are saying DigitalOcean is bad at this in the comments.

Their home page on a desktop has 2 equally sized sign in and sign up buttons in the top right. The sign up button is filled and the sign in button is outlined. In mobile view it's pretty bad, they still show both buttons side by side but they're buried under a hundred miles of product links.

Besides the buttons being pushed so far down on mobile, is that design really hard to find the sign in link -- specifically on desktop?

Interestingly enough Stripe has only a sign in button in their nav bar https://stripe.com/ for non-logged in potential customers. I just checked with an incognito window. I guess they determined users who sign up mostly come from the main area of their home page or through another page reached from their nav menu (products, use cases, etc.), not so much from a sign up button near the sign in button.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#77

Post by smcl »

Would it not be better if they found a different way to differentiate between the "Sign In" and "Try it FREE" buttons altogether? By using that cookie approach they've just introduced some inconsistency that may not be clear to users - e.g. you're on a different device (or an in-private window, or you cleared your cookies, or on a browser you don't normally use, etc) and you click the highlighted button and it takes you to a sign-up form instead of a login prompt.

While they say "Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button...", they've implemented "Sometimes make customers hunt for the Sign In button..." which is arguably worse. It's good that someone else has identified this as a problem (it's annoyed me for a while) I just don't think this solution knocks it out of the park.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#78

Post by fckthisguy »

egeozcan wrote: post #75
emilsedgh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Separating the password from the email field with an extra mouse click sucks if you are using a password manager. If I understand correctly, the reason behind this pattern is SSO. Most websites are gaining SSO capabilities. Before asking for your email/user, they don't really now if you're gonna login using password, or you should be redirected to an IdentityProvider. I'd be happy to know if there are better patter…

Honestly asking, what's wrong with "Password (Leave empty if you're using {Name of SSO}): ____"? If you are going to tell that may confuse users, I think not having a password field is already confusing the other half, while also not being password-manager-friendly.

I don't think making the user read instructions is the solution. Most (myself included) will begin typing before they finish reading.

The current trend to only show the password box after the username is provided doesn't have to be bad for password managers. I use loads of sites that do this (so they can support SSO) and they just use hidden form fields so the password managers know what to do.

I'd be curious to hear any suggestions you have for password managers to improve here though. I can't think of anything short of a .well-defined login route.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#79

Post by fckthisguy »

switch007 wrote: post #67
Anon1096 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vanguard is another one that drives me up the wall. Going to Vanguard.com doesn't have a sign in area to autofill with a password manager; you have to go to the personal investors page. And sessions are hard limited to 15 minutes so you have to jump through these hoops every time. I have the correct page bookmarked but even on that page the log in boxes don't appear until half way down.

The same Vanguard that could have millions of dollars of investments in your account? What’s the appropriate time out?

I don't think the criticism is the logout time, it's the fact that you have to hunt for the button. The logout time only exasperates the problem.

Re: Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website

#80

Post by quickthrower2 »

philosopher1234 wrote: post #15
blntechie wrote: post #11

This is so common nowadays that for many sites I have the direct login page bookmarked. It indirectly implies that once you sign-up, the company stops caring about you. At-least for me.

It implies that because it’s literally true. Not a complete loss of care, but it makes sense to hide the sign in button because users who are already signed up are already invested, and less likely to abandon the service. The front pages main job is to grow the company by attracting new users, and a sign in button for users who aren’t going anywhere anyways gets in the way of that.

Churn is a thing though and is as important as conversions
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