When designing a sign-up or login page, you must consider it from the user's point of view. Users have an onboarding experience on sign-up and login pages, so you want to ensure they don't feel confused or frustrated.

Thus, a well-designed login page is key to your site's UX process. It helps draw visitors to your site and converts visitors into leads, and having a friendly portal is important. This highlights the necessity for a straightforward login page that does not overwhelm users and allows them to login in just a few steps.

Our experience of 12 years of making websites for industry leaders makes us capable of giving recommendations. We pride ourselves on creating sites that look great and work well. That's why we will discuss the best strategies and examples of excellent sign-up and login page design—and provide great examples to inspire you.

Table of Contents

Make it obvious
Possibility to sign-up with social media accounts - one click
Avoid asking for password confirmation
Signal the caps lock option
Be consistent with your words
Instant input validation is required
Users need to know password requirements
Button labels should relate to the action performed
Switch between login and sign-up modes
Instead of using a username, use email
Allow easy password recovery
Split up the registration process
Provide a remember me option
Wrapping-up

Make it obvious

Make it clear where the login area is. If the user has to search for the login area, they’ll be frustrated and less likely to sign up.

Gmail's login page
Gmail’s login page.

Possibility to sign-up with social media accounts - one click

Signing up for a new application using existing social media accounts is becoming popular among users. This process is quick and efficient, as there is no need to create a new account and provide all the information from scratch. Actually, 86% of users are often annoyed by the need to create new accounts on websites, and 88% use social media to log in.  So when users only need to click on a social media sign-up button to get into the application, they feel more comfortable. It will also make the sign-up process more social and engaging, making it more likely for new users to share your website with their friends and colleagues. Also, signing in with a social media account is an advantage for the company since, in most cases, it will have access to more information that social media provides about the user—demographics, interests, behaviours, etc.

By surveying their users, a company discovered which social media platforms are most popular to sign up for. According to their stats, users prefer Google (70.97%), followed by Facebook (19.69%), and then Twitter (9.32%).
Does it mean the users should use Google or Facebook? It depends on your target. But your users usually sign in using the social they care less about because of security concerns, such as Gmail or Facebook.

Medium's login page
Medium’s login page.

Avoid asking for password confirmation

Websites often ask users to confirm their password when they log in. This security precaution has become standard practice since reporting the first data breaches, and the Confirm Password field helps users avoid misspelling their passwords while signing up for the app. While it makes sense that websites would want to do this, it’s counterproductive. Password confirmation creates a false sense of security. In this process, you must first enter a password twice if it doesn't match the system's requirements. However, the user is unable to see or locate the error. Because of this, they should remove both passwords and re-type them again without any idea. As a result, users' frustration will rise.

Providing a Show Password option with the Password field is a better solution that is both fast and efficient. The users can click the option and see the password they are entering, which makes instant corrections simple.

Ikea's login page
IKEA's login page.

Signal the caps lock option

Users may type an incorrect password if they are unaware of whether the Caps Lock key is on or off. This will result in an error when the app or website's set password doesn’t match when a user signs in. So you should ensure that you notify users when they enter passwords in the input field to avoid any unexpected errors when reusing the password.

GitHub's login page
GitHub's login page.


Be consistent with your words

Worldwide, the most common phrase appears to be "sign in," according to Google Trends. Although "sign in," "login," "log in," and "log on" are synonyms, "sign in" seems to be the most popular term. What's important from a UX perspective is that you choose the same term in every spot. You shouldn't use "sign in" in one place and "login" in another, for example. However, if you do use "sign in," you should use "sign out" instead of "logout."

It might seem like a small detail, but it's important to maintain consistency throughout your website or app. This will help visitors feel more at ease and less confused when using your product.

The Washington Post's login page
The Washington Post's sign-in page.


Instant input validation is required

Using input validation on your sign-up and login pages improves their usability. The validation makes the sign-up process easier, prevents errors, and quickly recognizes and corrects the feedback, knowing that the input is correct.

When offering helpful instant validation, consider a few critical factors. Include a useful error message that explains the problem and how to fix it and helps the user build trust in your product. And only display the message when the user has recently left the input field.

But consider that we want to help the user as much as possible. We must remember that everything that helps the users also helps hackers. For example: When a password and an email don't match, it would be more beneficial for the user to display something like "Wrong email" or "Wrong password" because he would know which field is incorrect.

On the other hand, this would also remove 50% of a hacker's work since he knows that this email has an account on that website and only needs to change the password field. Because of this, a message like "Invalid combination" would be preferable since it doesn't give away any info to hackers but still informs the user about what is happening and why he couldn't log in.

Also, make the sign-up process easier by only asking for necessary information. Everything that isn't necessary for account creation should go to the in-app onboarding, where the user can add more personalized information to customize the platform to his needs. By doing this, we avoid dropping rates due to too complex processes. You don't want to frustrate users with a long, tedious form where they have to spend a bunch of time selecting what they don't need.

Evernote's login page
Evernote’s login page.

UX Audit

Users need to know password requirements

Never presume that users are aware of strong password rules. Require passwords near the control so that users can see them.

Do not hide the password requirements in the default view; only display them when the user enters a weak password. In addition to wasting the users’ time, this will also decrease their trust in your product.

AirBnB's login page
Airbnb's sign-up page.


Button labels should relate to the action performed

If there are multiple sign-up options, ensure the button label clearly indicates which option the user selects. This will eliminate confusion and help users move through the sign-up process more quickly. For example, let’s say you have two different plans: the basic and the pro plan. If you have two sign-up options, one for the basic plan and one for the pro plan, ensure that you undoubtedly indicate which option the user selects.

AWWWARDS's login page
AWWWARDS' login page.

Switch between login and sign-up modes

You want users to know where to go if they want to sign-up or log in to your website. It isn't enjoyable if a user cannot find the sign-up or login button on a web page.

You can use different colours, layouts, and copies to distinguish your login fields from your registration fields.

Diprella's login page
Login interaction for Diprella

Instead of using a username, use email

Have your user sign up using their email address or phone number instead of a username. Users sometimes have to give up on selecting a unique username if one is unavailable, making it challenging to remember usernames for multiple sites. It is better to ask for registration details rather than users' usernames to save them the trouble of coming up with and remembering one, making the login process much simpler.

This will also give you a way to contact the user if needed which can be very useful to your company:

1. Marketing purposes: If you want to send out messaging or even a campaign.

2. Customer service and support team: If you notice the user is not engaging with your product, you have a second touchpoint to communicate with the user directly and try to win him back.

LinkedIn's login page
LinkedIn’s login page.

Allow easy password recovery

It’s also essential to provide an easy password recovery process. Users will inevitably forget their passwords or have them hacked, and you want to make it easy for them to recover their accounts. You can do this by allowing users to reset their passwords via email, giving them the option to add a backup phone number or security questions, or allowing them to use a trusted account.

DropoBox's login page
Dropbox's sign-in page.

Split up the registration process

Users can manage lots of data more efficiently with a multi-step form. They can concentrate on a specific category of data at a time.

Most websites require users to create an account before using it. When designing your sign-up form, you can split up the registration process into different steps to make it easier and less confusing for new users.

You might want to split up the registration process into three steps:

  • The first step could be to enter the user’s details.
  • The second step could be to choose a username.
  • The third step could be to enter the user’s password.

Splitting up the registration process will make it easier for new users to sign up for your site and understand the different steps involved.

Don't forget that designing a multi-step form is critical in making it user-friendly for the user. Make sure that the steps have appropriate names, that the user can easily jump between them, and that the user can see a summary of the data before submitting the form.

This will also give the user a sense of accomplishment since we like to complete tasks and see that we are getting closer to the end of something.

An example of good practice is a "thank you" message at the end of the flow, so the user feels his effort is valued.

Uber's login page
Uber's sign-in page - step 1.

Provide a remember me option

An explicit Remember Me option makes it easier for users to express whether they want the site to remember the credentials when returning. They may uncheck the box if they do not want the site to remember their email address, thus making it simpler for another person to guess their password.

There are two ways to do this:

  • Users can select the remember me option during the sign-up process, and their email address will be saved, so they don't have to type it again the next time they log in.
  • Users can select the option to remember their email address after they log in. It will save their email address, so they don't have to remember it.
Mailchimp's login page
Mailchimp's log in page.

Wrapping-up

In this article, we have given you the best practices for designing a sign-up and login page. But you always need to pay attention to suit your needs based on your audience and project goals. The more effort you put into your sign-up, and login pages, the more likely users will feel motivated to sign up and log in.

So you must create an engaging and accessible experience for your users throughout their onboarding process. If they're having problems, you must guide them through the process. Some things to keep in mind are creating a user-friendly login and sign-up process and being transparent about your sign-up and login process.

If you want to improve your website's sign-up and login experiences, you can get in touch with Imaginary Cloud.


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