[HN Gopher] Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on ...
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       Don't make customers hunt for the Sign In button on your website
        
       Author : rfelix2121
       Score  : 400 points
       Date   : 2021-05-03 01:01 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.stunning.co)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.stunning.co)
        
       | joshxyz wrote:
       | Fucking digitalocean.com geez
        
       | zero_deg_kevin wrote:
       | I find it hilarious that this article is on a SaaS site's blog
       | and has no sign-in button. Maybe I missed the "why this doesn't
       | apply to this site" portion of TFA, though.
        
         | wizzwizz4 wrote:
         | Their blog has no sign-in button. Their main page
         | (https://stunning.co/) does.
        
       | usrusr wrote:
       | A tiny button is far from the worst: try logging into your paid
       | account on the mobile website of a service that not only has a
       | free tier but also an app! (I'm looking at you, Strava)
        
       | wruza wrote:
       | Another annoyance is when you can't access their landing page
       | until logging out (like visiting example.com redirects or just
       | hyperscripts you into the dashboard if a session cookie exists).
       | You log out, look for the info and then search for a login div
       | again, where you have to spend another minute differentiating
       | between the "bring on", "chime in", "lay along", "sing in",
       | "growl at", "give up" and other low-contrast cretinisms in place
       | where explicit login and register links should be.
        
       | solipsism wrote:
       | Literally never had this problem.
        
       | jeffreyrogers wrote:
       | Some services make the register button easy to find but you have
       | to hunt for the sign in button. Paying customers matter as much
       | as prospective ones!
        
       | nickjj wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | thomasahle wrote:
         | If you shrink the website to half your screen width, the "Sign
         | In" button goes away, and there is only "Sign Up".
         | 
         | You can get to "Sign In" by clicking the burger menu and scroll
         | sufficiently far down, or by searching. You can't find it by
         | simply searching on the front page, or by just clicking the
         | burger menu. I guess that's what people mean by "having to go
         | hunting for the sign in button".
        
           | nickjj wrote:
           | > If you shrink the website to half your screen width, the
           | "Sign In" button goes away, and there is only "Sign Up".
           | 
           | Interesting, I don't see that here. I wonder if they're A / B
           | testing layouts and my IP is locked into a specific choice.
           | 
           | If I open the page in Chrome or Firefox I see both buttons
           | side by side and then if I slowly make the window smaller
           | (starting at 2560 width btw), it eventually gets to the point
           | where both buttons disappear inside of the hamburger menu
           | when the buttons get too close to the left nav. The sign up
           | button is never visible on its own.
           | 
           | Which browser do you use?
        
             | thomasahle wrote:
             | One of the Sign Up buttons go into the burger menu, but the
             | really big one stays on the front page:
             | https://imgur.com/0bFzIiB
        
         | batch12 wrote:
         | I actually thought of DigitalOcean first when I saw the title
         | of the article. I somehow always end up clicking sign up
         | instead of sign in.
        
       | Softcadbury wrote:
       | It's even worse when they use terms sign in and sign up, like
       | Github! English is not my native language and it always confuses
       | me.
        
         | XargonEnder wrote:
         | English is my native language and this annoys me because it
         | slows me down
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | English is my native language and I still call it "login" and
         | "register", the words which were originally used and which I do
         | not see any reason to change.
        
         | thrower123 wrote:
         | GitHub is awful for this. If you're not signed in, the whole
         | page is taken up with a giant signup UI, then in the top right
         | there is another signup button. Next to the signup button,
         | there is a sign-in button, but it has no border and is so
         | deemphasized that if you don't know it's there it blends into
         | the other useless links in the top bar.
        
         | BiteCode_dev wrote:
         | I end up regularly on the sign up page on github by mistake
         | because of this.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | Tade0 wrote:
         | Yeah, what ever happened to Create account/Register and Log in?
         | 
         | Why have two very different options with almost the same label?
        
           | Kwpolska wrote:
           | Heh, there was a time when Microsoft's Polish translators
           | (who I'm mildly convinced are robots in disguise) decided
           | "Sign in" should be translated as ,,Zarejestruj". Which is
           | what everyone else called the "new account" button. They
           | managed to fix it since then to a much more reasonable and
           | much less confusing ,,Zaloguj sie".
        
             | Dort wrote:
             | Translators for the Dutch version of Windows 10 are
             | definitely robots. For example, in the save webpage dialog
             | of Edge, they translated "Webpage, complete" to "Webpagina,
             | voltooid". Voltooid means completed, as in a completed
             | task. The correct translation would have been "Webpagina
             | (volledig)".
             | 
             | Similar errors are often found throughout programs new with
             | Windows 10 and sentence structures are directly copied from
             | English. I have never found a single error in Windows XP/7.
        
             | Tade0 wrote:
             | Oh, I remember that incident. Since then I've become
             | suspicious of any translations from English to Polish.
             | 
             | Especially given that I have some insider knowledge on how
             | large publishers translate tech books and the way they do
             | it is, in one word, awful.
        
             | garaetjjte wrote:
             | >who I'm mildly convinced are robots in disguise
             | 
             | I think Windows translators are real humans, because
             | quality is much better than whatever Bing Translator spits
             | out (seriously, who thought it was good idea to
             | automatically redirect to Bing-translated MSDN pages), but
             | translated completely without any context. For example,
             | task manager now have RAM "Form factor" translated as
             | "Wspolczynnik postaci"...
        
       | thepra wrote:
       | I make it more explicit than anything >_>
       | https://quick.collanon.app
        
         | alvarlagerlof wrote:
         | Your website takes a lot of time to load
        
           | hactually wrote:
           | Wow... Yeah, gave up at 26 seconds.
           | 
           | Ooft.
        
       | PaywallBuster wrote:
       | AWS and recently Cloudflare too
        
         | scarface74 wrote:
         | As an AWS consultant, I work with a lot of client companies and
         | I'm often watching a screen share while they are navigating
         | through the console. I haven't seen one yet that actually logs
         | in to AWS directly and not use some type of SSO solution.
        
       | jasfi wrote:
       | Could the problem be "don't make me hunt for the x button"? After
       | all, not every button can be highlighted.
        
         | ajmadesc wrote:
         | No lol. For services, Try me, login, sign up. Three buttons.
         | Not that hard
        
       | zackkrida wrote:
       | Totally agree with the diagnosis of the problem but not the
       | solution. I don't think switching the color is good UX--if I know
       | the top of the page has a big green button', I'm not going to
       | expect that button to have conditional behavior.
        
         | cgriswald wrote:
         | I think the solution has a more fundamental flaw. Reasons why
         | people are no longer logged in:
         | 
         | 1. The website timed them out.
         | 
         | 2. They pressed "log out."
         | 
         | 3. They/their browser deleted their cookies.
         | 
         | 4. They are on a different device.
         | 
         | 5. They are in private/incognito mode in a new tab or window
         | (say after clicking a link to confirm their email address at
         | signup).
         | 
         | To the extent the solution works at all it only works for (1)
         | and (2).
        
       | smcl wrote:
       | 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.
        
       | SLWW wrote:
       | This is about the most agreeable HN post I've seen in months.
       | WHY? Why do they do this? Why does every single "new" and
       | "cutting-edge" idea has a website that takes me more then 30
       | seconds (absolute worst case) to find the very thing I need to
       | login?
       | 
       | Why do companies like Twilio make me put my email in first and
       | hit the arrow before i can even type in my password? (it confuses
       | me and the password manager) and adds at least 5 seconds to the
       | login process.
       | 
       | I ask... why?
        
         | bb101 wrote:
         | I've noticed this for years, and always wondered "Why?" myself.
         | Then I came across a UX blog where the author suggested doing
         | exactly this. Their reasoning being that new users aren't
         | familiar with your website, so they need a big garish button to
         | help them sign up easily, whereas regular users are familiar
         | with your website already so they will know where the Login
         | link resides.
         | 
         | I don't agree with it personally, I think it reflects an
         | organization where marketing is prioritised over customer
         | happiness.
        
         | saddestcatever wrote:
         | > Why do companies like Twilio make me put my email in first
         | and hit the arrow before i can even type in my password?
         | 
         | Because of lazy UX implementations of SSO.
         | 
         | You'll see logins like Google, where this is common. If you
         | submit an email that has an SSO authentication associated with
         | it, they can redirect you to the right auth form.
         | 
         | However, for everyone that's not an SSO login this is a worse
         | experience.
        
       | hcarvalhoalves wrote:
       | I swear, designers and developers are un-learning how to build
       | sites. Things that used to Just Work on the web (sign in,
       | scrolling, load speed, etc.) now merit an article.
        
         | epistasis wrote:
         | Every new generation has to either learn from the past or
         | reinvent from scratch. The web has always had lots of cargo-
         | cult copying of processes, because the most influential sites
         | always get copied in order to try to be more familiar.
         | 
         | And with the overwhelming complexity of current front end web
         | tech, it seems there's not much time left to put into
         | thoughtful user experience.
        
         | Nextgrid wrote:
         | It's less about un-learning and more about the entire market
         | changing, compromised by seemingly-endless VC money that
         | rewards growth and "engagement" more than actual profits
         | derived from value delivered to users.
         | 
         | Nowadays a large chunk of online services' objective is more to
         | "engage" you and sign you up to some bullshit newsletter or
         | sales call rather than actually provide you a service that
         | you'd be happy to pay for. Marketing has become the primary
         | objective, with "deliver value to the user" a neglected side-
         | effect.
        
           | hcarvalhoalves wrote:
           | See, I believe this is not a good enough argument.
           | 
           | This would be the same as excusing falling bridges and
           | crashing planes on whoever's money speaking louder.
           | 
           | If the people who actually _build_ anything - the actual
           | developers, engineers, etc. - don't build things up to
           | standard or can't manage executive expectations, there's no
           | hope; we'll live in a capitalocracy ruled by MBAs.
           | 
           | People building things need to care about the crap they ship
           | because they'll have to use it too. There's way too many
           | people in the industry not caring, just happy to collect a
           | paycheck.
        
       | baybal2 wrote:
       | I just started to notice... some websites change places of sign
       | up, and sign in buttons.
       | 
       | Who in the world came up with this?
        
       | jillesvangurp wrote:
       | 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 with an extra
       | mouse click sucks if you are using a password manager. Doubly so
       | on mobile where using password managers involve a bit of fiddly
       | interactions. Having to do this twice sucks. If you do this, at
       | least have one of the fields in the dom tree but hidden so that
       | it gets filled with one click via your password manager.
       | 
       | - Not making the login form password manager friendly my not
       | sticking to conventions for field names for this.
        
         | 725686 wrote:
         | As a non-native English speaker I always confused "sign in" and
         | "sing up". I would prefer totally different words like "Enter"
         | and "Register".
        
           | kijin wrote:
           | Yeah, those two phrases look too similar. What happened to
           | good old "login" anyway?
        
             | notatoad wrote:
             | from the meeting where it was explained to me that we
             | couldn't use "login", it is too technical-sounding and not
             | friendly enough. "log in" is computer language, "sign in"
             | is human language.
        
               | yoz-y wrote:
               | What is the origin of sign in? I imagine the old days
               | when you needed to sign a book when entering premises? Is
               | this the floppy disk for save action of web jargon?
        
           | bluedino wrote:
           | You want to enter a site you're already on?
        
             | 725686 wrote:
             | As I said, English is not my native tongue. Choose whatever
             | synonyms are appropriate. Even google translate gets
             | confused. If I enter "sing in" it translates it to Spanish
             | as "registrarse" which is actually "sign up"! How about
             | using enroll, or register instead of "sign up"?
        
         | yoz-y wrote:
         | I feel that lately password managers (at leat 1Password, which
         | is what I use) have been working even with split forms. So at
         | least there is that.
        
         | tomxor wrote:
         | Another one:
         | 
         | - Defocusing input fields in the middle of typing login
         | information
         | 
         | I guess i'm in the minority these days but I like to keep
         | strong passwords in my head.
         | 
         | This usually happens due to some side effect of the login page
         | being absolutely fucking massive and not fully loading or
         | executing before I start to fill in the form, then one of three
         | things usually happens in order of frequency:
         | 1. cookie banner blocks input and defocuses       2. it
         | defocuses for no apparent reason (I suspect MVC "rendering")
         | 3. it "helpfully" re-focuses on the first input element
         | 
         | The last one is the most annoying because in the worst case i
         | type my password in visible text.
         | 
         | Only login I regularly use that does not suffer from this
         | problem (or any others!), is HN:
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/login is 1.07KB
         | 
         | Causes only one secondary HTTP request to favicon at 7.66KB
         | which doesn't interfere with the page in any way.
        
           | G4BB3R wrote:
           | Since I started using facebook (2010) until today, it happens
           | to unfocus and is very weird. If I go to login page, start
           | typing my email very fast, it lose focus after 1s even before
           | I finish typing.
        
           | jan_Inkepa wrote:
           | > - Defocusing input fields in the middle of typing login
           | information
           | 
           | Browser url-bars are shooketh...
        
             | tomxor wrote:
             | The great internet speed divide has no patience for loading
             | superfluous crap that is wasting their lives.
        
           | Timpy wrote:
           | >defocuses for no apparent reason
           | 
           | I use Surfing Keys, a vim-like plugin for browsers. When
           | inputs defocus unexpectedly while I'm typing all of the
           | navigation shortcuts kick in and it's like "roll a d100 to
           | see which random negative consequence you get." Usually I at
           | least lose the page that I'm on and I have to start the form
           | over.
        
         | majormajor wrote:
         | At the last big subscription company I was at, it wasn't a
         | product owner seniority thing, it was a organizational problem.
         | 
         | Signup is a big thing with lots of stakeholders and interest.
         | User acquisition is an easy metric to track for business
         | health. Everyone wants to push not-logged-in users to sign up.
         | 
         | Ownership of logging in was much less clear. It's not a full
         | time job for a person or team in the same way customer
         | acquisition is. So you put some buttons/links on the page, but
         | then there's no single owner of them to get pissed off when
         | other teams start moving their shit around.
         | 
         | (The other aspect here is that the website was a declining
         | platform compared to the apps, where a not-logged-in user is
         | much more captive and there's a more obvious single "login or
         | signup" landing page point. On the web most media sites, at
         | least, try to provide SOME sort of preview/partially functional
         | experience version of the logged-in view, which wasn't designed
         | with a prominent "SIGN IN" button in mind.)
        
           | kevincox wrote:
           | This is what is screams to me. When I have a hard time
           | finding the sign-in link it says "We don't care about our
           | existing users, we only care about getting new ones." It is a
           | big red flag for me these days.
        
         | tyingq wrote:
         | Also, blocking right-click->paste is REALLY irritating.
        
         | Aeolun wrote:
         | > Separating the password from the email field with an extra
         | mouse click
         | 
         | I think they mostly do this so SSO customers do not
         | accidentally enter their company password on the site every
         | time.
        
           | johannes1234321 wrote:
           | Right, often those sites have customers with different SSO
           | systems. I type my company mail address and am redirected to
           | company SSO.
           | 
           | I like this more than other sites where I have to find the
           | right button between different login options (sign in with
           | google, sign in with facebook, sign in with sso, ...) and
           | then have to type the company name ... whatever might be the
           | choice the admins did there that time ...
           | 
           | I also think that approach was initially created by Yahoo! So
           | they could shown the user's avatar on the password page to
           | prove authority. Not sure whether that still is a thing
           | somewhere, considering that a recent trend is not to verify
           | whether an account exists ...
        
           | jonplackett wrote:
           | This is always still annoying since you type in your email,
           | then get sent off to your SSO page - and they can never be
           | bothered to post your email over, so now you have to enter it
           | again.
        
             | thrower123 wrote:
             | I don't know if all of the SSO login sites do this, but
             | Office 365 authentication makes it a huge pain in the ass
             | to get back to the page that you tried to login from;
             | usually you get dumped back to the home page, and have to
             | try to navigate back to where ever it was you were.
             | 
             | Azure Active Directory does not make it easy to do this,
             | with the way you have to explicitly whitelist post-back
             | URLs, or else you get the dreaded login.microsoft.com 401
             | page of death, where you have to parse out information
             | buried in the query-string to determine why you didn't get
             | redirected properly (usually it is a trailing slash on the
             | URL... %2F)
        
             | alex_anglin wrote:
             | Agreed. It always seemed to me as analogous to the
             | situation whereby one enters some identifying information
             | in a phone prompt, only to have to spell it out again for a
             | CSR. Both are just plain bad design.
        
             | Aeolun wrote:
             | I kind of agree, but that seems more of a problem with the
             | target system.
             | 
             | Anyway my name is remembered on my company SSO form, and I
             | never sign in as someone else.
        
         | CodesInChaos wrote:
         | > - Separating the password from the email field
         | 
         | This is useful if you support authentication methods other than
         | password
         | 
         | > - Not making the login form password manager friendly my not
         | sticking to conventions for field names for this
         | 
         | Instead of relying on heuristics based on field names, it's
         | also possible to annotate the field with the autocomplete
         | attribute
         | 
         | https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes...
        
           | kkirsche wrote:
           | You can still separate them and have a hidden password field
           | for a password manager to bypass the other page or pass it
           | through to the next page.
        
             | numbsafari wrote:
             | 1Password manages to handle this just fine, even without
             | the hidden password field trick. Perhaps we just need
             | better password managers.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | Even if password managers handle the two-page scenario
               | you still have the delay of loading the second page. On
               | high-latency connections this is a major problem.
        
         | emilsedgh wrote:
         | > 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.
        
           | jillesvangurp wrote:
           | Most websites I've used where this is a thing, definitely
           | don't do this. All the projects where I dealt with PMs /
           | designers insisting on this they would not even had a clue
           | about what SSO was or how it impacts their UX. There are
           | plenty of websites out there with sane login flows.
           | 
           | Passwords work off well publicized naming conventions. That's
           | why they work on the vast majority of websites. The problem
           | is junior developers not knowing that is a thing getting
           | creative with naming things. No-one on such projects even
           | thinks about testing this or pointing out to their PMs that
           | this does not work. 9 out of 10 times you'd get the response
           | to "please fix that". Because why would you not.
        
           | dec0dedab0de wrote:
           | They could just check if the username needs to be redirected,
           | and if they do then ignore the password. It wouldn't be that
           | hard.
           | 
           | The only downside is the user submitting a password they dont
           | need to, but if you're using js you could post the username
           | first and only post the password if needed. That would be the
           | same exact process, except from the users perspective it
           | would be seamless. You could even have it check the username
           | as they type, and lock the password field if its not needed.
        
             | scarface74 wrote:
             | I could see a lot of large companies that integrate with
             | other B2B sites recoil in horror with a UI that encourages
             | employees to enter their corporate email address _and_ a
             | password. Many employees would use their corporate
             | passwords.
        
             | notatoad wrote:
             | this is exactly the sort of thought process that leads to
             | terrible login flows. yes, it's technically possible, and
             | it works for you.
             | 
             | but the login flow is one area of your product that needs
             | to work for _everybody_. There 's plenty of features that
             | can be tailored to a power-user workflow because they're
             | the only people that will see it, but the sign-in flow is
             | not one of those. any confusing UI in your sign-in flow is
             | going to confuse your least-confident users. and asking
             | people using Facebook Sign-in to enter a password when they
             | haven't ever set a password for your site is _extremely_
             | confusing. all just to save a couple keystrokes for the
             | most-technically-competent users.
        
               | dec0dedab0de wrote:
               | Well for facebook, and any other big ones they could just
               | click "sign in with facebook" thats common enough.
               | 
               | The problem is when you have a bunch of enterprise
               | customers and you're not sure which custom login to use,
               | and you dont want to list all your clients.
               | 
               | Ideally, this is solved by the client company telling its
               | employees to use an internal link that authenticates and
               | redirects. Though I'm sure not all clients are capable of
               | this, and still want to use SSO. In that case, I think my
               | solution is much nicer than requiring a two step login.
        
           | egeozcan wrote:
           | 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.
        
             | criddell wrote:
             | Seems like password managers should be able to handle the
             | password being entered on the next page when there's no
             | input on the current page.
        
               | nerdponx wrote:
               | KeepassXC (and its browser extension KeepassXC-Browser)
               | does this. Not sure why anyone would even consider a
               | different password manager.
               | 
               | (Just don't forget to donate, if you have the means.)
        
               | jasdine817 wrote:
               | Because different people have different requirements.
        
               | kevincox wrote:
               | Firefox also handles every one of these perfectly. I
               | assume there is a hidden password field already but
               | whatever it is it doesn't cause me issues other than an
               | extra click.
        
             | fckthisguy wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | beforeolives wrote:
               | The Oreilly learning platform does this. Email and
               | password field on the same page and a message under the
               | email field
               | 
               | > Using Single Sign-on (SSO)? Simply enter your company
               | email address and click sign in.
               | 
               | Seems simple enough to me as a user, not sure how most
               | people interact with it though or how many companies A/B
               | test these things.
        
               | benhurmarcel wrote:
               | My company uses an SSO provider with Google Workspace.
               | Most employees have no idea about any of that, they
               | wouldn't know and probably would type their company
               | password there.
        
               | beforeolives wrote:
               | The password field disappears if you enter an SSO-
               | compatible email address.
        
               | johannes1234321 wrote:
               | Then you have to either leak a list of each customer to
               | the client to verify there or send each key stroke and
               | consider latency ...
        
       | csours wrote:
       | Fitbit does something related - the url for your tracking
       | dashboard is just fitbit.com, but when you go to fitbit.com, it's
       | just the frontpage of the website; until you log in, and then
       | navigate to your dashboard again.
       | 
       | This makes it very clear that 1: fitbit wants me to use the app,
       | and 2: fitbit wants to sell me stuff more than they want to help
       | me.
        
       | mhdhn wrote:
       | I personally definitely agree with "Don't make customers hunt for
       | the Sign In button on your website", since I find that so
       | annoying. I've come to expect this annoying behavior especially
       | from Y Combinator companies, ever since I read Paul Graham
       | opining that companies should actually emphasize the trial/test-
       | drive button, and deemphasize the sign-in button. He said that's
       | what Viaweb did, and they thought it made better business sense.
       | I just now tried a bit finding the essay where he states this,
       | but I gave up. Maybe someone here will offer it.
        
         | MattGaiser wrote:
         | Is it this?
         | 
         | https://mixergy.com/paul-graham-design/
         | 
         | Kind of along those lines.
        
       | musicale wrote:
       | Github hid their sign-in button and added annoying animations.
       | 
       | Why, github, why?!
        
         | pupdogg wrote:
         | This pisses the hell out of me becuase, due to my privacy
         | settings, I end up on their homepage a lot. Evidence just for
         | records: https://imgur.com/a/HfF9vUJ
        
       | globular-toast wrote:
       | I hate this so much. They've all copied each other to the extent
       | that having a hidden sign in button is requirement for a "modern"
       | site.
       | 
       | Back in the day it was the other way around. Sign in was primary
       | and sign up was secondary (often accompanied by something like
       | "don't have an account? Sign up"). You just know some busybody UX
       | person saw that and argued this was bad for new members. Well now
       | you've just screwed it up in the opposite direction. Well done.
        
       | darkwater wrote:
       | And this can be easily solvable by swapping the Sign up for Sign
       | In after the first time you logged in a browser cookiejar.
       | Obviously the devil is in the details, but it shouldn't be that
       | complex having a visible Sign Up for potential new users and a
       | visible Sign In for existing users...
        
         | imhoguy wrote:
         | Please don't! The worst thing is to swap meaning of a button at
         | exactly same placement. If you are forced to do it then at
         | least change background color and add some icon etc.
         | 
         | But nothing can beat MS Teams "Close" document preview button,
         | which once clicked, uncovers chat "Call" button. Add some laggy
         | nature of Teams and you call the entire channel/chat just by
         | trying to close an opened document with too many clicks.
        
           | darkwater wrote:
           | But that would not change "immediately". Basically if you
           | never logged in (in that browser) you see the "Sign up" more
           | prominently and once you registered, you are already logged
           | in (so you don't see anything at all) but if you do log out,
           | then you would see the "Log In" clearly (and the "Sign up"
           | will be somewhere also but not in the best spot).
        
         | johntash wrote:
         | This could make it even more annoying imo. Sometimes the sign
         | up button is the first thing you see, and then other times its
         | the sign in button. You'd end up clicking on one or the other
         | out of habit and realizing it was the wrong thing afterwards.
         | 
         | If I'm signing in, there's a good chance there is no cookie
         | saying I have ever signed in.
        
       | FriedrichN wrote:
       | I think changing the button styles based on cookies is not a good
       | thing either, it just adds a new kind of confusion. Just keep the
       | style consistent, give the login and sign up buttons a clear
       | distinct style and keep it that way.
        
       | fnord77 wrote:
       | sites that seem desperate to add new users do this.
        
       | blunte wrote:
       | Don't make customer hunt for anything on your website.
       | 
       | Prioritize features (ideally based on studying user behavior),
       | and make those features present and accessible. Hide the rest, if
       | necessary, behind some menu system or toggle.
       | 
       | The minimalism trend (perhaps a reaction to the early amazingly
       | busy Amazon UI?) has gone too far. One great (bad) example of
       | this is Parabol.co. We use it at my company, and it provides just
       | the right set of features we need. But for providing a relatively
       | small feature set, it seems to go out of its way to make it
       | difficult to know how to use those features. I only mention them
       | because they are a good example of this, but there are countless
       | other services that have user hostile (or frustrating)
       | interfaces.
        
       | spookyuser wrote:
       | https://headspace.com/ is such a good example of this, login
       | button is in probably the worst possible place on the page. And
       | to make it even worse your login sessions are invalidated almost
       | every day so you _have_ to login every time you use the website.
        
       | jFriedensreich wrote:
       | also please call it "log in" and "sign up" not "sign in", don't
       | make users work to use your products, buttons starting with the
       | same word are slower to parse.
        
       | tluyben2 wrote:
       | I was wondering if I was going blind for a while, staring seconds
       | at websites trying to find where to login. Now I do what 'the
       | computer illiterate' have apparently done for years; never go to
       | the sites themselves, just put 'DigitalOcean login' etc in the
       | addressbar (duckduckgo(or google)) and there you are.
        
         | notdang wrote:
         | And if you don't have an adblocker installed, the first 5
         | results will be adds which will get you to the home page, not
         | the login page. At least in this case you make them pay for it.
        
       | young_unixer wrote:
       | Discord is bad at this.
       | 
       | When you receive an invitation to a server, you're presented with
       | a textbox that reads "What should everyone call you?" and you're
       | unknowingly creating a new account. Then you're asked your birth
       | date and then for your email. You type your email and it's
       | already used, obviously.
       | 
       | By this point you don't want to go through the whole process of
       | deleting your browser history to log into your existing account,
       | so you go along with the new account thing and use another email
       | address.
       | 
       | Before you know it, you have 5 different accounts and don't
       | remember which ones you use for which servers.
       | 
       | Yes, there is a "use existing account" link, but it's not
       | prominent, the "What should everyone call you?" textbox with the
       | big "Continue" button are the only psychologically viable option
       | unless you've already gone through the whole process of
       | involuntarily creating many accounts.
        
         | bentcorner wrote:
         | I think discord is great but I do agree with you. The whole
         | "join a new server" UX is in this weird place where you might
         | not use it that often (even if you are a heavy discord user),
         | discord having an unusual concept of servers, combined with the
         | flip-flop dance between browser and native app.
         | 
         | The end result feels slightly off. Like I can't say what should
         | be happening, but what is actually happening feels not quite
         | right.
        
         | ziml77 wrote:
         | Does Discord let you create multiple accounts with the same
         | email address?
        
         | anilakar wrote:
         | And when you access the site directly, you are always shown the
         | front page which is basically a full-screen ad and serves no
         | other purpose than user conversion. Furthermore, the sign-up
         | link literally says "Open Discord in your browser" which can be
         | read as "go to the app".
         | 
         | Ideally there was one single email address field and a combined
         | sign up / sign in button that either took you to the password
         | or new account creation dialog. If you're concerned about
         | privacy implications, do realize that user signup forms leak
         | the very same information.
        
         | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
         | Unless I'm mistaken, Slack actually forces this as part of
         | their model: one account per organisation. It's not fun when
         | you have to reset passwords...
        
           | Twisell wrote:
           | I had to create a Slack account to interact with a vendor
           | support team. Run into that mess and can't for the love of
           | god find a "manage all your accounts" interface on Slack.
           | It's insanely counter-intuitive.
           | 
           | I'll avoid Slack as much as possible unless they fix this
           | evil UX.
        
         | peanut_worm wrote:
         | I think I have 4 discord accounts for that reason
        
         | yawnxyz wrote:
         | it took me until right now to realize that this happened to me,
         | and that I've been using the wrong account for the last six
         | months and I actually have two accounts... so really, at this
         | point my "wrong" account is my real one.
         | 
         | The reason it happened is b/c I use email aliases for stuff I
         | sign up for, and sometimes I forget them...
        
       | metalman wrote:
       | Frustration is one of or the primary drivers in the purchase and
       | use of computers. "Getting them to do anything at all,makes us
       | overlook there fundimental uselessness" Douglas Adams
        
       | sen wrote:
       | This is becoming more and more common with major sites, and it's
       | really bloody annoying. Some are putting "Sign In" behind some
       | tiny dropdown in the nav, not just grayed out or small but
       | invisible unless you hunt for it.
       | 
       | They know exactly why they're doing though, and I think OP is
       | preaching to the converted. Those doing this don't need a
       | tutorial explaining how not to do it, they need to lose money
       | (users) until they stop doing these dark patterns.
        
         | mkl wrote:
         | I don't understand. Why is it to their advantage to have their
         | users struggle to log in?
        
           | bartread wrote:
           | They probably have metrics suggesting that having both sign
           | up and sign in buttons on the page leads to lower sign up
           | rates than having only a sign up button, or something along
           | those lines.
           | 
           | Rather than find a more in depth/better designed solution,
           | it's easier just to remove the "sign in" button and any
           | "confusion" that might cause for users who would otherwise
           | complete the sign up workflow. If their A/B testing indicates
           | that removing the button improves sign up rates, that's
           | exactly what they'll do.
           | 
           | It's super-annoying and short-sighted - not to mention lazy -
           | but this kind of micro/over-optimisation of behaviour on the
           | web has been de rigeur for at least a decade now.
           | 
           | A better approach would be to try to understand why
           | "confusion" around sign up/sign in is happening - i.e.,
           | what's the real reason having both buttons/links on a page
           | decreases sign up rate? Root cause the issue and you can fix
           | the real problem in a way that probably doesn't annoy your
           | customers. That's effort though and most customers probably
           | don't care enough to complain about the annoyance of hunting
           | around for a sign in button or link.
        
       | hnarn wrote:
       | The first time I encountered this was Dropbox. It honestly made
       | me re-think using them at all, and these days I mostly use
       | OneDrive.
        
       | croisillon wrote:
       | My pet peve are paid services only showing the limited-promotion-
       | price, a discount is nice of course but I want to know how much
       | that will cost me in the long run.
        
       | holler wrote:
       | For https://sqwok.im, I explicitly placed the login/signup
       | prominently at top right for all users on mobile and desktop
       | because I want it to be clearly visible always. I could see some
       | value in detecting whether the user has already created an
       | account and highlighting the "login" portion like the author has.
       | 
       | There's a business service site I have to log into once a month
       | who've hidden the login behind a drop down and it's really
       | annoying!
        
         | mattmanser wrote:
         | Your site is really slow. I honestly thought it was broken when
         | I first went, no login link to be seen at all.
         | 
         | This is why you should avoid making a SPA unless you know what
         | you're doing, if you're going to use one at least put a spinner
         | or something so it's clear the site's doing something.
        
           | holler wrote:
           | > This is why you should avoid making a SPA unless you know
           | what you're doing
           | 
           | The site doesn't have much traffic right now and is running
           | entirely on serverless lambda, it's likely you arrived while
           | it was idle and had to wait for it to wake up...
           | 
           | > at least put a spinner or something so it's clear the
           | site's doing something
           | 
           | def should improve the loading state for when it hasn't woken
           | up yet.
        
         | jjgreen wrote:
         | No login link, just a series of grey lines, even after I enable
         | javascript. Ah, I see you require that I accept cookies just to
         | to view your front-page ...
        
           | holler wrote:
           | Yeah this site requires javascript to use and it uses
           | cookies... It may load slowly if there's no traffic, see
           | below.
        
       | pypie wrote:
       | This drives me nuts. It feels the same as the insurance company's
       | phone menu asking if you're interested in purchasing a policy or
       | submitting a claim, where the former choice get you an instant
       | human being and the latter a 45 minute wait. In other words, it
       | signals that you're more interested in signing up new customers
       | than serving your current customers.
        
         | Forge36 wrote:
         | I'm working on switching insurances this month. 18+ months of
         | being unable to pay online.
         | 
         | If they don't want my money and competitors are cheaper why am
         | I debugging their website to get passed all of their JS errors?
        
       | hellotomyrars wrote:
       | 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 between new and existing users.
        
         | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
         | I love this pattern - I think it was Slashdot I first saw it on
         | - but it still suffers from the same problem. What do you label
         | the button - "sign up / login"? It's still easy to miss that
         | it's also for login when scanning.
        
         | bryanrasmussen wrote:
         | 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 that
         | said I wouldn't care if the UX research suggested it was a good
         | move. I wouldn't do it (on anything I owned, I would just argue
         | against it if asked to implement it)
        
           | alpaca128 wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | fireattack wrote:
         | Seriously. I honestly don't mind to have "sign up" being more
         | prominent, but see very little reason why they go further and
         | hide login button..
        
         | ziml77 wrote:
         | More clicks to log in than sign up is annoying, but what really
         | bothers me is when they don't make it clear that the page
         | brings you to both. Like if the button only says "Sign up" I'm
         | going to look around for a bit for a "Log in" button first. If
         | they're going to combine them, the least they could do is make
         | it say "Sign up/Log in"
        
         | spicybright wrote:
         | I miss going to foo.com and having user/pass fields on the top
         | row of the screen, with maybe a sign up link next to it.
        
           | macNchz wrote:
           | A handful of websites I visit periodically have username and
           | password fields readily available....but they are
           | registration forms not login forms, and if you put in your
           | existing credentials, it'll just tell you that you already
           | have an account and should log in instead. You couldn't just,
           | you know, log me in with the information I just provided
           | instead of telling me to provide it again on a different
           | page? Drives me up the wall!
        
           | sethhochberg wrote:
           | I'm familiar with a few sites which used to be this way with
           | the login form directly on the homepage, and removed those
           | fields during the internet's transition period from HTTP to
           | HTTPS for all pages. Browsers started flagging pages which
           | included password fields as insecure, even if the form
           | containing them submitted via HTTPS (which was arguably a
           | fair assessment). The solution for many sites at the time was
           | simply to move all login to a distinct page which was served
           | over HTTPS, and leave all other pages as HTTP. Back in that
           | day the opinion of many site operators was that HTTPS was
           | going to tank advertising revenue, so they avoided it
           | whenever possible until the browser vendors forced their
           | hands.
           | 
           | In many cases the homepage login forms took years to come
           | back, after we got to a point where virtually every site was
           | all-HTTPS on all pages. In some cases they never did.
        
           | jspash wrote:
           | Ahhh. I miss the days of the username and password being on
           | the _same_ page! I refuse to believe that the average
           | internet user gets confused by a two field form that they
           | need to break it into two (usually slow) steps. Re-
           | architected in (usually flaky) javascript. That takes up
           | (always more) of my time!
           | 
           | (sorry for the !!!'s. but this one really gets my goat)
        
             | jtvjan wrote:
             | That's to support single sign-on. It checks whether to show
             | the in-house sign-in page or to redirect.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | This one is a significant failure of our entire industry.
               | We've somehow accepted that degrading user experience
               | because of an implementation detail is good instead of
               | working together to hide that implementation detail by
               | implementing the necessary browser functionality.
               | 
               | We already have technologies such as Kerberos that are
               | supported in every browser and seem like they would solve
               | this problem.
               | 
               | In any case, as a website operator you can mitigate this.
               | Have separate pages for SSO/non-SSO, dynamically hide the
               | password field if the username is associated with an SSO
               | provider, or just ignore the password field and have a
               | subtitle along the lines of "leave password empty for SSO
               | accounts".
        
               | AgentME wrote:
               | It's not obvious to me that it's an improvement to have
               | an extra textbox that goes away moments after you type in
               | your email address (possibly after you've tabbed into it
               | to start typing) or an extra textbox that just stays
               | there unused.
        
               | midasuni wrote:
               | Can't you detect it client side? Send the contents of the
               | username field to the backend, if it's SSO change the
               | password field to "login with ssoprovider.com"
        
               | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
               | It's even worse user experience since things change as
               | you type (you have to wait for network round trip so it's
               | not instant), plus password managers are still confused.
        
               | daniellarusso wrote:
               | I thought it was to make scraping slightly more
               | difficult.
        
         | rorykoehler wrote:
         | I save the login page link in my password manager. Problem
         | solved.
        
           | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
           | Other people still had the problem, even after you did that.
           | Problem not solved?
        
       | AlchemistCamp wrote:
       | Digital Ocean has this problem.
        
         | joshxyz wrote:
         | Fuck yea i love them but this is ANNOYING lol
        
         | alias_neo wrote:
         | Yep, even worse on mobile. You have to open the hamburger menu
         | and then scroll 4+ screen heights down (on a OnePlus 8 Pro)
         | just to find "Login".
        
         | memco wrote:
         | GitHub is one that gets me often.
        
           | dewey wrote:
           | What's the problem? They have both "Sign in" and "Sign up"
           | next to each other. Same color, opacity and the only
           | difference being that there's a border around "Sign up".
        
             | oneeyedpigeon wrote:
             | On mobile, the sign in link is hidden behind a hamburger
             | menu.
        
               | memco wrote:
               | Yes, that's what gets me.
        
         | mewpmewp2 wrote:
         | I remember the same, but funnily enough, it seems to be fixed
         | now, with both "Sign in" and "Sign up" buttons available on the
         | top right. I don't remember how it was before, but I always
         | started to create a new account instead of logging in.
        
           | AlchemistCamp wrote:
           | It's significantly worse if your browser is half the width of
           | a 1080p screen, which mine generally is.
        
       | tailsdog wrote:
       | Irony is there is no "Sign In" button or link on this page. I
       | have to hunt for it by clicking the Logo to get to get back to
       | the homepage.
       | 
       | I know it is a blog but still it's part of the website and as a
       | customer I should be able to access "Sign In" with one click from
       | any page, right?
        
       | ed25519FUUU wrote:
       | I just decided to stop pursuing a home loan with a company
       | because of a few anti patterns like this. The first was there was
       | actually no "log in" button whatsoever. You have to click "create
       | an account", and _then_ there's a log in link.
       | 
       | The second, more fatal anti pattern is not allowing paste in the
       | password field. There's simply no way I'm going to memorize
       | random 30-digit password for your website. (I had to use dev
       | tools to actually paste the password). Even though the APR was
       | good we moved on.
        
       | cek wrote:
       | Kindel's 2nd Law - Companies with a subscriptions-based business
       | model eventually behave in ways hostile to that company's
       | customers.[1]
       | 
       | [1] https://ceklog.kindel.com/2019/07/30/kindels-2nd-law/
        
       | ethanoler wrote:
       | I am a UIUX product designer, and this was left intentional.
       | 
       | The idea is that benefit of having a better CTA for SIGNUP far
       | outweighs the friction/cost for the obscure SIGNIN.
       | 
       | Existing Users can also be trained and conditioned to look for
       | the sign in. They will not get away since they are existing
       | customer (SaaS).
       | 
       | However, once a prospective new lead bounces out, most likely
       | they will not convert anymore (counting remarkerting aside)
        
       | stunt wrote:
       | Another one:
       | 
       | SaaS websites, don't make visitors hunt for what the hell the
       | service does.
       | 
       | It's somehow hard for many SaaS websites to clearly explain what
       | their service does. I often have to dig into multiple pages to
       | figure out what the service does.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | fossuser wrote:
       | This kind of thing really bothers me - it's like a symbol for how
       | little they care about existing users.
       | 
       | I feel like there should be some specific name for this kind of
       | thing - design patterns that target new users and suck for
       | existing users. Honeymoon feature?
       | 
       | 'First hit is always free' feature? Maybe just 'First hit'? I'm
       | bad at naming.
       | 
       | ---
       | 
       | "As they approached the city they could see enormous walls
       | surrounding it. Jonathan noticed a guard standing near the
       | entrance to the city. The guard was shouting, "Sign Up! Sign Up!
       | Sign Up!" and then more quietly, "or Log In.""
       | 
       | https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...
        
         | spaetzleesser wrote:
         | That seems to be the way modern business works. Entice new
         | customers with great offers and then neglect existing customers
         | while milking them for money. Cable is like that. Cell phone
         | plans are like that. With my car insurance it was the same.
         | They raised rates every year so after 15 years I switched
         | companies and now I am paying half the premiums. Even companies
         | are like that with employees. New people are getting big raises
         | for joining and people already there are getting 1% raises per
         | year.
         | 
         | It seems loyalty is for suckers these days. It used to be that
         | long time customers and employees got rewarded. Now they are
         | being punished and exploited.
        
       | MiddleEndian wrote:
       | For my game site, I didn't want people to have to deal with
       | passwords. I first tried to use google/facebook signon, but I
       | found the code to be annoying to maintain (google and fb would
       | change their APIs on a whim and really obscure the location of
       | their settings for reasons unknown) and even my friends would
       | rather not use those services. At some point I decided instead to
       | just automatically sign people in and give them auto-generated
       | usernames.
       | 
       | https://www.miscbeef.com/birdcrab
       | 
       | (blatant self-promotion)
        
       | cpcallen wrote:
       | For a while it was the case that Mailchimp.com did not have a
       | login button on their homepage at all. To log in I would have to
       | use the link sent to me by the colleague who managed our account.
        
       | ogre_codes wrote:
       | Why not just _put the login in the top bar_.
       | 
       | I'm not sure why a site would recommend making an extra click
       | _easier_ when it's not necessary at all. If someone has ever
       | logged into your site, they should get a login page so they don't
       | have to do some extra tap. This is triply true if your site is
       | frustratingly slow to load.
       | 
       | Also:
       | 
       | Support password managers. Your damned custom login page BS might
       | be cute in design but sucks for usability. If your site doesn't
       | work reasonably well with a password manager I won't come back.
       | US Bank lost my business this way recently.
       | 
       | Related: Have sane password requirements and limits. If my
       | password manager gives you a 32 character password, don't bitch
       | because it doesn't contain a number or uppercase character. It's
       | 32 characters long and unguessable, that should be enough.
       | Also... if you fail because there is an underscore or ampersand,
       | you've failed.
        
       | epistasis wrote:
       | I'm about ready to unsubscribe from the LA Times for this BS.
       | They seemingly invalidate my login every day, then when I get
       | linked to an article, a huge pop-up obscures the article while
       | reading it, and despite paying them for this damn service I can
       | never even find a way to login.
       | 
       | And if you do this to people just because their cookie went
       | stale, then is this really a customer that you want to remind
       | that they don't use your service enough? A customer that is happy
       | paying the bill every month but doesn't use a ton of resources?
       | 
       | It reeks of really bad optimization of metrics: do everything
       | possible to increase conversions, at any cost to the rest of the
       | business. That sort of desperation is not good for retention.
        
         | vincentmarle wrote:
         | > They seemingly invalidate my login every day
         | 
         | I don't get it either, this is why I stopped reading the LA
         | Times (I should probably cancel my subscription). On the other
         | hand, I can't remember the last time I logged into NYTimes, it
         | just works (that's why I read it daily).
        
         | majormajor wrote:
         | The login link is consistently in the bottom left of the popup
         | for me, though I also wish it lasted longer.
         | 
         | Some of this I suspect may be related to browser privacy
         | settings these days, as the "Remember me" checkbox to avoid
         | hitting 2FA for my bank accounts basically no longer works for
         | me either these days? Some 3rd party cookie collateral damage?
         | 
         | Password manager makes it pretty painless anyway, though.
        
         | bluedino wrote:
         | I'm not sure who owns the LA Times but it seemed like for a
         | year you had to randomly login to any of the Advanced Media
         | owned newspaper websites. Seems like a simple issue to fix.
         | Maybe it wasn't.
        
         | kingsuper20 wrote:
         | >I'm about ready to unsubscribe from the LA Times for this BS.
         | 
         | At this point, I just naturally assume that newspaper websites
         | are unusable. They certainly give ad-blockers a workout. Once
         | you get through all the cruft candy I especially like the
         | paywalls with the several second delays.
        
         | omarhaneef wrote:
         | Are you linking from within Facebook or Twitter? I think they
         | have their own mini browser so your logging in outside doesn't
         | count inside.
        
           | Swenrekcah wrote:
           | That's another one. Shipping an In-App browser should be
           | punishable by 20 years of only browsing the internet via
           | Pinterest.
        
           | epistasis wrote:
           | Twitter or other chat apps or web-based link aggregators, but
           | not Facebook. When in an app on mobile, I usually launch the
           | native web browser from the Twitter browser. I almost wonder
           | if some of the link parameters log me out some times...
        
       | hparadiz wrote:
       | This is what happens when everything is metrics based. Your
       | paying customers pay the price. This happened with Loggly when
       | solar winds bought them. We no longer use Loggly.
        
       | stadium wrote:
       | And the sign out button too!
        
       | blntechie wrote:
       | 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.
        
         | philosopher1234 wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | quickthrower2 wrote:
           | Churn is a thing though and is as important as conversions
        
           | fckthisguy wrote:
           | While that may be the case (I'd also argue that the front
           | page should be a welcoming place for existing users), showing
           | me that you value your existing users is a great marketing
           | move.
           | 
           | It's otherwise very hard to convey that you care about
           | existing customers so this seems like a no-brainer.
        
           | simonh wrote:
           | Inconveniencing either current or prospective customers never
           | 'makes sense'. It's not like you have a fixed amount of
           | inconvenience you have to distribute.
        
             | philosopher1234 wrote:
             | You have a fixed amount of screen real estate on the
             | landing page. Distributing it to your most important users
             | for that page (prospective users) does make sense to me.
        
               | kemotep wrote:
               | Is the solution presented in the blog to utilize a cookie
               | to determine if someone is a prospective user versus
               | already a user not an acceptable compromise?
               | 
               | It seems rather straightforward to me, from their
               | example, to de-emphasize the "Sign Up" button and
               | prioritize the "Sign In" button for someone who already
               | has an account.
        
               | philosopher1234 wrote:
               | That seems like a good strategy to me. It raises the
               | question though, is it worth the cost of maintaining a
               | separate page?
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | I can't see how people that already pay me money could
               | not be the most important users?
        
               | philosopher1234 wrote:
               | Your existing and paying users are:
               | 
               | 1. Less likely to abandon your service than prospective
               | users
               | 
               | 2. by far less likely to even see your landing page,
               | since they're usually already logged in.
               | 
               | In this specific context, your existing users are the
               | less important ones.
        
         | erhk wrote:
         | It's punishment for deleting your cookie. Don't sign in we
         | don't want that. Just stay signed in. Trust us.
        
           | mrweasel wrote:
           | Even the solution in the article seems to suggest using
           | cookies.
           | 
           | I don't understand the problem, if people want to try or
           | sign-up for your service they'll locate the signup button.
           | That's a one time problem. A hidden login button just annoys
           | existing customers.
           | 
           | My feeling is that this is down to testing without privacy in
           | mind. Your site might be fine, but others aren't so a
           | minority of users will clear cookies at the end of each
           | browser session. That's not a senario most will test for or
           | experience.
        
           | tesseract wrote:
           | There are some websites that are both super aggressive about
           | timing out your session and also make you play hide and seek
           | for the login button. Of the sites I use frequently UPS used
           | to be about the worst offender but the most recent version of
           | their site does have a usable login link.
        
             | Anon1096 wrote:
             | 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.
        
               | presto8 wrote:
               | Totally agree, Vanguard's landing page is a disaster.
               | 
               | I was able to directly link this page however, which I
               | bookmarked:
               | 
               | https://personal.vanguard.com/us/AuthLogin
        
               | switch007 wrote:
               | The same Vanguard that could have millions of dollars of
               | investments in your account? What's the appropriate time
               | out?
        
               | fckthisguy wrote:
               | 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.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | leesalminen wrote:
               | Should probably require a TOTP MFA code for all movements
               | of money anyway regardless of session validity.
        
               | tzs wrote:
               | How about having a short timeout for making transactions
               | and a longer timeout for viewing balances and
               | transactions?
        
           | blntechie wrote:
           | Agree, I always use incognito/private mode and maybe that's
           | the reason I see this more often than others.
        
         | musicale wrote:
         | > once you sign-up, the company stops caring about you
         | 
         | precisely
        
         | daniellarusso wrote:
         | Remember when a CRM was concerned with following the lifecycle
         | of the customer, not just getting to the initial sale?
         | 
         | Perhaps these are similar symptoms.
        
       | dreamcompiler wrote:
       | Isn't this the direct result of startup incentive structures?
       | Don't startups measure success more in "number of conversions"
       | than "number of return visits"?
        
       | Arhaan wrote:
       | Semi related, ClickUp does have a signup button right in front of
       | you but they always log me out between sessions. It's a great
       | app, but it's irritating when you have to login each day,
       | especially since it is meant to be used everyday.
        
       | poisonborz wrote:
       | I also noticed this trend, but I don't understand the reasons,
       | the site also doesn't explain it. Wouldn't it be beneficial to
       | capture (and potentially track) existing users earlier? What's
       | good in annoying them? Why are dominant sign in/register buttons
       | mutually exclusive? What became of the trend of the reverse -
       | large sign-in with a later option to register?
        
         | JoshuaDavid wrote:
         | My cynical guess is that when companies A/B test this, they
         | find that a clear sign-in button reduces the number of new sign
         | ups (because if the sign-in button is hard to find, some
         | existing users will create a new account). A/B testing is great
         | but it's very easy to optimize for something that's easy to
         | measure rather than what you fundamentally care about.
        
       | alpaca128 wrote:
       | Also, if you're running an online shop please don't put the
       | "order as guest" option on the "register" page without any hint.
        
       | donatj wrote:
       | Plex's responsive design hides it at the bottom of their
       | hamburger menu in super low contrast gray-on-darker-gray text
       | when your window is less than maybe 900px. It's literally like
       | they're trying to hide it.
       | 
       | I keep my windows in a grid and I end up just making my window
       | wider because it's easier than using their god forsaken hamburger
       | menu.
        
         | smilespray wrote:
         | This is one of several reasons why I would never consider
         | paying for Plex Pass again. The other reasons include spending
         | a LOT of resources on rolling out features I imagine few users
         | are likely to be interested in, such as DVR.
        
           | donatj wrote:
           | I wouldn't go that far. I subscribe to Plex Pass happily
           | mostly to support financially a service I adore and use
           | daily. Features I don't use don't hurt me and they give you
           | the option to disable things you don't use.
           | 
           | The login button is just hard to find on the homepage.
        
       | kingsuper20 wrote:
       | You know, that's an odd thing. Pre-hoi polloi internet, there was
       | an awful lot of push for interface standards on
       | PC/workstation/Mac software. After the gold rush occurs,
       | practically everyone's webpage displays the kinks of the
       | developers or some toolkit. From a user's standpoint, there's not
       | much value-added here.
        
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       (page generated 2021-05-03 23:02 UTC)