

Login Screen – behind the scenes - asifjamil
https://www.gosquared.com/blog/archives/3359

======
reneherse
I just created an account and installed the tracking code on one of my sites.
I have to say, the UX from sign up through implementation is exceptional, and
virtually seamless. I particularly liked the install verification sequence,
and the brief yet informative animated introduction to the dashboard. Kudos to
your team for creating a product that's such a pleasure to use and look at!

A few very minor nit's to pick: Overall, the login screen is great, but
omitting the submit button seems a bit too minimalist. I know what to do
because the response of using the Return or Enter or Go key is by now second
nature; it might not be as apparent to less geeky folks. Besides, the design
choice is jarring given how prominent a button you're using for the password
reset flow.

Regarding the visual flow in the sign up process: It's probably already on
your list of ToDo's, but the form styling between the join and login screens
is substantially different.

After installing your tracking script on both a static page and using the
Wordpress plugin, and double checking the installation verification, I had to
go through the dashboard introduction a second time. It would be ideal if
there was button allowing me to dismiss/opt-out of the intro.

Lastly, I'd suggest experimenting with an additional tier of pricing above the
$9 mark but below the custom enterprise level. My intuition is that there's a
level where people want more capability but are reluctant to go through the
personalized and uncertain "Enterprise" process. Also, it's possible people
might be more likely to choose a paid plan if there was more than one option;
that's definitely the response I personally had.

Just off the cuff, one version might be:

Free: 1 site, 1 individual

Standard: 3 Sites, 5 team members. $9/month

Premium: 10 Sites, 10 team members, exclusive premium features. $19/month

To be sure, you don't want to cannibalize your Enterprise sales, so it's worth
comparing these price and usage points to what data you have in that area.

Finally, grandfathering existing Premium users in this scenario would be as
simple as upgrading them to the new level and giving them a $10/month discount
for the life of their account.

Good luck, and great product!

~~~
simontabor
k's thank you for this feedback! I'm on my phone at the moment but I'm going
to get back with a detailed reply as soon as possible, we've made a lot of
difficult decisions and your feedback covers a lot of it.

------
Stratoscope
I don't like the form field labels inside the fields:

1\. When I go to the login page on my PC or Nexus 7, I see a blinking caret at
the beginning of the "Email address" text and I have no idea whether I need to
select that text so my typing will overwrite it, or if I should just start
typing.

2\. When I go to the page on my Android phone, I don't see the "Email address"
text at all, just a blank field with no indication of what goes there. I have
to tap outside any field to see what that field is for.

I don't think labels inside fields should ever be combined with automatically
putting the focus in one of the fields. That forces you to leave the label in
place when the focus is on a field, which is a recipe for confusion.
Conventional labels are much more friendly.

After I type in my email address (in the .to domain; see my profile here), it
shows me a picture of myself as soon as I complete the address. That's cool,
but when I hit Tab to go to the next field it says "Did you mean mg@me.com".
Huh? Perhaps if you find that you've succeeded in fetching a gravatar, you
should not use the "did you mean" message. The gravatar itself is a better
confirmation that I've got the right email than any possible second-guessing
you could do about domain names.

Also, your blog is pretty hard to read. The text is barely more than 50%
contrast, really faint and washed out. Why do modern web designers think text
contrast is their enemy?

~~~
froggy
To fix points 1 & 2, they could overlay the label to the left and have the
caret start to the right of the label, like in MailChimp's login page:
<https://login.mailchimp.com>

It would still look just as nice.

~~~
Stratoscope
Oh, that mailchimp page is nicely done. Very simple implementation too: they
basically just gave the input element a bunch of left padding and absolutely
positioned both it and the label element inside a wrapper div with
position:relative.

------
rpicard
I don't think the "Did you mean [...] ?" popup should block the password box.
Maybe it should appear on the top instead? My email address uses a .io domain
and it suggested the .com domain. Since it blocks the password box, it seems
like it's assumed that the suggestion is correct, and that I'll click the box
before continuing.

Aside from that, it looks great of course. I think that goes without saying.

EDIT: I don't think that this was really a call for feedback, but there's my
two cents either way.

~~~
simontabor
Thanks for the feedback! I need to add the .io TLD, cheers for the nudge.

~~~
jrnkntl
Add .nl as well, it suggested .net when it was already showing my gravatar.

~~~
lloeki
This brings interesting logic here: if the email gives a valid gravatar, then
it's probably a valid email, hence 'did you mean' should probably not be
shown.

------
vlad
> When have you ever gone to “Forgot your password” without entering an email
> first, or ___having guessed a password?_ __Clicking on this autofills the
> email you had in the login form...

1) I love reading posts about UI features, but I noticed something ironic
about this one: both e-mail and password fields are cleared when an
authentication error occurs, so clicking "Forgot Password" will result in a
blank e-mail being copied over. If a user bothers to type in their email
address, they will probably also try a password and click login at least once
before clicking "Forgot Password", so by then the email will be blank again.

2) Another interesting difference is how this site and Quora display user
photos. Quora will tell you if your e-mail is not in the system or needs
confirmation, while this site always returns an invalid password message, even
if the user doesn't exist in the system.

The big UX flaw here is that a photo might frustrate a typical user into
trying lots of passwords since their photo shows up when they type their
e-mail address, when in fact they don't have an account or used another e-mail
to register.

------
litek
That's pretty neat. The suggestion tooltip in it's current form is a bit
annoying though. I actually did type my email correctly, it even has a
gravatar, but I can't stop the suggestion from overlaying half the password
field.

Also, on a failed login attempt I usually typed my password incorrectly, not
my email (especially when I can even see my gravatar). So you might want to
keep the email field populated.

~~~
simontabor
Good points, thank you!

I'll add these to our to-do list

------
renownedmedia
I entered me@thomashunter.name, it pulled my gravatar, then asked me if I
meant me@thomashunter.me. Not sure why it didn't like the .name TLD.

The tooltip floated over the password box and was kinda annoying.

~~~
ajanuary
It would probably be a good idea to assume any email with a gravatar is
correct.

~~~
eli
Does gravatar even give you that information back? I assumed the browser
requested the image directly from them.

~~~
simontabor
We've got it so that the image 404's and we listen to the image error event to
fade the G in or out.

~~~
eli
Neat, good idea.

------
bluesaunders
The gravatar is a nice touch, but it works even if my email is not signed up
with your service, which felt a bit misleading.

I got the sense of, "this is the correct email address to login with because
the system recognized me" when in fact it was the wrong email.

~~~
simontabor
Good point - the reason for it is we wanted it to be entirely independent of
our users db for security/privacy reasons (and simplicity!)

------
Fzznik
1\. Where's the Login/submit button? I wonder if many people would expect
this.

2\. What do people think about when you enter your email address and
accidentally enter the wrong password: should the next page have whatever
email address you initially entered re-displayed? Because the error message
(rightfully) doesn't indicate whether the problem was actually with the
password or whether you instead typo'ed the email address, would having this
re-displayed allow the user to more easily recognize their mistake? (i.e.,
seeing that you typo'ed your email address is more helpful instead of first
thought being that you've forgotten/mistaken your password)???

~~~
peterjmag
1\. Problem is, not everyone will know that they're supposed to hit Enter to
submit, so you're already needlessly frustrating a percentage of your users
(albeit, probably a small percentage) by hiding the submit button. Here's a
bit more discussion on the topic, from a question I asked on UX StackExchange
a while back: [http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/8876/usability-of-
hidi...](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/8876/usability-of-hiding-the-
submit-button-and-using-the-enter-key-to-submit)

~~~
Stratoscope
Indeed. I've watched many friends fill in online forms, and I can't remember a
single time any of them have ever used the Tab or Enter keys. They've all
clicked on every field and finally on the Submit button.

------
d0m
I'm wondering about the /lack/ of submit button. I'm often tempted to remove
it but I know from experience that so many people use the mouse to click on
the button rather than pressing _enter_. What are your insights in this issue?

~~~
badusername
Exactly. For a login screen with a post that exalts the design, I thought it
was a glaring usability mistake. Even a simple cue, 'Hit Enter to Continue'
that appeared when the fields were being filled in, would up the usability. I
know I won't look for it, but my mom would.

------
Newky
The thing I found a little jarring about this, is that if you are not
registered for gosquared, it still can get a gravatar you have registered on
gravatar. Despite me not being registered, entering my email, it is as if they
already have information on me.

This could be a little daunting to someone who doesn't understand how this is
happening.

~~~
simontabor
Possibly, but you don't usually try to login before signing up... right?

~~~
morsch
I sometimes do that when I'm not sure whether I'm already signed up or not.
Seeing my portrait (if I had a gravatar) would suggest to me that I did
register an account. It's probably not an issue for a service like GoSquared
though.

------
latchkey
I'd rather use Persona to login instead of creating yet another account.

~~~
eberfreitas
Yes, this. But how the average user would respond to it and maybe a better
question, on which type of websites that would make total sense?

I mean, would persona fit the e-commerce business just fine?

~~~
latchkey
I run an e-commerce business and it works great. Persona really fits in well
for all websites and when it is eventually integrated directly into the
browsers, it'll be even more of a non-issue.

The more sites that adopt Persona, the more that the UX design and differences
between sites will become a non-issue and posts like this where the designers
are inventing yet another way of doing things will stop. Persona provides a
clean standard interface that everyone knows how to use and even better... a
single login.

------
mlangenberg
No submit button? That doesn't make me happy (especially on a touch device).

------
swanson
Why does the account creation screen use a completely different layout/style
(stock bootstrap)? That was very jarring to me.

I'll assume you just haven't gotten around to changing that too, but it ruined
the effect.

~~~
simontabor
Sorry! We're working on improving all areas of the site at the moment.

------
eranation
I really hoped to see my email copied in the use case of typing email on the
sign in page, and clicking sign up,

also the sign up page looks so much different, so I would say 100% score on
the 50% of the job done.

------
dougbarrett
Do you foresee any issues pinging gravatar as fast as every 200ms (based on
your source) when someone is typing in their e-mail address? Since you are
checking domains and if they are correct, could you check to see if the email
is valid form before pinging gravatar for an image? It seems like it'd be a
little less load for all parties involved.

------
benatkin
Bold claim, nothing to back it up. And this is an Analytics company.

Some of the features seem interesting but I'm skeptical as to whether people
like the picture showing up (I certainly don't when I see it on Quora) or
whether having to enter your email address is really a big deal or just a
micro-optimisation.

------
davecyen
Have you tested offering users Facebook oAuth? Seems to be increasingly
popular, even regardless of how relevant Facebook integration would be for
your user base and product. Just one less email/password combination to
remember

~~~
StavrosK
If you're going to offer centralized auth, offer Mozilla Persona. It's easier
to implement, simpler for the user, and not odious.

~~~
dpcx
But not something that an overly large number of users are going to have...

~~~
StavrosK
It's very easy to make a Persona account, and, in my opinion, much better than
having Facebook connect. I avoid FB Connect to the point that I will not sign
up to a site with FBC if I can avoid it. If the site offers no other ways to
log in, I will not use the site.

From what I have heard, I'm not alone in this.

------
Nijikokun
[http://forrst.com/posts/Login_Form_Underground_Social_Networ...](http://forrst.com/posts/Login_Form_Underground_Social_Network-
VN4)

I did this like two years ago, nothing original.

------
gagege
I entered my .us email address and is suggested I change it to .me. Also, the
suggestion box covered up half the password field.

Other than that it's works very nicely. The Gravatar is a cool idea.

~~~
timparker
Thanks, we've updated that now.

------
Fzznik
A nice touch is the responsiveness that was put into moving the sign-in box
from the vertical-middle of the screen on tablets and desktops, up to the very
top of the screen on mobiles. Well done!

------
recuter
Try putting "(drop table)" in the email field. I was amused.

~~~
simontabor
I'd forgotten I added that easter egg. Ha!

~~~
gnw
The real question is what happens when you submit it ;)

------
zobzu
The UI is cool :) That being said, it's not as cool as browserid/persona
(where you click one button, and done, can't get much wrong here)

------
damncabbage
... Where's the "Login" button?

------
snikch
It loses your email address if you don't enter your password :(

------
gokulk
serving users email as a GET request for reset password ?? intriguing...

~~~
gamzer
Would you please elaborate what they are doing and why it is intriguing?

~~~
gokulk
sorry for the late reply. I think probably cause it is out in the open,
compared to methods by bigger tech companies like google where the user
information is not passed in the url for reset password

