Login Form Design – 8 Improvements You Can Implement Now

Login has become a part of the web culture. In fact, it has become so common that most of us hardly notice it any longer. But you can’t buy products from Amazon.com, you can’t send emails to your friends and you can’t even post tweets if you are not logged in.

So, the web is all about getting logged into some websites in one way or another. And everything looks fine unless and until you run into some problem while trying to login into a website. Take it this way – if you fail to log into Amazon, the shopping website will not be able to offer a customized browsing experience.

So, it is quite understandable that if your website fails to offer a simple login form for users, most of them are going to get really annoyed.

Why a Simple Login Form Is Important?

Because complicated login process serves no purpose at all. It frustrates the customers, infuriates the users and intimidates the non-tech savvy people. The result, as expected, will be disappointing. You will witness massive bounce rate as a large number of people will get caught in the mess of the complicated registration/login process and leave your website fuming in anger. This is definitely not a good advertisement for a brand.

So, it makes sense that we spend some time to offer a simple and stress free login experience for our visitors. Here we are going to find a solution to this problem of complicated login form so that you can see higher conversion rates and more engagement. Let’s get started!

Login Via Social media

You can cut down on the complexities of the login process of your website by making a small change that is – allowing people to login to your website via their social media accounts. Even leading image based social networking sites like Pinterest allow users to login to their websites via social medial profiles. However, there is a genuine security concern associated with this method. If the third party website somehow gets compromised, it will have a ripple effect on your website too. However, if you are allowing people to log in via two or three trusted social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc, you have nothing to worry about.

Pinterest allows users to login via Facebook accounts. This saves the hassle of many users who just don’t want to create another set of user id and password as they are struggling with too many of such combinations.

Login Via Email Address

People are having a hard time remembering passwords of different accounts and therefore, you should not heap more misery on them by making it compulsory to set a unique user name for your website. If people can’t remember their passwords, how on earth they are going to remember their different user names. To make the login form appear less confusing, you need to give users the freedom to login with their existing email id. This will make the login process less painful.

The leading eCommerce site Amazon allows users to login to its website via email id. People rarely forget their email id and that means, they just need to remember one thing that is Password.

However, you should not force people to use email address; there should have an option to create unique user id because some of them would not like to clog their email with promotional emails.

Persistent Logins

Okay, let us face the truth that most people hate to fill out forms no matter how small they are. Therefore, asking people to enter their login details every time they visit your website is not a good idea. Things get even more irritating when people are browsing on mobiles. Everybody knows how difficult it is to type on smartphones and therefore, you need to include ‘Keep me Signed In’ checkbox on the Sign In page so that users don’t have to enter their account details over and over again.

Of course, this feature is not applicable to sites that offer banking or financial services. If your website deals with sensitive information, you should forget about this feature. However, this option is embraced by almost all eCommerce websites.

Gmail and Outlook also use this technique so that their users don’t have to enter their user ID and password again and again to be able to access their accounts.
You can tweak this feature a bit. Maybe it is a good idea to keep a visitor signed in for one week because keeping a visitor signed in for 6 months may lead to some security concerns.

Include ‘Forgot Password’ Option

We tend to forget everything. So, it is no wonder that some of your visitors will also forget the password. Therefore, you need to keep a provision for people to extract their password in case they forget it. Include a forget a password option to the login form. Some websites display this option if the user fails to provide accurate login details in their first attempt. Believe it or not, there are some websites where you will not be able to locate the Forget Password option no matter how hard you may try.

Error Message

Whenever someone fails to provide correct details while trying to log in the site, the system generates an error message. And this is important; you need to inform people where they have made the mistake. However, the error message should be simple and easy to follow. Don’t use technical jargon that nobody understands.

Nobody knows what heck this error message means – ‘Invalid Input Value’. You need to be specific like – Caps Lock Is On or User name and password mismatch etc.

Labeling is a Must

Don’t use text like – ‘submit’ for each button because it does sound silly. Rather say the exact word. What the button is supported to do. Like for example – ‘Log In’. If you have kept provision for people to use either email id or user name to login, you need to be specific about that too. Just don’t get it wrong otherwise the outcome may be disastrous.

Be Careful with Extra Questions

It is a common practice to ask extra question to authenticate a user in a login page. This practice is quite popular with banking websites and they do have a genuine reason to do so. But we don’t see any such reason to include an extra question on general websites. However, if you decide to include extra question, make sure that you are asking the right question. You can use CAPTCHAs as well but remember that most people hate CAPTCHAs. So, it is your call at the end.

Zero Distraction

Some web designers believe that we need to create a separate page with login form so that visitors can enjoy hassle free login experience. However, you can also use pop up dialogue box too, if you wish to. If you are using pop up option, you need to make sure that the background gets blurred out when the pop up appears as it will help reduce distraction.

White background is good at keeping distraction at bay. However, there is no hard and fast rule like that. Try to make the CTA button prominent and make the screen clutter free as it helps in the process of getting logged in.

In fact, developing a simple login form is not complicated at all. It is all about not losing focus and keeping things simple as far as possible. Not sure whether the login process is complicated or not? In that case, you need to ask your Grandpa to test it first. If he finds it complicated, it means you have to do things differently in the next attempt. If he likes it, it means your visitors are going to like it as well. So, hopefully with these tips you will be able to create a hassle free login experience for your visitors.