The modern web is obsessed with speed. Just this week, Vercel launched Next.js 11 with a special focus on Core Web Vitals, a new set of Google metrics

Designing fast sign in forms— diving into the data

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2021-06-21 16:30:02

The modern web is obsessed with speed. Just this week, Vercel launched Next.js 11 with a special focus on Core Web Vitals, a new set of Google metrics that are measured in tens of milliseconds to determine page speed. Google has noticed that faster websites mean better user experiences, and has incorporated these metrics into their search ranking algorithms.

At Clerk, we're focused on a speed challenge that's equally important but often neglected: how quickly can users sign in?

After much qualitative debate - Clerk originally launched with Google and Facebook sign in buttons below the option to sign in by email.

After collecting a few months of data, we realized we should make an adjustment. There was a near-perfect 50/50 split between users who preferred Social Sign In vs email and password. But, Social Sign In was faster: ~5 seconds on average compared to ~8 seconds for email and password. So we made the switch:

In the months since making this change, Social Sign In usage has started to outpace email and password, with the last month seeing a 52/48 split.