11 Tips for Better Signup / Login UX
Erik D. Kennedy · Published Jun 22, 2021
OK, I hate long intros, so: this is a checklist of some of the most important UX tips for creating usable signup and login forms. It’s based on my experience looking at hundreds of beginning designer login flows, thanks to my courses Learn UI Design and Learn UX Design.
Ironically, the fundamental rule of interaction design is: remove interaction. Remove clicks, remove reading, remove waiting, remove thinking.
An easy example: if you know that literally 95% of people opening a signup form will immediately click into the first field, save them the trouble and auto-focus on it.
The only things certain in life are (a) death and (b) email addresses have an “@” and a “.” in them. Fortunately, mobile phones have specialized email entry keyboards showing those characters – but you must label your textbox type=email in HTML. This is such a simple change to make mobile users’ lives easier.
Rather than waiting for the user to fill out the entire form before you point out any errors, let them know as soon as your system can tell there’s an error. For something like email, it makes sense to validate on blur (that is, when they focus on another field).
