Login Screen – behind the scenes

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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)???

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

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

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

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.

I did this like two years ago, nothing original.

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