Good Website Design

Authentication & Session Management

Login/Sign-in, Register/Sign-up, Logout/Sign-off

Must users are not savvy enough to know the difference between Sign-in and Sign-up and will often confuse the two. Also

Examples of Auth UI

Flixster — Login | Sign Up
1. Good: They use Login instead of Sign-in
2. Good: Login link goes to /login URI
3. Bad: Sign Up often confused with Sign In. So can be confused as Login or Sign-in.
4. Ugly: The destination page is at the URI /register but the use Sign Up in the UI instead of Register.

A good auth experience should have:

A single Login or Register UI element that links to a single URI: /login
The user then attemps a login with the following results sent to a single URI: /account
1. The user successfully logs in. Done
2. The username has a match but the wrong password:
  1. Display that the username was valid
  2. Display the rules for a valid password
  3. Ask the user if they input the wrong username and would like to try a different username or register a new account.
3. The username has no match:
  1. Display that the username was invalid
  2. Ask the user if they input the wrong username and would like to try a different username or register a new account.