Design vs Art Blog

User experience could be so much improved if you make the login process easy and if your site remember users once they registered. If for security reasons you want your users to login every single time they go to your site, make the login process easy and place it in a prominent location, if possible in the home page. Yahoo!, for example, is doing it very good.

Yahoo! asks users to sign in to get access to all the services they offer and gives the possibility to keep signed in, so users don’t have to go through the process each time. This is great for users but also for Yahoo! as it allows them to show users personalized content as soon as they reach the Yahoo! home page.

It’s sad for me to accept the fact that I have to use emusic, the music download service that I love, as a bad usability example. Service in general is quite good but the login process is horrible, even more, I have read in forums that users have been complaining for some time already.

The specific problem is that users go to the emusic site to, off course, download music, and to do that they are required to log in every single time the user reaches the site. To make the whole thing more complicated, the site is too silly to remember you.

Also, a login box in the home page could make user’s life easier. Come on emusic, let customers to stay logged in, they will like it, this is more common sense than a design pattern.

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Disclaimer: with this kind of article I want to point out usability and interface problems some sites could have. Please do not take this as an attack, take it as a free advice. I would like to make clear that this design problems could happen for many reasons, including lack of time or money.

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