Which to show first: login or register screen or both?

Question

I have a site for which I am working to improve user onboarding.

What happens now is that when a user does some action that requires him to be logged in, I make a jQuery popup come up telling him to log in. And if he is not registered, there is a link to registration.

But sometimes I see sites that do it in reverse order and show the "register" screen first.

I guess if you want people to register, the register screen makes more sense, but then it would annoy people who are already registered. No?

What is the best practice for doing this sort of thing? Does it make sense to show both, the register and login form on the same popup?

Answer 1

I'd show the Login-Screen with a clearly visible Registration-Link. Users that are registered can quickly login and the others can see where they have to go.

Another solution I saw and liked was adding radioboxes like this:

[x] Login
[_] Register

When "Register" is checked or the password is left blank users will be redirect to the registration form with the username already filled in.

Answer 2

Why not both? You could either put two forms side by side, or use tabs.

Alternatively, have a simple username/password (or email/password) labelled "login" then a section below labelled "register" with whichever extra fields you would need for registration.

Answer 3

Both is a much better than either. Whichever one comes up first, I am liable to try filling in, which may not be the right one. If it doesn't work, then I am liable to give up - negative feedback is always bad.

Both - side by side - means I have to make my own choice.

Answer 4

While I don't like sites that make it not 100% clear whether I'm in Login or Register (and hence not with the simple checkbox ideas), I really (as a user) like the idea of combining Registration and Login in one page.

Usually you have two panels, one for the two login fields, and the other for the same fields plus any fields required for registration, Similar to login in http://tekpub.com (note necessarily a pop-up though).

Answer 5

How often will your users use the register screen, and how often will they use the login screen? The answer is probably "every time but once", and "once".

If you're concerned about user experience, optimize for the normal case.

Answer 6

If you wanted to be really clever, you could store a long-term cookie on the user's machine and show Login if you know they've logged in before and Register otherwise.

But as many other questions have mentioned, there's nothing wrong with showing both at once.

Answer 7

I think both makes for a much friendlier experience. With a little javascript and good design, a div may only show 50% initially with the login and have very intuitive UI to focus on the other 50% where your registration form live.

Answer 8

Launchrock have a nice model for this, a single email field is displayed, and checked against their database of existing users. If email is found, the user is asked their password to login, otherwise they are shown the signup: