Pro's and Con's of having Register/login vs. only login

Question

What do you guys think is better for the user experience:

Having single sign in:

New User/Returning User --> Sign in Modal --> social button --> Authentication --> User Home

New User/Returning User --> Sign in Modal --> E-mail --> Authentication--> /Outside Platform clicks link in E-mail/ --> User Home

1. Users just need an email/social to start using the service regardless of their account status.
2. Back-end is on charge of the differentiation returning users vs. new users.
3. Sign in will be passwordless
4. E-mail sign in will prompt a secure link sent to user's e-mail.

Having a Registration/Login

New User --> Registration Modal --> Authentication --> User Home Returning user --> Sign in Modal --> Authentication --> User Home

1. Different flows for different users types
2. New users will need an e-mail/social link to create their account
3. New users will need to fill basic registration form for identify user type.
4. Returning users will need an e-mail/social link and a password for using their account.

We're having having this debate in my company right now we have the first flow with only one way of signing in same for new/returning users. We've been experiencing some complains about some will mistype their email AND create a new account and not understand why they were not seeing their information in their User home.

I lean towards having registration/sign in differentiation

• Keep Web standards.
• Not rely on user's memory for login into the right account
• Create account give us the opportunity of creating a more complete user profile
• Consistency will rely on the design
• Get rid of additional step of clicking on your e-mail to login.

Right now we don't have many returning users and we're focusing on getting sign ins but in the future we would need to have a better flow for returning users to avoid friction.

Answer 1

Assuming you have a public website, there are following important points:

1. Sign up should be as easy as a button click and focus should be to introduce user to website features asap.
2. Allowing only Humans should be a priority.
3. You need to remember Users for further personalized communication(like feedback, offers etc.) even if they used the app one time. So keeping name ( or First Name) with email should be preferred.
4. There is of course difference in login with social button and emails. Social buttons prone to provide reliable data and this should be displayed as preferred option.
5. Profiles can be updated later with personal data for serious buyers.
6. A valid email can be verified within 24/48 hours so that you can provide time frame to anonymous User to have a look on website. And on verification profile info can be asked as next step.
7. Introducing registration steps initially suites to web portals where portal is important than user(i.e. govts service portal). Not popular in public sites where user is important.
8. But Yes, once website is mature and stable, putting a simple registration form is not a bad idea.

Hope these points help in taking decisions. Thanks.

Answer 2

We've been experiencing some complains about some will mistype their email AND create a new account and not understand why they were not seeing their information in their User home.

I don't think you should let them create am account without validating the email (or at least you should have an internal differentiation between "good" emails and maybe someone else's email). If you validate that they do have access to their stated email, then basically they could only create a secondary account with another mail of theirs.

At the same time, please note that some people do end up creating multiple social media accounts because they don't manage to log in. Or someone may inadvertently log in with their spouse social media account, since they didn't expect that your website would be related at all to <social platform>, and that's who was logged in there. On the other side, you also have people not having an account on mainstream social platforms (or simply preferring the good old one-account-per-site schema).