Transparent Change: Login Changes

At Group-O-Matic, there are no passwords. Instead, members have unique access links they use to access their private group pages. These links get emailed to them when they join groups. Once you click a group access link once, Group-O-Matic remembers you, and if you go back to groupomatic.com, your groups are displayed with links to access your private group pages. This works pretty flawlessly most of the time, and when it does, we think it is a better system than having yet another username and password for a number of reasons we won’t bore you with in this post.

However, sometimes people change computers or clear their “web cookies” and then get confused about how to log back in to their private group pages. Previously we had some links entitled “Lost Link” at the bottom of various pages to help in this process, but these links seem to be too subtle in practice. So today we made a number of changes to help members when they trying to figure out how to log back in to their groups.

First, at groupomatic.com, if you are logged in, we moved the links to your private group pages to the top of the page and made them bigger, making them much more obvious. Previously they were below the search box, and people were searching for their group instead of clicking on the right link. Now the right link is above the search box (and the first text on the page), and so we hope people will notice these links more readily.

If you aren’t logged in, we created a Login link as the first link on the page, and also in a bigger font so its gets noticed. This link goes to the same place as previous Lost Link link at the bottom of the page. The Lost Link page now displays some helpful instructions at the top detailing how to login and the process in general. The original Lost Link links are still present at the bottom of the page but they have been re-titled ‘Lost Group Access Link’. The other links at the bottom are one word, and so this makes the new links stick out more. We figure some people will miss the top link and will instinctively look at the bottom, and so wanted to duplicate the link with different text.

Finally, we think some people will still search for their group.  If they do that, previously they would have gotten to the public group page for their group when looking for their private group page.  Now, if they are logged in, they will automatically go to their private group page.  (This is similar to the change we made when we updated the Optional Subdomains feature–see our previous announcement.)  If they are not logged in, we added a message for current members about logging in the Join Group section.  And of course, if they try to join again, they will receive a similar message (this has always been the case).

As always, we welcome your feedback. So don’t hesitate to contact us or leave a comment.