Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Building Excellent Things - Redirect after Login

There are many details that are easy to overlook when building web products. These details are opportunities to either delight or annoy.

When you build a web app that requires a login, users will often share links inside the app with other users. When those links are shared, and a different user clicks on them, the expectation is that they land on what was referenced by the link. This becomes slightly more complicated if the user is not logged in. If you must present a login screen, the correct detail is to log the user in and then redirect to where the user originally intended to go (delightful) -- assuming appropriate authorization (eg. don't let me share my bank account page with others).

Otherwise, the user is required to go back and click the link twice (annoying).

Don't make your users click the link twice.