Member-only story
Why the Confirm Password Field Must Die
Sign up forms are one of the trickiest web pages to design. Including and excluding certain form elements affects the conversion rate. The designer’s job is to figure out which elements they should include or exclude.
A common question is whether designers should include a confirm password field. But the confirm password field works like an email confirmation field and causes the same problems.
Confirm Password Fields Lower Conversion Rate
Many think the confirm password field is necessary to include when creating a password. This is because a password field masks the user’s input. If users mistype their password, they won’t recognize it. The confirm password catches typos by prompting users to type their password twice.
While the confirm password field seems sensible, including it can lower your conversion rate. This research study found that the confirm password field was responsible for over a quarter of all users that abandoned their sign up form. It was also responsible for hundreds of user corrections, including field refocuses and deletes.
Once they removed the confirm password field and replaced it with an unmasking option, the number of user corrections decreased. Not only that, but it increased form starts, completions and the conversion rate.
