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Ask HN: Show logged in state on SaaS marketing site?

6 points by webignition ↗ HN
The main horizontal nav at the top of a SaaS service will typically present options to either log in or sign up. Which of the two is shown is dependent on the logged-in state of the user (if logged_in display_account_link else display_sign_in_link).

Some SaaS services ignore the logged-in state of the user on the not-the-product-itself marketing site. An example is MailChimp where I am shown 'Sign Up Free' and 'Log in' options when viewing https://mailchimp.com regardless of whether I have already logged in. I'm assuming this to be an intentional choice and not a bug as it has been that way for years.

Some SaaS services respect the logged-in state of the user on the marketing site (if logged_in display_account_link else display_sign_in_link) in addition to doing so within the product itself. I can't find any real-life examples of this other than for a service I am currently developing. Examples welcome if you know of any!

My questions:

Are there any best practices, from a user perspective of, of choosing one of the above options (never respect/always respect logged-in state on the marketing site) over the other?

I can see how never respecting the logged-in state on the marketing site has technical benefits with respect to something something complexity and something something security something something.

Do you find yourself confused when ending up at a given service's marketing site and thinking that you are not logged in when you thought you were?

I ask as the additional complexity and security aspects of respecting the logged-in state on the marketing site of a Saas product is something I have to deal with and think about from time to time.

When wearing my engineering hat I want to go with the MailChimp way of doing things. When wearing my UX hat I want to respect the logged-in state of the user at all times. Sometimes my hats argue between themselves.

4 comments

[ 63.9 ms ] story [ 332 ms ] thread
onion2k
There is no good reason for your marketing website to have access to your application database or your customer's session data, especially not for something as trivial as changing the text on a link.
mtmail
I'm used to see "sign up now!" and similar marketing on the www subdomain (homepage, often powered by Wordpress) when I know I already have an account. The SaaS app often runs on a app. or dashboard. or manage. subdomain. Usually clicking 'login' goes to the SaaS app with a note 'you're already logged in'.

I wouldn't worry. It's a UI optimization which can have considerable technical complexity. E.g. you want to move the cookie to a different (shared) domain, the www site cannot decrypt the cookie because it has no shared secrets (or different programming language), logging out of one page should update the links on the other.

On our SaaS it was easy (shared platform). We only added it to be able to pre-fill API keys in documentation (makes it easier for users to copy&paste code, https://geocoder.opencagedata.com/tutorials/geocode-in-nodej...). Without that benefit I wouldn't have spent the time.

saluki
I recommend leaving the marketing page content the same for logged in users to view pricing, etc even if they are logged in.

If they are logged in and they click signup or login most frameworks detect that and you can automatically send them to their dashboard.

I like to show dashboard instead of log in for logged in users, I leave pricing/signup the same in case they want to view what the current plan offerings are.

As far as UX I don't like seeing log in if I'm already logged in but other than that I wouldn't worry about it too much. Not a huge issue either way.

Good luck with your SaaS.

ajeet_dhaliwal
At tesults.com, the home/marketing page ignores the logged in status of the user from a UI perspective. If a logged in user actually goes to the home page we redirect them away back to their control panel / results view because we found that’s what they really wanted. If they really want to see the marketing page they can do so by clicking a link on the footer.