How to Design Better Signup Screens Than 99% of Products
In this 2025 tutorial, Charles Postiaux (founder/designer at Balloon.studio) walks through dozens of real‑world signup screens—Elicit, Unity, Grok, Patreon, Fei, Monarch, 7shifts, Mural, Replit, Epidemic Sound, and others—pointing out what works, what hurts conversion, and how to redesign each for higher signup rates. He emphasizes core principles such as a single, obvious call‑to‑action, progressive disclosure (splitting forms into 1‑field steps), matching auth providers to the target audience, reinforcing the product’s value with visual cues, minimizing text and legal clutter, using social proof sparingly, and continuously A/B testing layouts. Throughout he offers concrete UI tweaks (e.g., reducing fields from five to two, removing carousels, adjusting button sizes, simplifying wording) and ties each recommendation to the underlying goal of reducing friction and increasing revenue. The video ends with a brief pitch for his studio’s paid teardown service.
Chapters
In this video, I'm going to tell you exactly how to design better signup screens. And we're going to look through some of the best products in the world to see what they do right and what they do wrong. And together we're going to see how to improve them so that you can design the best possible signup screen for your product and get a lot more users and make more money. If you don't know my name, I'm the founder and designer at Balloon.studio. I've worked with companies worth over $160 billion. And let's do it. First of all, the basics. When you look at Elicit, for example, this is super basic. And I think that in my opinion, if you don't know how to design a signup screen, if you're not familiar with how to optimize it and to improve conversions, and you just care about helping the users sign up, this is the kind of screen you need to do. Super simple, clean, one action. You just sign up. You have an option to sign in to have it if you already have an account. Ideally, the button should be based on the type of users that you have. For example, Elicit might have a lot of users that are engineers, developers. And so Hub makes a lot of sense. But if you don't have technical users that don't have GitHub, for example, and you're not sure what this is, you can just focus on having Google. I think that's already a lot. Some people might do LinkedIn, others might do Apple. So it really depends on your industry and the type of users that you have. But that's a really strong basic one to have. Another one is from Unity that I think is really strong. First of all, it's super smart because they offer a lot of different ways to continue, which I think is always a great sign. It's also super easy to create an account. You can see that there is a lot more Simplicity. And here broke it down into 2 steps, which I think is really smart because it lowers the friction, it lowers the work required to create an account. You just enter your email and then you can continue. And when you click on it, you can continue to create your account and you're kind of engaged into the flow already. You've already spent some effort creating the account. And so it's a lot easier then to show those extra little fields to fill out because if you were to show all of this On one screen, a lot of people would just drop out. A lot of people would just leave just because I have to fill out 4 text fields. It's a lot of work. I don't want to do it. But if it's just one, you can see like 1 versus 4, it's a no-brainer. And so in my opinion, if you can break this step into 2 parts, for example, if it's more than just a password, if you want the full name and the username, it's a great way to do it. They still show the email so that the user still knows that the email is entered. It's there. I just finished the account. Another thing that they do is they show this visual, probably to show the power of Unity for video games and for creating realistic videos and video games. So in my opinion, this is a really good example to do it. They reinforce what the user is here to do. It's like when you sign up with Unity, you're going to be able to create those amazing visuals and renders. And I'm going to show you some other products that actually don't do it super well and how to improve that. But they're doing really well because they do not push the user to like read anything, click on anything outside of creating an account. That's what matters the most. Always focus on that key action. You want people to sign up and sign up as quickly and as easily as possible. Grok is another simple one. I would say that it would be probably better— I can see a back button, so I don't know exactly how they're thinking through it. Okay, so you have this step first. You can enter the email and then fill out— you see, that adds friction. Why do you need this field extra when you could do just like what Unity did where you kind of make it uneditable at this point. I think that would already save space. They could also put full name instead of first name and last name. That would again save space. And password, they could just show password first and then confirm password would show up after you've entered your password. You just have 2 fields. And so going from 5 text fields to 2 is a huge change. The benefit that they have is that you can use the product already before doing anything. And so you probably have that motivation of, okay, I've used it, now I want to go deeper into it, or I want to save what I'm— what I've asked. The dynamic might be different, but I still believe that it would help them a lot to just simplify a lot more their signup screen. Patreon, in my opinion, this is kind of like 50/50. I think the way they show the text here is probably too much, like joining 250,000 creators. Absolutely. The only difference is that it adds more thinking and work for the user to, like, they're trying to understand, okay, how am I going to sign up? How am I going to create an account? And you talking about, you know, joining multiple creators is cool, but it's probably not the place for that. And this is a nice place to do it, the visuals on the right. The only problem with that is it's one, it's interactive, and two, there is more text and visuals to like scan and digest. And so that adds again more friction, more things to digest, more things to understand for the user. When the only goal is to sign up, is to create an account. For need help signing in, I'm wondering if it's going to send you to a sign-in page, because if it does, it should be sign in, not need help signing in. It adds too much confusion compared to just sign in. And so here, removing the text, shortening it would help a lot. And then not a creator, join as a fan. I'm wondering if it should just be create a fan account instead. Again, it's like, why do you ask a question when it should just be an action? Right. Right? Like should usually not be a question, except if it's the question that people are asking themselves. But here, it's there's no question to be asked. Only how am I going to sign up? Which is these three options or the email, which is already there. So I would probably remove that. I would probably add the sign up sign in instead of the text here. Keep those here. Maybe just slightly improve the corner radius of those buttons just to be similar to the email and and continue. And I would try to. Clean that up because you could have those elements here. You could say 250,000 creators here. You could say earning from membership. You could say how much creators have earned this year or this month. Like it could just be like a little checklist of things that you're going to get or that the community is already having. And that would add a lot more benefits, instant rewards kind of, and helping people envision themselves doing that. And that would add that extra push like Patreon could do like Origin in terms of here is everything you're going to get out of it. But super simple, super easy to have. So that's pretty much the screen, right? That's, that's what we want. Only one key action, which is to continue with whatever option they want and to sign up the account. And then you get that motivation to actually do it. All of the benefits you're going to unlock, which I think is amazing. And again, similar to what Unity did, once you sign up, you complete other steps. So email, full name, and password. And actually, I would even say that if you enter your email, you could again Remove that field so that you just focus on your name and your password, and that's it. Fei is doing like— honestly, I don't think you can do simpler, more optimized than that. You can either sign up with Google or you can sign up with your account. That's it. Nothing else to do, nothing else to learn about, to think about. It's just you create an account. So if you want the simplest of options to design a signup screen, I think Fei has a really good example for that. I think Monarch is doing a good job as well. I like this divider, kind of almost 50/50. Try for free, cancel anytime. Super clean, simple. There is no question. There is no wonder or doubt what's going to happen. Then you can sign up Google, Apple, or you can have your email address. You can sign in. Just, that's it. A button here. I'm not a fan of the carousel, to be fair. Okay. So each carousel item has a different screen and a different testimonial. I'll probably remove the carousel and instead I would A/B test. So all of the 5 pages that they have for this, I would try to just A/B test each of them. Which one gets the best conversions and the best signup rates? So is this going to be this one and Kara? Is it going to be the dashboard with Josh? Is it going to be the cash flow with David? So no carousel, nothing, just one visual and see which one gets the best conversions and just test again and again, again, until we find the best optimized one because signup is always about that, creating an account. If already people are leaving on this screen without even seeing the product, you're just wasting a lot of money from marketing and it's not going to help anybody. So that's like the foundation, right? The larger the foundation is, the higher you can build up. So if the foundation is getting smaller and smaller just by not optimizing the signup screen, the product cannot succeed as much as you'd want to. Real quick, if you want to improve your product, optimize it and how it looks, you can work with us at baobab.studio. You can just get started. Fill out the form and that's it. If that's too expensive for you, I also offer a teardown, which I review personally and go through. I've already done it for multimillion-dollar companies. Pretty much what I'm doing here where I review the product that you have, go through your website, your web app, and just give you as many thoughts and ways to optimize your product as possible so that you can get the most out of it, make a lot of money, and then work with me with the studio. They do, I think what they do, I don't know if that makes sense, but they're doing a good job is what I'm saying. It's clean, it's simple. Work email, password, create account. Super easy. You can log in if you have an account. It shows exactly what you're going to get with your plan. I think that's a really good thing. Lovable is a pretty good design as well, I would say. It just shows— I'm wondering if it's like a visual, like to build. So probably what's going to happen is they just change the content of the chat bar. Again, probably a lot of developers are using Lovable. Other people are using Google for sure. So super convenient and easy to have those 2. And then email password. If you don't need anything else from besides the password, that's a good way to do it. Otherwise, like the other ones I've done, just email, continue, and then you can add more information. Clean again, sign in. That's it. No need to make it complicated. And then I think it's a really good way to do it. 50/50 on the screen. Simple way to understand the product. The colors are very colorful. So I think it adds some emotional value to it and makes people happy and excited to use the product. It shows the potential with just this little change in text, but there is nothing else crazy going on. So it keeps the focus on creating an account. And I think they're doing a really good job at it. 7 shifts. I feel like it's a little, it's a little much, especially since it's a free trial. I'm wondering if there's a better way to do it. I'm wondering if this image is relevant. You can see the app probably. So that's already good. I really like the idea that it shows social proof. I think it's really strong as well. Only one product has shown social proof, I think. It was Monarch who showed some social proof. Patreon did a little bit, but super— yeah, a little bit there. But I think that's a really strong social proof to have. They reemphasize it here. I just feel like it's a little much. First of all, already the text input field, it's already super big. It's chunky, so it takes up a lot of space. Take me back is all right, makes sense. It's still long. I'm wondering if they could just be back instead, or if they could do again like Unity does where You show the email here with the arrow or the chevron and people understand what it means right away. Start free trial, really good. No credit card required, really good to add. Do we need that, the chat box? Probably not the right place to do that. I think it's just a ton of little information here and there, like no credit card required, free trial. Then it says 14 days free trial and then no contracts. And then 50,000 restaurants, 50,000 restaurants. The name also has 7 in it. So. Overall, it's just a lot. So they could either remove the email and put it in a previous step to create the momentum, very simple, low friction step to get started. And then it would be a lot simpler there. Or they could also just break this down into 2 different screens. So the first screen would probably be email and password. And you agree on the terms and policy, which, you know, I feel like there is no need to have the checkbox simply because you have to check it anyway if you want to use the product. So it could just be at the bottom, like You agree if you click on start a free trial, and then the next screen would just be first name, last name, restaurant name, and that's it. I'm wondering if there's a better way to use that because it's like half of the screen, right? 50% of the screen estate is used for a photo, a tiny little bit of the app, and a big text that you also have here. Is there a way to show all of that stuff in here instead? I think other screens— I think Origin does that for the time, like here. They could have this. Where is it? Here. They could have this start with 1 week free. It would be start with 14 days, 2 weeks free, and they can show that on the design. I get that in this screen, the benefit is that people might just want to get this over with and be like, yeah, sure, 14 days, why not? And if you add it on the 3rd screen, probably there might be more friction and resistance to it. So I think it would be worth A/B testing just to see. I think 1 password is pretty good. You get a lot of the benefits like Origin did. Always a good reminder, they probably A/B tested whether or not the form should be on the left or the right to see which one gets the most conversion rates. Optional is really good. Mistral AI doing kind of like Elecide does where it's just one model almost in the middle of the screen and that's it. I would just say that it takes a lot of space as you can see for Almost nothing for almost no good reason. So I'm wondering if there's a way to just optimize that, clean that up a little bit. For example, breaking it down again, first name, last name, could it be on another page? Do the buttons and text field need to be that big? Can we improve the spacing on the logo plus what it is about? I think that could add some benefits to it. Mural is also really smooth and very low friction, easy to go through process. Just work email, And you sign up or sign up with Google and you can log in here. They even removed the text here, just login button. Very easy to notice and to click on. Like I think that's a super well optimized screen. ElevenLabs, I've talked about it in another video. Basically I feel like it's too much. They're doing something right here is just a ton of text, which usually you would, I don't know if legally you have to do it twice or if you can just put it once. Oh, okay. They put it twice probably because you have the 2 bundled agreements that you don't have here. I feel like it's just a lot of text. And the problem which doesn't help is the fact that they have a super big card here, a visual with the text, pro tip. You can go through them. You have a lot of visuals. Like you're just here to create an account. You're not here to see their full sales pitch. Like you've already been sold. You're here to create an account. You've been sold the product. That pitch again feels a little redundant and probably not useful or needed, especially since you have so much text to agree on, to see. I think this one is pretty good from Replit. Good 50/50 screen. Really cool. Almost kind of like mix of branding plus benefits that they get from the product. I feel like it's a little hard to scan it. I'm wondering if it would work better if it's just a list. Again, would be worth A/B testing. I'm not sure if that really changed anything, but yeah, I feel like just a list might be good. The only problem with the list would be that it would maybe go over the earth. That might kind of ruin it. And so probably that's why they did it this way. But still really good. You get the benefits. Super easy to go through the way to create an account. All the boring text and stuff is at the bottom. You can log in, you can get help if you want. There is no chat box, so that's perfect. They again know their audience. Maybe they know that a lot of people use X, so they have it here. Cool screen. Epidemic Sound is also pretty nice. They do the 50/50 screen again. The only difference here is that they use the visual to be about the story, the brand of the product, and not pitching stuff or explaining things or having like checklists that you have to scan through. It's just a visual that looks cool, looks funny, and it might be enough to get more people to sign up. The button is super easy, super nice to go through. I feel like it's also really well branded. So that's another benefit that they have. Super easy to log in if you already have an account. The little legal text is at the bottom, kind of like hidden away because the buttons are so big that you kind of ignore it, which is, I think, a great benefit. Super easy to enter again, email, password. You get the verifications, just 2 buttons, super clean. All right. So I could do that for the rest of the afternoon, but you have better things to do than that. I hope it was helpful and interesting. You've been able to learn a couple of things to apply to your product to improve conversion rates. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope you liked it. Don't forget to leave a like and subscribe, and I see you for the next one. Bye.
