How to do account sign-in right

Jared over at User Interface Engineering has written a great article about how to design the account sign-in feature correctly. And if you don’t think doing this right is important, check out Jared’s experience:

Yet, in usability test after usability test, we see the registration and sign-in processes to be consistently problematic. It’s the most common thing that scares users away from shopping on e-commerce sites. It generates the most calls to the customer-support call center. Designing an account registration and sign-in process that doesn’t frustrate users turns out to be very difficult to achieve. It looks easy at the outset, but a pile of subtleties can sneak up on your experience, making something that should be simple become stressful for the users.