Consistency: Username vs User name (Part #2)
August 22, 2006 by Glenn R. Cochran
Okay, so I'm a little slow at getting around to blogging. For that I apologize. I'm still trying to get used to putting myself out there on a regular basis. I promise I'll start posting more often in the future.
Data: A Small Sampling
As promised, I've been off doing a bit of informal research around exactly what text label different web sites and applications use when asking for the unique identifier that represents a particular user account at log on time. In Part #1 I made the blanket statement that the world is very inconsistent indeed. Even among a single category of similar sites or applications the text actually varies quite a bit. Well, here is what I found.Web Research - Easy!
I started by checking out many popular sites on the Web since doing this type of informal research is fairly straight forward. I focused my efforts in four distinct areas of use: retail shopping sites, online portals, finance sites, and web-based applications. The results are spectacular...
| Category | Text Label Used |
| Retail | "Email Address", "Email Address:", "My e-mail address is", "Your e-mail address:" |
| Portal | "E-mail Address:", "Screen Name", "Yahoo! ID" |
| Financial | "Enter Online ID", "User name", "User ID", "User Name", "Username" |
| Web Application | "Username:", "User ID:", "Email:", "Sign In Name", "Username:" |
Retail Prefers E-mail Address as Log On Identifier
Five out of five retail establishments conclude that a user's e-mail address,with or without a hypen or colon, is the way to go. Most simply use a text label while others prefer to turn a label into a sentence which ends in an input control for accepting the value. Sadly there is no agreement on whether users should enter "my e-mail address", "your e-mail address", or any old e-mail address they feel like.
Portal Sites Totally Undecided!
Two out of three portal web sites think the label used to collect a unique identifier for log in purposes is related to their overall branding strategy. AOL.com uses "Screen Name" while Yahoo.com requests a "Yahoo! ID" to log on. MSN.com simply sticks with e-mail address...the lowest common denominator understood (ha!) by users on the web. Only bummer is that MSN.com users accessing the site through their browser running on the Microsoft Windows operating system still have to log on to their computer with a user name and not their e-mail address. Oh well!
Finance Sites Side with Web-Based Applications
The finance industry, not unlike many on-line applications, has concluded that user's either have a name or an identifier which should be called an ID for short. Seems pretty straight forward to me! No funny at (@) symbol or dot (.) pattern to memorize.
In each instance in these two categories, where the concept of a user name is presented, the site treats the label as either one word or two. Darn it! Still no clear winner. However the concept of an ID is almost always referred to as "User ID" which is most often two words, always begins with a capital letter "U" and both letters in second word are capitalized.
My Web-Based Conclusion
One could say that online portals along with retail shops on the web are "more consumer focused" while finance sites and applications availabel on the web are "more business focused" but that would be a gross over simplification of how the world works. The trend seems to indicates that the use of user name versus e-mail address for a log in identifier may have something to do with the target audience of the site or application. Hmph!
Desktop Research - Hard!
Pointing a browser at site after site is trivial compared to installing application after application on my desktop computer in the name of research. Next time I'll share my findings about operating systems and the applications they host that require log in credentials.
To be continued...