To Sign Out Or Not Sign Out

When I was younger, I learned a hard lesson about the importance of always logging out of my email. I had used a public computer to access my Yahoo email account, and ended my session by closing out the browser, instead of properly clicking the “Sign Out” link. As a result, I remained signed in, and my email was breached by a malicious person. Subsequently, this individual proceeded to send out profane, vulgar, and disrespectful emails to my friends and family. Needless to say, that mess took countless apologies, and weeks of clean up to set everything straight.

These days, software engineers have created innovative workarounds for common scenarios similar to the one described above. They require users to check specific boxes to stay logged in, and even in some cases disallow session saving completely (i.e. financial institutions). However, regardless of the mechanisms now available, the root cause of the problem continues to be overlooked: Getting the user to end their session properly by logging out. While many could argue that behaviors are subjective and, “one less thing to remember” will always mean better usability, I disagree completely. Why? Because there is a great opportunity here.

There is never a guarantee about which page a user will navigate to during their visit to your website. Traffic patterns can change, depending on a variety of variables and conditions. However, what if you could guarantee that a member will always see ONE page when navigating through your site? Which page? The page following the sign out action (usually notifying the user they are successfully logged out).

Utilizing this page for a particular business purpose is not a new concept, but many sites and applications rarely capitalize on it. With a little creative thinking, steering users to logout and see the confirmation page would not only endorse better web safety habits, but perhaps open the door to other opportunities. Here are some ideas on what you can do with the logout confirmation page:

• New features coming soon
• Your recent awards and accolades
• An advertisement or special offer
• A tip on how to do something
• Ask for customer feedback
• And most importantly…. a thank you!