Customers only have to login once
It is becoming more and more common to see “Log in with Facebook” options when you visit editorial sites but are social logins something that online retailers should consider?
Using Facebook, or any other social platform such as Google Plus or Twitter to log into a website is known as a social log-in.
Looking at the stats by social log in software provider Janrain, Facebook is the most popular choice to log in with when customers are offered a choice but Google plus is performing well also. It also found a whopping 77% of users prefer a social log in to a website registration.
According to recent study by SociableLabs, only 30 of the top 500 US online retailers are offering a social log in – the figure in the UK is likely to be even higher, but it is a figure that is expected to rise.
SocialLabs suspects the main reasons that more retailers haven’t jumped on the bandwagon are the technical barriers of implementing it onsite, security concerns and the amount of effort required to add the log ins.
These all sound like they could be easily rectified but they might not be the only reasons there hasn’t been a massive influx of ecommerce social log ins. There are a number of considerations when looking at whether to implement them or not.
Pros
Your customers only have to remember one log in
There are an endless number of online services which require users to create a log in and password. According to research by Janrain, 40% of shoppers use the ‘forgot password’ button at least once a month. By offering a social log in, your customers can eliminate at least one of these extra user name and password combos to remember and their experience will be improved.
You garner lots of data about your customers
It could be argued that social media platforms know more about your customers than they know about themselves. By letting them log in with Facebook, Google plus etc, you are gaining a lot of valuable customer data which will help you to personalise their time in-store and your marketing efforts once they have left.
Battle cart abandonment
Facing a lengthy registration form is one of the top reasons that customers abandon their shopping carts – taking any steps possible to shorten this process for your users will go a long way to removing this problem and increasing your conversion rates.
Users can easily share their experiences
With users logged in on social networks already, the likelihood of them sharing your brand or products on their platforms are a lot higher. You can create calls to action such as ‘Like Our Page’ or ‘Share this product’.
Social logos are familiar to most
When you’re asking people to register with your site it generally means they are new customers. In this case they might not be that familiar with your brand. Having the social log ins available shows them something that they are familiar with and therefore might feel at ease in using your site.
Cons
You are giving control over customer data to a third party
By allowing people to use their social media accounts to log in, their account with you is tied to a third party. What if Facebook or Twitter was to go down? What if your customer cancelled their Google+ account having used it to sign in with you?
Having these customer details is an important part of your strategy so putting it into the hands of someone else might cause problems down the line.
How reliable is the data?
It’s not unheard of for people to give false details for their social accounts. It might seems like you are getting a rich data base on each of the customers logging in with social platforms but you might just get false info.
Also – depending on someone’s privacy settings, you might not be able to access their information at all.
What if it doesn’t work for your site?
If you try out having social log ins and for some reason you decide it isn’t for you – you will lose all of the customer details that have been fed to you through the social platforms and you customers will have to re-register when they come back unexpectedly.
Mixed branding
Using social log ins adds other companies logos next to yours on one of the most important pages of your site. The MailChimp blog has a detailed post outlining their reasons behind ditching their social log ins.
“The IPOs and APIs of other companies are beyond our control, but we place ourselves in a position to feel some of that bad brand juju when the logos of other companies sit next to ours on the most popular page in our app,” wrote Aarron Walter on the MailChimp blog.
There’s an implicit affiliation there. Call us control freaks, but we built this brand and we “feel strongly” about shaping its direction ourselves. One logo on our login page is enough.”
Too many options
The fewer decisions a user has to make on the way to a purchase the better for them. If they are confronted with multiple register options from of the off this may well put them off.
Also, if they are returning to your site, they may well forget which social platform they logged in with last time causing more problems.
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