What You Should Know About Implementing a Social Login Solution

Social login solutions are essential for any ecommerce or retail website.  They increase conversion rate, save time, and give you access to important information about your customers’ preferences.  Here’s why implementing social login software is a great investment for your business.

What Is Social Login?

You have seen social login if you have visited the checkout screen of a retail site.  On many sites, the social login buttons are next to the space for entering a username and password.  They say things like “login with Facebook” and “login with Paypal.”

Perhaps the better question is this—what is online commerce like without social login?  Without social login, customers need a separate account for every site from which they buy.  If the customer has made fifty online purchases from Walmart and wants to make one from Target, he has to create a whole new account.  If he is making his fifty-first online purchase from Walmart, he still has to enter his username and password to finalize his purchase.

How Social Login Benefits Customers

Creating a new account to make purchases from a website is time-consuming and annoying.  Some customers will decide against making a purchase just because they don’t have time to fill in all the required fields.  They might bristle at having to enter identifying information, such as their address and birthdate, on yet another website. Online login forms sometimes have annoying glitches, like insisting that your address is not in a valid format without advising you on the correct format.  How are customers to know that the form wants “Maple St” instead of “Maple St.” or “Maple Street”? Online forms are tedious enough on desktop computers, but they are even worse on mobile phone screens.

There is also the issue of password fatigue.  The proliferation of online retail accounts means that customers have to reuse passwords or else risk forgetting them.  Almost all Internet users have had to reset an online password at least once because they forgot a previous password. Likewise, the security questions are a no-win situation.  Any hacker with a modicum of patience can find out your mother’s maiden name. As for the alternative, subjective security questions, how can you remember what your favorite food was in 2009?  Even if you do, did you spell it “hummus” or “hommous”?

Meanwhile, with social login, you just click on “log in with Facebook,” and Facebook logs you in automatically.  It is much easier than entering a username and password on a tiny mobile phone screen.

How Social Login Benefits Businesses

While social login offers convenience to customers, its main benefits to businesses are financial ones.  Because of its convenience, social login halves the rate of shopping cart abandonment. Meanwhile, social login users tend to spend longer on the site and purchase more items than customers who use the conventional login.  Meanwhile, the social network with which the customer logs in allows you access to valuable data about the customer’s interests and preferences. You can use this data to tailor the customer’s experience on your site to his or her preferences.  For example, if she logs in through Facebook, you can recommend products that people who view the same Facebook pages that she views have previously bought.

Making the Most of Social Login

Simply having a social login option is better than not having one.  To make social login the most profitable, you should design your social login solutions in a way that best fits your business.  Here are some guidelines for implementing social login on your site:

• Offer several choices of social networks.  Roughly a quarter of Earth’s inhabitants use Facebook, but it still has its detractors.  Meanwhile, some people love Paypal, but some hate it.
• When you first implement social login on your site, place a “Why use social login” link below the social login buttons.  You are more likely to attract new social login users if you can explain to them how social login benefits them. You can use your “why use social login page” to reassure them about what data of theirs you will not share.
• Place social login buttons next to the conventional login form.  This makes it clear that clicking a social login button and logging in the old-fashioned way will lead to the same result.
• Once users log in with the social login, personalize their experience.  When Bob clicks “log in with Google,” the next screen should say, “Welcome, Bob.”  It should also show his profile picture if he has uploaded one.

A social login option will make your retail site more convenient for customers and more profitable for you.  It will increase sales among mobile users. Annex Cloud will help you design a social login interface that is right for your company.  Contact us about implementing social login on your site today.