Why Social Logins are Essential for Your eCommerce Site

Does your website have social logins? This function, which allows users to log in using their Facebook, Twitter, G+ or LinkedIn account, is easy to implement and can offer businesses of all shapes and sizes a huge boost.

Here’s why:

It’s potentially lucrative

At the checkout stage, you can’t overestimate the importance of making every last person count. But billions of pounds are lost collectively at checkout every year.

Why? According to a report by Janrain, the concept of ‘password fatigue’ is growing – and it can really impact sales. 92% of shoppers abandoned the checkout stage of a website when they lost login information instead of trying to recover their information.

Offering users the opportunity to log into your site using a Facebook or G+ account means that users won’t face that problem – ensuring that you get them one step closer to conversion. It’s very mobile friendly

Mobile eCommerce is growing rapidly, and social logins are an essential part of engaging with the burgeoning mobile market. Mobile users in particular dislike having to use keyboards because they’re time-consuming, small, fiddly and make it easy to input the wrong information.

Mobile users are famously impatient, and will leave a site in a matter of seconds if it’s slow or not providing them with the information they want to see. So if you can replace complicated, unsightly keyboard-led log in information with simple, aesthetically-pleasing social logins you’re sure to see more engagement and increased sales. It’s popular

The fact is that social logins are popular and they’re only going to become more widespread. Currently 52% of people online use social logins to shop online – while 87% are aware of it and 65% are more likely to revisit a site if they know that they can log in using social buttons. Another study showed that more than a third (40%) of people preferred to use social to log in to sites.

Why incorporate social logins into your site? Because people like them! It’s great for targeting

Another issue for smaller businesses occurs when customers enter the wrong personal information. Whether it’s incorrect email and home addresses, different names or false preferences, the wrong log in information makes it hard to understand what your customers are looking for and how to reach them on an individual level.

After all, you’ll know that it’s a huge turn off when brands contact you about stuff you just don’t care about. According to another study by Jahrain, 29% of people who receive mistargeted marketing are less likely to buy products online – while 10% will never visit that website again.

Getting it right is essential:

Janrain-Consumer-Response-Mis-Targeted-Marketing-Efforts-Jan2014

On the other hand, you’ll also know how tempting it is when you log onto Amazon, eBay or other personalised sites to see stuff that you love.

When you can incorporate social logins to your site, you can enjoy access to all of the information your customers have given on Facebook, including:

• Their age

• Their gender

• Their email address

• Their interests

• Their political views

• Their location

You can use this information to target them specifically with content and advertising as well as create targeted personas to understand your brand’s demographic in more detail. In short, incorporating social logins is a marketer’s dream. It’s accurate and safe

After the recent hacking of eBay, in which millions of customer passwords were exposed by hackers, security is a big issue in eCommerce right now. And although the hack affected targeted users from one of the internet’s biggest brands, it’s fair to say that shoppers can suffer from trust issues when it comes to giving smaller shops their personal information. Social logins erase that worry – ensuring that their information is only stored in a few handful places.

Sure, issues remain over whether it’s safe to give Google or Facebook your information in the first place, but offering the opportunity to log in socially means that customers are more likely to trust your small or medium-sized shop. It’s great for metrics

Every website wants more activity, right? Research by Monetate showed that sites are likely to see more shares, more comments and more page views from users that are signed in socially.

People that don’t have a social log in will spend an average of 5 minutes on a website, while those that share and comment on content will last double and triple that respectively (11 and 15 minutes). What’s more, users that share and comment using social login will visit on average 11 pages – compared to just 5 from those without a Facebook, Twitter or G+ log in. Talk to us about social APIs today.

Want to increase user engagement with creative, personalised social APIs? Find out how TheGenieLab can help you to maximise the power of social. Talk to us on our live chat today or call 01633 415 364 for an informal chat.

(Image: Jason Howie)