The Best Practices of Social Login Integration to Boost User Engagement
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1) This whitepaper discusses best practices for integrating social login to boost user engagement. It covers selecting identity providers, positioning the social login interface, using user profile data, and analyzing social analytics. 2) The selection of identity providers depends on factors like the target users, business region, and provider popularity. Positioning the social login interface is important in areas like authentication, account linking, comments, lead generation, and resource downloads. 3) With social login, businesses can access user profile data and insights not available through traditional analytics. This data provides understanding of users' preferences and demographics to improve strategies.
The Best Practices of Social Login Integration to Boost User Engagement
- 2. | ii | THE BEST PRACTICES OF SOCIAL LOGIN INTEGRATION TO BOOST USER ENGAGEMENT PUBLISHED BY: LOGINRADIUS INC. EDMONTON, ALBERTA, CANADA APRIL 25, 2013 VERSION 1.0 This whitepaper discusses the best practices for Social Login (also known as Social Sign-On) web applications and is based on LoginRadius’ research and observations over the past two years.
- 3. | 1 || 1 | INTRODUCTION Research shows that over 75% of users prefer not to sign up through a typical registration process, resulting in huge user loss to web applications. With social login, this can be avoided by allowing users to log in with their existing accounts from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and others. Thus, social login has recently become an important part of any web application. Social login not only eases the user’s online identity management, but also improves user experience on websites. With social login, website owners can also capture a user’s social profile data, let users link multiple social accounts together, and invite their friends. Social login provides invaluable insights which go a long way in building a lasting relationship with the users. In this whitepaper, we have listed several best practices to deploy social login on a website in order to ensure high user engagement and greater impact on business. The best practices for social login integration have four major components: 1) Selection of ID Providers 2) Position and Design of Social Login Interface 3) User Profile Data Usage 4) Utilizing Social Analytics
- 4. | 2 || 2 | SELECTION OF ID PROVIDERS The selection of ID Providers for your website is a critically important step, which depends upon your users’ characteristics, your business’s geographical reach and the popularity of ID providers. We have created the following metrics to help you choose the best ID providers for your website. After understanding your target audience, choose the most popular ID providers based on your users’ geographical area. Top 26 ID Providers Rank ID Providers Geograhpical Reach Type 1 Facebook Global Social Network 2 Yahoo Global Internet Corp 3 Google Global Internet Corp 4 Twitter Global Micro Blogging 5 Vkontakte Russia Social Network 6 LinkedIn Global Professional Network 7 Windows Live Global Internet Corp 8 Steam - Gaming Network 9 Persona - Non Social Online Identity 10 Wordpress Global Blogging 11 AOL North America Content Network 12 Foursquare North America Location Based 13 Live Journal Global Blogging 14 OpenID Global Online Identity 15 MyOpenID - Online Identity 16 Github North America Software Dev. Hosting 17 Hyves Netherlands Social Network 18 QQ China Social Network 19 StackExchange - Questions & Answers 20 Mixi Japan Social Network 21 Renren China Social Network 22 Verisign North America Internet Infrastracture 23 Orange France Telecommunication 24 Virgilio Italy Search Engine 25 Kaixin China Social Network 26 Myspace North America Social Network To learn more about social network trends, read our recent industry research: Social Network Statistics – Social Login and Social Sharing Trends - Q3 2014 1
- 5. | 3 || 3 | POSITION OF SOCIAL LOGIN INTERFACE After selecting your desired ID providers, the next critical step is to decide how to best present social login on the various sections of your website. This section describes the best practices for 5 major use cases. 2.1 USER AUTHENTICATION A) When Utilizing Social Login with Traditional Login a) Login interface: We recommend making social login more visible than traditional login to experience a higher sign up rate. • If the traditional login interface is located in an area of limited width, then place social login above it. • If the traditional login system takes up a full page, then present both of the systems side-by- side. • Always place social login on the left to communicate ease of login to your prospective users. the Social Counter widget with sharing options. • Always add the sharing widget to the end of the content as users are most inclined to share right after reading the article. • Add the Social Counter widget to the left of the content. You can see how our customers EasyToBook.com and Sporti have displayed social login with traditional login to encourage more users to sign up with social login. 2
- 6. | 4 | b) User Registration Page: We highly recommend showing the social login interface on the registration page, as well. This will clearly indicate to your new users that they can sign up with their existing social accounts. The interface is best displayed in a separate section above the registration form. You can see an example of this from our customer elephat.com
- 7. | 5 | B) When Utilizing Social Login Only (no traditional login system) We recommend the following practices: • Show the social login interface in the top section of all pages (in the header if possible) • Clearly indicate clearly that these icons/buttons are for social login • Show the interface on all pages (it is highly recommended to place it in the header) Below, you can see how our customer CreatorUp! has clearly highlighted social login interface on their homepage to make sure their users notice it. 2.2 FOR SOCIAL ACCOUNT LINKING Social account linking can be used for two purposes: a) So that your existing users can log in in with their existing social accounts b) Allowing users to link multiple social accounts together to one single account on your website. By allowing social account linking, you can capture more information about your users and better leverage your existing user base for social media marketing. It is highly recommended to show social login interface in the user account dashboard.
- 8. | 6 | 2.3 FOR SOCIAL COMMENTS If you want to use LoginRadius’ Social Login to let users post comments via their social accounts, we recommend placing the social login interface either directly above or directly below the comment box. One way to do so is to provide a pop-up to the user once he/she clicks on the comment section. In the pop-up, provide both the social login and motivate them by communicating the benefits of login and ease of social login.
- 9. | 7 | 2.4 FOR LEAD GENERATION ON LANDING PAGES Capturing leads on landing pages has been a big challenge because of the cumbersome forms that most users do not want to fill out. It is highly recommended to use social login on these landing pages as a way to capture user profile data after logging in. We suggest placing the social login above the lead capturing form, or disabling the form and showing social login only. 2.5 FOR LEAD GENERATION ON RESOURCE DOWNLOADS Similar to landing pages, you can let users sign in with social login before downloading case studies, whitepapers, and other resources. Motivating those users to log in with social login can allow you to capture their name, email address, and other important information for your marketing and sales purposes.
- 10. | 8 || 8 | USERS’ SOCIAL DATA With social login, not only are you eliminating the long registration forms, but you are also capturing a wealth of social information from users, including the ever- important email address. After the arrival of OAuth 2.0, most social networks have started providing a wide range of fetchable data fields. The fields available vary from network to network, so we recommend that you review what each network provides and decide your data requirements to meet your marketing, sales, and business needs. You can see a list of data fields from each social networks on the LoginRadius website. 3
- 11. | 9 || 9 | SOCIAL ANALYTICS Social analytics provide a unique insight into your userbase. This type of analysis goes beyond Google Analyticsasitisbasedonusers’socialdata. Theanalysisnotonlyhelpsyoubetterunderstandusers’login and registration preferences, but also lets you learn more about your user base. Some of the insights that you can get from social analytics are: • Preferred Social ID among your users • Breakdown of users across gender, age group, country, and cities • User login trend over time • Social network reach among your user base • Technology preference among your user base You can use this information to continually redefine your sales and marketing strategies and to innovate. 4
- 12. | 10 || 10 | ABOUT LOGINRADIUS LoginRadius was founded in 2012 and has continued to grow rapidly to over 120,000 customers and has a monthly reach of 250 million social share views. LoginRadius made it into the list of Canada’s Top 25 Startups (by TechVibes) and BranhamGroup placed us among Canada’s Top 25 Up-and-Coming ICT companies. We are funded by some of the top Canadian VC’s: Yaletown Venture Partners, Accelerate Fund, BDC Capital, and Real Ventures. We are partnered with industry leaders Amazon, Mozilla, Google and Microsoft; and are working together towards a common goal of simplifying how users connect to the web. Currently, LoginRadius has over 25 employees and headquarters in Edmonton, Canada. There are also additional offices in Jaipur, India, and Sunnyvale, California. 5
- 13. | 11 || 11 | APPENDIX (A) SAMPLE SOCIAL LOGIN THEMES I
- 14. | 12 || 12 | APPENDIX LIST OF THE BEST MESSAGES TO PUT ABOVE THE SOCIAL LOGIN INTERFACE Recommended message to be put above social login interface (Message not in priority order) 1 Log in with your preferred social ID 2 Social Sign On 3 Login/Register with: 4 Log in with: 5 Sign in with: 6 Connect with Social Account 7 Sign in using your preferred Social Network 8 Register quickly 9 Create an account 10 Register with your preferred social account II