During my daily wanderings through apps I use and bookmarked sites I visit, I’m often tempted to log in for an enhanced user experience. If I log in to the site/app I can see additional features, and the login allows me to share my thoughts with people by writing reviews/posts, sharing pictures or sending interesting articles to my friends. On a normal day while visiting my favorite site, I would log in using my email address, post or share a thought and I would call it a day for the site.
But today when I thought about sharing my ideas with the world using my favorite site’s comment section, I was given way more choices than ever before. Besides using my email address to log in, there were four more options. I was surprised to see the following social media login choices:
The option to log in with my email address was still available, but wow, there are now a lot more options to pick through just to share an idea.
Actually I should not be too surprised to see social media logins now available for my favorite site or app. According to Michael Olson, a writer for janrain.com, “The key takeaway, above all else, is that people want a choice of social login providers. The social media landscape is fragmented, and people use each of their social networks for distinct purposes, whether to interact with friends and family, project professional identity or follow influencers.”
Further, janrain provided the following infographic for Q2 Social Login Preferences. It’s not surprising that Facebook is cited by 44% of users as the preferred social media login, followed by Google at 37%.
What is interesting is that per the janrain article, “90% of people have encountered social login before, and more than half of people use it”. With this information available, don’t be surprised in the future when you are prompted by your favorite site to log in with social media credentials. Bottom line, you can log in with what you feel comfortable with, or continue to navigate as a guest, even though some content and features might not be available to you.
Logging in using one of my social media logins with the click of a button might be easier, but then again the auto fill feature on my mobile device makes entering my name and email address pretty easy too. What if I come across a new site? Should I use the social media login to create a new account or should I go back to adding my email address to create an account? Or maybe I don’t want to log in at all. It’s a trade-off you will need to decide in each situation.
As a website or app owner is it worthwhile for you to add social media login to your site or app? (Hint: It might be according to recent data.) Generally, the easier you make it for someone to sign up or log in, the better the response rate.
From the perspective of a user, I do like using social media login for certain sites; however, I do switch back and forth between social media login and email login. In the end it’s really up to you and the particular site to help you make the decision on how you want to access the site or app.
Reference:
Olson, Michael. “Social Login Trends Across the Web for Q2 2014.” Janrain.com. July 1, 2014
