Social login, sign-in, sign-on — the ability for users to login to new sites using their existing social media profiles — offers some clear advantages to e-commerce players.
Research (n = 61) carried out in mid-2010 on behalf of Gigya (a company providing social infrastructure technology to online businesses) indicated that both publishers and retailers were aware of the opportunity, and had clear plans to include social login functionality on their sites.
Earlier this year, JanRain, a competitor to Gigya, published Consumer Perceptions of Online Registration and Social Login — the results of a 2011 survey of social-media active US online shoppers (n = 616). Their finding suggest that not only does social sign-in improve data quality, but that users were broadly (77% of respondents) in favour of it.
However, recently, SociableLabs (yet another company in this space) published the results of their audit of the IR 500 (Internet Retailer’s list of top US e-commerce businesses.) They found that only a fraction of these had implemented Facebook login:
Following discussion with some of the retailers, SociableLabs suggests that there are 3 reasons for this:
- Technical barriers (Newer businesses with fewer legacy systems were more likely to have implemented Facebook login.)
- Security concerns
- Resource requirement
Sociable Labs concludes:
For these three reasons, Log in with Facebook has yet to be adopted by the IR 500 to a significant degree in 2012. However, many of the companies we have spoken with in the IR 500 have plans to integrate Log in with Facebook in 2013, and we would not be surprised if the penetration rate doubles or triples to 12% to 18% in 2013.
See also: Inside Facebook: Internet Retailers miss opportunities by not using Facebook login
