Social Media Marketing: Social login or traditional website registration?
Janrain, a social Web user management platform provider, recently released its Social Identity study with the research conducted by Blue Research.
The study involved a final sample size of 616, with respondents recruited by email and screened to ensure they either purchased a product online within the past 30 days, or read articles or watched video from major media outlets in the past 30 days.
A key element of the survey was finding out how respondents felt about using a social login — Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. — instead of having to register individually at multiple websites.
Some of the results were very interesting:
- 86% of respondents reported being bothered by the need to create new accounts at websites and said they would actually change their behavior:
– 54% might leave the site and not return
– 26% would go to a different site if possible
– 6% would just simply leave or avoid the site
– 14% would not complete the registration
- 88% admitted to supplying incorrect information or leaving form fields incomplete (this result should come as no surprise to marketers). This figure is up from 76% in last year’s study
- 90% admitted to leaving a website if they couldn’t remember their login details rather than taking the time to recover their login information. This figure is up from 45% in 2010
The study also found that even though website visitors are becoming more frustrated with traditional marketing, they are becoming more open to using social identities for website registration.
In fact, 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account.
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Among that 77%:
- 78% of social login fans have posted a comment or message to their social networks about a product or service they liked or thought others should know more about
- 83% reported being influenced to consider buying new products or services based on positive social media comments
- 69% report positive reviews might increase their likelihood to purchase a product or service
- 82% seek out, or avoid, companies based on social media reviews
That’s a lot of pretty numbers, but what do they mean for marketers?
To help put this research into a marketing context, I had the chance to interview Larry Drebes, CEO, Janrain. Here is the result of that interview:
