Social Login Adoption By Consumers ‘Exploding’ [Survey]

Brands should imple­ment social logins on their web­sites and apps to cater to grow­ing con­sumer desire for con­ve­nience and trans­paren­cy, which is dri­ven in part by their hatred for fill­ing out forms and/or dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber­ing pass­words. At the same time, con­sumers...

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Brands should imple­ment social logins on their web­sites and apps to cater to grow­ing con­sumer desire for con­ve­nience and trans­paren­cy, which is dri­ven in part by their hatred for fill­ing out forms and/or dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber­ing pass­words. At the same time, con­sumers say they are more will­ing to share data in exchange for more rel­e­vant con­tent, so brands must walk a thin line between col­lect­ing that data and not ask­ing for too much. That’s accord­ing to the 2014 State of Con­sumer Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al­iza­tion sur­vey from Gigya.


Con­sumer iden­ti­ty man­age­ment plat­form Gigya has released its 2014 State of Con­sumer Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al­iza­tion sur­vey, which found social login adop­tion is “explod­ing” in part because con­sumers want trans­paren­cy, rel­e­vance, and con­ve­nience when shar­ing data with brands. And, as a result, more busi­ness­es are uti­liz­ing it.

In fact, 77 per­cent of the con­sumers in Gigya’s sur­vey of 2,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 55 said they have logged into web­sites and apps using their social media accounts, which Gigya says is an increase of 45 per­cent since its 2012 sur­vey. Gigya defines social login as con­sumers per­mit­ting brands access to the data in their social pro­files.

In addi­tion, the sur­vey, which, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, can be down­loaded via its own social net­work aut­ofills on the Gigya web­site, found about 60 per­cent of respon­dents said they use social logins “often” or “always,” which is up from 35 per­cent two years ago. That’s in large part because of con­ve­nience, Gigya says.

Par­tic­i­pants point­ed to the length of time it takes to fill out reg­is­tra­tion forms, as well as dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber­ing user­names and pass­words, as their top rea­sons for opt­ing for social logins. In addi­tion, more than 60 per­cent of respon­dents said they were like­ly to choose social logins when using mobile devices because tra­di­tion­al logins are par­tic­u­lar­ly cum­ber­some there.

Con­sumers who said they nev­er use social logins cit­ed fear the web­site or app is look­ing to sell their data.

At the same time, 20 per­cent of respon­dents said the promise of more rel­e­vant con­tent, offers, and rec­om­men­da­tions makes them more will­ing to share infor­ma­tion.

What’s more, con­sumers harsh­ly pun­ish brands that do not deliv­er it. After receiv­ing irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion or prod­ucts, 43 per­cent of con­sumers in Gigya’s sur­vey said they ignored all future com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the brand and 20 per­cent stopped buy­ing prod­ucts from that com­pa­ny alto­geth­er.

Gigya also found more than 80 per­cent of con­sumers have aban­doned online forms over con­cerns about the amount and type of infor­ma­tion request­ed and 60 per­cent said they have aban­doned pur­chas­es from sites that make them fill out online forms.

This adds up to some impor­tant lessons for brands, accord­ing to Gigya:

  • Imple­ment social logins: This gives con­sumers seam­less expe­ri­ences, as well as addi­tion­al con­trol over the data they share.
  • Use pro­gres­sive pro­fil­ing: Brands can avoid scar­ing off cus­tomers by not ask­ing for too much data up front. Instead, brands should grad­u­al­ly ask for that data after some trust has been built. They should also clear­ly state the data they are look­ing to col­lect and how that data will and won’t be used.
  • Auto­mate social data com­pli­ance: Choose providers that can take on the bur­den of man­ag­ing data pri­va­cy.

Have you imple­ment­ed social logins on your web­site? How have your cus­tomers respond­ed?

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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