Social Login: What Is It?

Today, social media isn’t just for teenagers anymore; in fact, it plays an important role for individuals, professionals and businesses. Thus, social login appears as a likely consequence and it is becoming a frequently-used term in digital marketing. Why? More and more people desire to use their social media accounts to access some companies’ websites or applications. Therefore, in this article, we are going to discuss what social login is, its benefits and the competitors in social logins market.

The definition of social login

According to whatis.techtarget.com, social login is defined as “a single sign-on (SSO) technology” that allows web users to verify themselves on a broad range of applications and sites by connecting through a social media account rather than using a separate ID and password on each website, which we all know as an exhausting and tedious process. Some social logins such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and Twitter commonly connected to some websites. When the user visits a site that offers social logins, they may register or log in with their ID and password that they regularly use on their social media. A widget or plug-in is available for use to link the site to the customers’ social platform.

The benefits of social login

Social login is a leading solution for brands and publishers to get more people to register to use their websites. All of these are made possible by a fast registration process. By that way, these enterprises have chances to collect more detailed information about their customers. On the other hand, companies can share information and perform things like customizing exhibited articles or products. In David Moth’s survey (2013), 74% of businesses think that sales and conversions will be improved as customers’ satisfaction increases. Moreover, social login makes companies’ sites more valuable by giving what customers want. This means they would spend more time on these websites due to increased interests.

Getting to know web users and having them share the companies’ brand with their networks is a marketer’s dream. Social login allows you to go one step further. When a web user wants to use social features like giving comments on and sharing of the content, a social login can make that work much easier and faster. With integrated friend invite, users don’t only endorse your brand and products but can actively encourage their friends to access the brands’ site and content. The number of potential referrals surpasses further than marketing teams could manage alone, with users have tendency to check something out if one of their friends has shared it. Making it easier to go viral by installing social login should save a lot of the companies’ marketing efforts.

Is it easier without social login? Maybe no.

Without using social logins, users need to login to their account manually every time they access a website or an application. To make things worse, some users have several accounts, so remembering all of the login information is really a hardship. This is exactly where social logins become handy. Moreover, it is usually not an easy way to log in normally on a smartphone because of some limitations, but the problem is no more with the use of social logins. Just one touch and they are ready to go.

Multiple identities are also one of the biggest advantages of social login. It allows customers to register websites with multiple social accounts so that it is easier for them to control all of their online identities.

Social logos also help not well-known companies more recognized by customers, because seeing any leading social media platform like Facebook or Google offers the web users a feeling of familiarity and comfort.

The competitors in social login market

It is evident that Facebook is the most common choice of social identity for the majority of the web users. In 2015, 62% customers logged in with their Facebook identities, and Google followed Facebook with 24% share of the market. To get an overview of the social login scenario, Gigya – a company that offers tools for enterprises to let people log into their websites and applications using Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo or other accounts, did an in-depth survey on 58 million social logins across 700 companies during the fourth quarter of 2015.

Before getting to know each company’s respective share of the social login overview, it’s essential to take a look at how frequent users choose each of the four social platforms as a social login option. Again, web users choose Facebook and Google nearly 100% of the time. Meanwhile, they only choose Twitter 72% of the time and Yahoo 35% of the time. On mobile, Facebook led the race with 80% social logins in the fourth quarter, leaving competitors far behind. In what came as a rather tragic story, Yahoo accounted for less than one percent.

The Big Names

While Facebook was keeping its dominant position, Google promised to rise later. During the second half of 2015, the search giant cut down 4% off Facebook’s share of total social logins. Facebook still ended the year with more than double Google’s share, but the third and fourth quarters witnessed the first time that Facebook went through unexpected stock declines in two consecutive quarters.

With the unveiling event of Google+ in 2011, Google+ might be considered as Facebook 2.0. However, it couldn’t be compared to a legitimate Facebook rival. Many thought that Google+ was really about arranging Google’s product line around a single well-known account. It was using these accounts to gather an increasing amount of data about its users, target them with ads on and off Facebook, and evaluate how those ads translated into business outcomes, like sales and site visits, for advertisers.

Unlike Facebook and Google, Twitter’s share of the social login market stayed low, closing 2015 at 7%. Twitter was able to share with a brand or publisher, which limited those companies’ abilities to personalize their site or app to the individual user.

In contrast to Facebook’s dominance, Google’s growth and Twitter’s steadiness, Yahoo kept witnessing its popularity decline. This appeared to reinforce media buyers’ assertion that Yahoo’s lack of a large logged-in user base hurts its advertising business. Yahoo’s share of the social login market peaked at 18% in Q3 2013 and plummeted to 4% in  Q4 2015.

B2B

A new report conducted in 2014 showed that B2B logins on LinkedIn increased by 6% in the fourth quarter. In this case LinkedIn surpassed Google and it became the most popular in B2B segment. The total number of logins increased from 29 percent in the third quarter to 35 percent in the fourth. As the consequence of the increase in LinkedIn logins, Facebook and Google both lost 3 percentage points.

Others

VK is also one of the leading social media platforms across the world. It receives more than 50.2 million visitors per month, and is also very popular in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. However, VK only belonged to a 2% group which appeared in social login market in the 4th quarter of 2015.

To get to know more about social login developed by Magenest, please follow this link: https://store.magenest.com/magento-2/social-login-and-share.html

And if you are curious about our Magento development services, don’t hesitate to reach us and propose your ideas and briefs. Our Magento-certified developers and specialists will be guaranteed to make your ideas become true.

Latest Insights

eCommerce Statistics 2022 and the Trends
you need to know

Don't want to miss out on our latest insights?
Subscribe to our newsletter.

EMAIL

Disclaimer: By clicking submit, you agree to share your information with us to receive news, announcements, and resources when they are available.