Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
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Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
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Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#2October 2 2012 is a long time ago.
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#3This is from 2012, can a mod update the title?
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#4October 2 2012 is a long time ago.
Their findings are not necessarily any less relevant just because it's from 2012.
In fact -- their findings match almost exactly what my company has discovered.
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#5I think the real takeaway is "Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It _For B2B_"
Very few people are going to sign up or log into a business account using a personal facebook or twitter account, and few businesses are going to have a lot of people with direct access to their facebook page and twitter feeds.
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#6This is bad advice for anyone that's not a SaaS company selling to people on non-mobile browsers, like MailChimp is.
Our analytics show that many people on mobile and consumer websites do indeed want to use OAuth.
(I've been meaning to do a blog post on this topic...)
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#7> Our old login form told users, "Your username or password is incorrect," when they may have the username right, but the password was incorrect. If you have 4 possible usernames and 4 possible passwords, you have 16 possible combinations between them—only one of which is correct. That means in this scenario, the user would have 15 chances to make an error when logging in. But when you know specifically that your username is incorrect, odds of failure drop precipitously.Our old login form told users, "Your username or password is incorrect," when they may have the username right, but the password was incorrect. If you have 4 possible usernames and 4 possible passwords, you have 16 possible combinations between them—only one of which is correct. That means in this scenario, the user would have 15 chances to make an error when logging in. But when you know specifically that your username is incorrect, odds of failure drop precipitously.
This is an old pattern. The reason for it seems to have been forgotten: If you tell the user they got the user name wrong, you're leaking information. They can now try and guess valid account names. Of course, one could argue that this may not matter in their specific case, but it does in some.
The parable of chesterton's fence comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
edit: Ah, I really need to overcome that instinct of jumping to the comments whenever I notice something. Looks like they addressed this.
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#8October 2 2012 is a long time ago.
Their findings are just as relevant today, it's just that they're far more relevant for a B2B site than a B2C site.
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#9Facebook and twitter may simply be the wrong form of login for a business tool.
That's partly why I'm biased towards Google, since they have fairly neutral associations. People don't usually post anything embaressing to google, and so wouldnt be as threatened with a company wanting access to their Google account.
On the other hand, more options are more distractions. Email and password is so simple and well understood that it just works.
Re: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It (2012)
#10I think the real takeaway is "Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It _For B2B_" Very few people are going to sign up or log into a business account using a personal facebook or twitter account, and few businesses are going to have a lot of people with direct access to their facebook page and twitter feeds.
We've found that allowing social logins on our site (ecommerce) only causes confusion for our customers.
"We can't locate your order under that email address. No, not that username either, keep guessing..."
We have found it's best to either not force customers into account creation at all, or make it super easy (ie. a checkbox "yes" and password prompt on the checkout page only).