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I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

ankursethi.com

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Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#31

Post by joshstrange »

0.21% sounds low but my initial thought is "I don't know if they are making the point they think they are". Conversion rates are always pretty low.

That said, I've never clicked on a share button mostly because:

- I don't know what it will do, it's not consistent at all

- It might add extra crap "Your friend shared 'Story Title' with you!"

- It will probably try/want to add tracking crap

I always just copy the URL and send it however I want to send it. People aren't stupid when it comes to sharing, they understand how to accomplish what they want, we don't need a dedicated share button.

What we don't have, and hopefully never will, is the number of people who click the share button verses the people that copy/paste the URL which I assume 90% of people who want to share do. It's universal, it "just works".

Clicking the share button means I'm at the mercy of the site operator, copying the URL puts me in control.

Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#32

Post by blitzar »

raincole wrote: post #10

> The share buttons got clicked 14,078 times. That’s a 0.21% usage rate, which works out to about 1 in 476 visitors. In other words, people not only click share buttons, but do it quite often?

> Visitors were twelve times more likely to click an advertisement.

I would have guessed clicking on ads was rare

Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#33

Post by yieldcrv »

ndegruchy wrote: post #5

I've added a button that just triggers `navigator.share()`[1]. I know most users do the copy-paste dance, but I find this is a good middle ground. Adding functionality for my users, but not adding special social media share buttons. [1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...

navigator.share is limited and the share intent breaks UX, adding more clicks to a funnel than I want

I leave it as an option for the users that really want it though, but surface other things like just the copy icon to put something directly on the clipboard

the articles best stats are from 2012, I’m sorry to inform that was 14 years ago, people are even more acclimated to direct linking

Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#34

Post by jdw64 »

0.2 %is quite significant, isn't it? My small website (www.makonea.com) gets about 90,000 visitors a month on average. (That's about 300 per day?) So that means a post gets shared about once every two days. Maybe I should seriously consider making my posts more shareable. And if I promote it on HN, I'd hope there's a 0.2 %chance that people would check out my site.

Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#36

Post by brikym »

The user has to have an extra reason to use it. Share buttons or stateful URLs are great when user input is embedded. You have to add that extra user generated sauce or it's not worth it.

Web games (like my redactle.net) will typically have a share button that allows players to share their score. Calculator tools often include a way to share a URL with all the fields filled. Youtube does it with timestamp links.

Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#37

Post by subroutine »

Zak wrote: post #22
mgiampapa wrote: post #9

I use share buttons all the time on social platforms, and apps like Amazon that don't have any other way of deep linking. Lot's of people use apps that don't expose a link, share buttons are great and even better when they use standards like your OS's share functionality.

The article is discussing "share on [Facebook,Twitter,etc...]" type buttons on websites, not share via [OS functionality or other native app] buttons inside native apps. That said, I'm curious as to why someone with enough technical sophistication to be posting on HN browses Amazon with a native mobile app instead of a web browser.

You prefer to browse amazon using a mobile web browser over the native Amazon app? Why?

Re: I've always wondered if anyone used sharing buttons on news sites and blogs

#39

Post by dewey »

The point of share buttons in most cases is the tracking pixel that comes with it, not the share feature itself.

Also when you work with real users, not developers who remove tracking parameters you quickly realize that share buttons are used and people complain about them if they don’t work, can confirm from my own experience.

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