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Social Identity: 7 Best Practices for Driving Registrations with Social Mediums

Enabling people to register using an existing identity from Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo,
or other provider is one of the most powerful registration tools to emerge in the last
few years. Registering people through an established online identity not only
streamlines the registration process but also gives your business a head start on
building deeper relationships with them.

As with any optimization effort, the devil is in the details. An effective system
requires as much attention to user experience as to technology. The most successful
implementations follow these seven best practices:

1. Put social network brands to work

2. Provide identity options

3. Communicate the value

4. Apply available data

5. Link accounts

6. Create visual cues

7. Analyze to optimize

Best practice #1: Put social network brands to work on your home page
Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and the other providers are powerful brands that
can help increase registration rates simply through brand recognition and affinity.
Best practice is to display a minimum of three social network icons on the home
page, and above the fold, to indicate that visitors can sign in using a social network

Best practice #2: Offer multiple identity options
A key goal of every site should be to maximize the number of people who are able to
register using an existing identity. The best way to do this is to offer people their
choice of identities to use on your site, and at least three choices at a minimum.
Identity providers include social networks, webmail platforms and other OpenID
issuers such as Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and LinkedIn.

Best Practice #3: Provide a reason to register – and use an existing identity
Fox news does a terrific job of explaining to new visitors why they should register: it’s
required to comment. They even demonstrate how they will personalize the
experience for visitors who sign in.

Best practice #4: Apply available data to streamline the registration process
One of the benefits of registering people via existing identities, from social networks
to webmail platforms, is the ability to collect and apply publicly available information
to streamline the registration process.
This is an enormous win for marketers, solving the age-old tradeoff between
collecting the information needed to personalize the site experience and
communicate with the user while keeping the registration process short and simple to
reduce abandonment rates.

Best practice #5: Link existing accounts with social network accounts
When a previously registered user chooses to subsequently sign in to a website with
an existing identity, don’t create a duplicate record. Best practice is to link existing
account information, history and preferences with their social network account or
accounts.

Best practice #6: Give visual cues that a user has successfully completed the
sign in or registration process
When the registration or sign in process is complete, give the user clear confirmation.
Put a checkmark on the platform icon or gray it out, display the user’s existing profile
picture, and most importantly greet them by name. Don’t leave them wondering if
their registration was successful, and don’t waste the opportunity to begin building on
the strong foundation you have established for the relationship. In the following
examples, citybizlist.com displays the user’s photo and a welcome message
containing the user’s name.

Best Practice #7: Analyze to Optimize
Testing can help you determine which are the most important identity providers to
display on your own site. User preferences can vary significantly. For example, while
Facebook is the choice of approximately 50% of visitors across all sites, 45% of
people choose Twitter as their preferred identity on news sites.

Source Credit: Gigya's Social Optimization Solutions