If not, chances are you're getting incomplete or inaccurate data during your user registration process. That's what the most recent data shows from a new report conducted by Blue Research on Jan 10, 2012 and published "Social Sign-On Is Consumers’ Choice" by eMarketer. It shows that a whopping 88% of online buyers had at some point intentionally left registration information blank or used incorrect information when creating a new online account at a website. This is up 12 percentage points since 2010.


The same report also showed 77% of online buyers also think sites should embrace social sign-on, which is up 11% from 2010.


Clearly, this is a sign that people are getting more comfortable with privacy issues that linger when site A is sharing information with site B. Facebook, Google, and the like have been pressured to make it clearly evident what profile data they are opting to share when they use Social Sign-on.

What exactly is social sign-on?

Social sign-on is the integration of your website with social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Microsoft Live, Google, and many more. Social sign-on allows your end-users to login to your website using an existing account via sites mentioned before. Your website can then ask the user and third-party site to share certain demographic profile information that your website needs to conduct business. If you still require additional profile data, you can always ask the user as another step during the sign-up process.

Naturally, this is a win-win situation for all. The end-user doesn't have to fill out a lengthy registration form and you get profile data from the social network, which is 7 times out of 10, probably more accurate.

Like many people, our team at Boom Consulting has hundreds of passwords to manage so we are big supporters of a social sign-on approach. We integrate social login into any new website we develop that has some form of user registration. It simply makes sense from a user experience standpoint. New users get an accelerated sign-up process and return users get a simple login experience with credentials they've already come to know.

Our web development team are experts at integrating third-party social sign-on solutions that allow your users to login using credentials from Aol, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google, MySpace, Windows Live, PayPal, Salesforce.com, foursquare, Hyves, Verisign, MyOpenID, OpenID, Flickr, Blogger, Livejournal, Wordpress, Orkut, VZ-Netzwerke and Netlog. (Whew, that's a lot!) You can view our implementation of the Janrain Engage Social Login on Find Internet TV, JumpUpon, and our very own site here at Boom Consulting. Janrain has also published research outlining the benefits of supporting multiple social and email logins.

If you use the web much, you’ve probably noticed that more sites are integrating social sign-on. It simply makes sense for your business and end-users. Check out your competitors and see whether they are already using social sign-on, which could be the deciding point on whether you or your competitor gets the business! Contact Boom Consulting and we'll start integrating social sign-on into your website.