

Ask HN: Conversion rate increase with a Facebook sign-on? - msencenb

I am considering implementing a Facebook sign on in addition to the usual registration and was wondering if any HNers could share their experience with doing so. Did you see a significant increase in sign-ups?
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fookyong
if signups are your metric, then I would guess you'd see an increase.

however, as others have mentioned on HN, by reducing friction you increase the
amount of "tyre-kickers" - people who just want to check things out and leave.

that's not such a bad thing if your cost-per-user is negligible, or you have
some kind of post-signup campaign in place (e.g. an email after inactivity
that tries to "reactivate" the user).

in those situations, the more people you can expose your company to, the
better. I'd wager that many startups don't implement Facebook signin because
of the engineering overhead that could be spent on sexy new features.

~~~
Charuru
Do you have any basis? I mean we all know the theory why it might, but I'm not
convinced?

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Reedge
We tested this with <http://www.reedge.com> for a client that integrated the
facebook login on the checkout page of a Magento shop. I remember that Around
8% more finished the checkout compared to when we did not show the facebook
login option.

The problem was we did not test the actual login, just having the option. The
client did not give us details on revenue/turnover or hoe many people actually
used login of facebook.

It was a health product on the US market.

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RossM
As long as it isn't your only authentication method I don't see harm in adding
it.

I'm extremely turned off by sites that want me to sign-on, with the only
option being Facebook, because I've had enough of sites demanding irrelevant
permissions they obviously don't need (you need my email, not to be able to
post to my wall). If I really want to sign up for something I'll do that and
'fix' the permissions in Facebook but it really peeves me.

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martian
Last time I tried it I saw a significant decrease -- as much as 50% lower
signups as tracked with Google Website Optimizer.

~~~
msencenb
Really? Was it your only login option or in addition to your usual? Also how
much traffic were you seeing (aka was it statistically sound?)?

~~~
martian
To clarify: Facebook was shown as the default login option, with a site-
specific login available with a Javascript toggle. My test compared which
login option was the default. I don't remember the specific numbers (had a lot
of traffic though). Google Web Optimizer had given a 95%+ indication that the
FB login was performing poorly. So I'd acknowledge issues with the test, but
these numbers were convincing enough that I made the site-specific login the
default from that point forward. What I did not test is whether having FB
login as an option helps or hurts total signups. I suspect that this only
helps but can't give any numbers.

Clearly there are lots of caveats, and the results of any experiment are going
to be informed by your site, audience, and so on.

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bman
I enabled the facebook connect for one month on my startup site and learned
alot of things. First yes you will get alot of signups, but most will never
return, never make a single contribution and only came to say they did. Second
I will never do it again. The accounts as I said were of 0 value to the site
or the existing users that had been invited. The invited users end up using
more services and clicking through different parts of the site. They also care
more about it when talking to others versus just being able to say they were
there. Hope it helps.

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desigooner
Personally, I'm wary of sharing my facebook credentials with a site that I
don't trust yet or don't peruse regularly. I'd rather fill out the details or
actually use my twitter id instead as I'd consider that a throwaway compared
to my facebook account. This paranoia just goes up considering that the vendor
in question is Facebook, someone who doesn't have the cleanest record when it
comes to privacy of data.

Have you implemented or thought of implementing twitter's Oauth functionality
instead? I wonder how that'll work out for you.

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theBobMcCormick
I'm assuming he's talking about using Facebook Connect, which is based on
Oauth, so the user wouldn't have to share their Facebook credentials with his
site. (<http://developers.facebook.com/docs/guides/web#login>).

I agree with you that sharing your Facebook credentials or your email
credentials ( _especially_ your email credentials) with another site is
foolishly stupid.

~~~
desigooner
I understand that user doesn't share credentials but usually, with facebook
connect, the only method available to connect is where the site grabs a ton of
information from facebook (name, email, profile interests, etc.) .. I'm not so
sure I'd want to share it unless there's a reason to it..

e.g. Huffington Post asks for basic info (name, profile pic, gender, user id,
list of friends and then some), access to my newsfeed, interests and likes,
and my current city .. this is only to comment on a post .. it seems like
overkill to me and as a result i wouldn't really use facebook connect in this
instance.

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MPiccinato
I have been using RPX on my site to allow users to login through Facebook and
Twitter. This is where a majority of my sign ups come from. It really depends
on what type of site you have.

I don't get many return users from it but I do get some extra information
which is useful in my case for statistics.

I am currently moving away from RPX in favor of using the services for
Facebook and Twitter directly so I can do more with the user and with the
data.

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aymeric
I have used rpxnow in several of my websites and it confused users more than
anything else.

Only geeks are annoyed by the classic registration forms.

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AdmiralBeotch
Is anyone else left scratching their head at how the facebook login overtook
OpenID?

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ydant
Nope, it makes perfect sense to me. Open ID made no sense to non-computer
enthusiasts (and to plenty of the enthusiasts as well). Those same people all
have Facebook accounts and probably visit Facebook multiple times a day. They
trust Facebook, so clicking on it seems painless - and it's definitely
effortless.

~~~
tomjen3
It doesn't make sense: everybody who have a Facebook login also have a gmail,
so why not not just allow people to login with that?

~~~
gxti
Stackoverflow does exactly that. They have big buttons for all the major
identity providers, including Google, Facebook, etc. and a text field at the
bottom for manual openid login.

~~~
sabj
Personally I feel a lot better about Twitter + OAuth than FB, but that's just
me.

As for why not use OpenID? Personally, I don't want to tie my Gmail account to
a lot of things -- then people have my email! I don't necessarily want to tie
my Facebook to them, either, but in the same breath some forms of OpenID can
end up sharing more, depending...

This is why I get cranky when people implement Disqus, too -- old comments I
made that were supposed to be anonymous but which had my email for the author,
etc, are now pulled in and linked to a general identity months or years later.
:(

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theBobMcCormick
Why would you feel better about Twitter + OAuth than FaceBook + OAuth (which
is what the sign on component of FB Connect is)? From a technology
perspective, it's the same protocol. Neither company has a good security track
record.

(not criticizing BTW, just curious)

~~~
desigooner
the twitter account could be a throwaway account and generally lesser risk of
anybody getting too many personal details.. facebook, not so much ..

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roschdal
I would suggest using OpenID, I've had much better experiences with that.

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kapauldo
I added FB to Pikk and saw a mild uptick in signups. You also get the benefit
of using users real names and images. It took about 4 hours of work or so to
get it live. Hope this helps.

Kevin

