Brands should imple­ment social logins on their web­sites and apps to cater to grow­ing con­sumer desire for con­ve­nience and trans­paren­cy, which is dri­ven in part by their hatred for fill­ing out forms and/or dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber­ing pass­words. At the same time, con­sumers say they are more will­ing to share data in exchange for more rel­e­vant con­tent, so brands must walk a thin line between col­lect­ing that data and not ask­ing for too much. That’s accord­ing to the 2014 State of Con­sumer Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al­iza­tion sur­vey from Gigya.

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Con­sumer iden­ti­ty man­age­ment plat­form Gigya has released its 2014 State of Con­sumer Pri­va­cy and Per­son­al­iza­tion sur­vey, which found social login adop­tion is “explod­ing” in part because con­sumers want trans­paren­cy, rel­e­vance, and con­ve­nience when shar­ing data with brands. And, as a result, more busi­ness­es are uti­liz­ing it.

In fact, 77 per­cent of the con­sumers in Gigya’s sur­vey of 2,000 U.S. adults ages 18 to 55 said they have logged into web­sites and apps using their social media accounts, which Gigya says is an increase of 45 per­cent since its 2012 sur­vey. Gigya defines social login as con­sumers per­mit­ting brands access to the data in their social pro­files.

In addi­tion, the sur­vey, which, coin­ci­den­tal­ly, can be down­loaded via its own social net­work aut­ofills on the Gigya web­site, found about 60 per­cent of respon­dents said they use social logins “often” or “always,” which is up from 35 per­cent two years ago. That’s in large part because of con­ve­nience, Gigya says.

Par­tic­i­pants point­ed to the length of time it takes to fill out reg­is­tra­tion forms, as well as dif­fi­cul­ty remem­ber­ing user­names and pass­words, as their top rea­sons for opt­ing for social logins. In addi­tion, more than 60 per­cent of respon­dents said they were like­ly to choose social logins when using mobile devices because tra­di­tion­al logins are par­tic­u­lar­ly cum­ber­some there.

Con­sumers who said they nev­er use social logins cit­ed fear the web­site or app is look­ing to sell their data.

At the same time, 20 per­cent of respon­dents said the promise of more rel­e­vant con­tent, offers, and rec­om­men­da­tions makes them more will­ing to share infor­ma­tion.

What’s more, con­sumers harsh­ly pun­ish brands that do not deliv­er it. After receiv­ing irrel­e­vant infor­ma­tion or prod­ucts, 43 per­cent of con­sumers in Gigya’s sur­vey said they ignored all future com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the brand and 20 per­cent stopped buy­ing prod­ucts from that com­pa­ny alto­geth­er.

Gigya also found more than 80 per­cent of con­sumers have aban­doned online forms over con­cerns about the amount and type of infor­ma­tion request­ed and 60 per­cent said they have aban­doned pur­chas­es from sites that make them fill out online forms.

This adds up to some impor­tant lessons for brands, accord­ing to Gigya:

• Imple­ment social logins: This gives con­sumers seam­less expe­ri­ences, as well as addi­tion­al con­trol over the data they share.
• Use pro­gres­sive pro­fil­ing: Brands can avoid scar­ing off cus­tomers by not ask­ing for too much data up front. Instead, brands should grad­u­al­ly ask for that data after some trust has been built. They should also clear­ly state the data they are look­ing to col­lect and how that data will and won’t be used.
• Auto­mate social data com­pli­ance: Choose providers that can take on the bur­den of man­ag­ing data pri­va­cy.

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Have you imple­ment­ed social logins on your web­site? How have your cus­tomers respond­ed?