With the arrival of digital age, internet has become the prime source of surfing daily news. Recent research by Pew Research Center shows that around 50% people use internet for daily news. People are looking forward to Twitter, Facebook and many other social media networks in order to learn about what’s happening around them.
Challenges for news websites:
- One of the main challenges news websites face is the fewer number of sign-up rates. But again, the question arises is why would a visitor register on a news website when he/she is able to read the news without signing up. So, to make user signup on the
website, there must be some worth signing up on your website. - Many of the times, webmasters face issues with comment spam. There are many instances of users being abusive when a new or a story hurts their sentiments. Such comments when read by others leave a foul impression. Webmaster also face SPAM comments by bots which are done by affiliates or scammers.
- Many of the visitors arrive on news websites using search engines and when they are done with reading the news/story they want, they just leave the website. There is a very less percentage of visitors who return to a specific website. And after the rise of news.google.com, the sites which are highlighted on the portal get enormous traffic leaving the rest ones without any traffic. To that end, marketers want to make sure they get a good amount of returning visitors on a regular basis
- A news websites consists of news and stories from all over the world and on different topics. An average user might not be interested in all the news and looks for the stories which are relevant to him based on his location and interests. Marketers must know what their users are looking for in order to provide them a better experience.
How social login helps?
Social media and news are almost interconnected as social media holds great role in providing latest news and real-time updates to people. You must have seen “Login with Facebook” or “Login with Twitter” on many news websites such as CNN.com, The Guardian and many more.
With Social login, users can sign in to a website with their existing social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and many more.
Social Login allows users to login using their existing social network accounts. They can also use the same account for commenting on the website. Now, as we discussed before that users can abusive while commenting, if they will sign-up using their social accounts there is will be very less chances of comments being abusive. People have their family and friends connected on social networks and no wants them to see such offensive comments.
Another point we discussed was to make sure that visitors keep returning on their website. With the help of social login, marketers can pitch the users to
- Like their official social networking profiles. This will add a new touch and will make sure users keep returning on their site
- By sending them newsletters with something like a Top news Digest on their emails.
Login using social networks provides marketers with a user profile data. This means they get access to users information like their location, personal interests and what they like. Using this data, marketers can personalize the news as per the choice of users. Also, there might be some news which be premium or so sensitive that it needs registration, with the help of social login, signing up becomes a matter of seconds, making the the registration process smoother for users resulting in more signups. With Social Login, along with reading the news, readers can easily share the news, comment their opinions and interact with writers with just a single click.
Basically social login helps your website in following ways :
- Makes the process of registration smooth and quick thereby improving sign-up rates.
- Improves the time-on-site of users thus user now can view more content thereby leading to higher conversions.
- Provides precious user data that helps in custom targeting.
- Ease of registration and useful profile data help in keeping the users coming back.
- Reduces comment spam while improving overall user experience.
Again, offering social login doesn’t mean you need to ditch your current user registration process, Instead offer them the choice about how they want to login thereby improving flexibility.
News websites that are using Social login :
- Huffington Post : The one-stop destination for news, latest updates and blogs about technology, comedy, entertainment and much more, Huffington Post provides readers the choice between traditional registration and social login. It also describes clearly the benefits of registration.
- CNN : Another popular news website to explore latest breaking news and information about top stories. By creating account, users can save articles, comment on the stories and set up personalized email alerts based on their preferences. The CNN website offers users the choice for the way they want to sign-in. Social Login along with traditional registration is provided to readers.
- The Guardian : The website keeps readers updated with latest US news as well as international news about various fields including sports, politics, entertainment, technology and many more. For registration process, The Guardian provides traditional registration option along with login using social networks. The only difference this site makes is that social media networks are extremely specific to user preferences including just Facebook and Google+.
Nobody can deny the fact that providing interesting content is the main focus for online news writers, but again user engagement is the key to growth and become popular. Social Login simplifies the access to your content and makes it easier for user to interact with you.
