To login is to err – or how the Facebook API can smooth the on-ramp
A contact in the retail leisure sector recently asked me ‘Do customers really need to login to a restaurant site? Surely all they want to do is make a simple reservation’.
I was momentarily flummoxed. Our ‘less push, more pull’ philosophy, by implication puts the customer in control and by doing so encourages action. For retail leisure clients this means we provide the ability for customers to login to manage their brand relationship (including reservations, personal details, email marketing preferences), and whilst it’s a bit more hassle the first time they do it, for subsequent visits it means that the form time is reduced by over 50%.
Just consider the amount of data needed when making a reservation; personal details including name, age verification (if it’s a drinking establishment), phone and/or email and that’s over and above the details needed for the reservation itself; time, date, number of guests, any special requests.
What about emails though to manage everything? Consider this; I received an email from my local pub, run by Geronimo Inns, the eflyer said ‘email us to make an enquiry’ – I did and since then I haven’t heard anything back. My email is probably now long forgotten and I’m not chasing it up, and that’s the point, by having somewhere online where you can go and see the status of your relationship you can obtain reassurance that everything is being handled as you’d hope.
On reflection, the real issue my contact highlighted was the login process itself. Having to remember a password is annoying, people tend to forget their details and when they’re at the point of action they’re forced to do a password reset before they can proceed. Alternatively, people use the same password for every user account they have, negating the security of each site if one is hacked.
Who’s going to hack a restaurant website though? Well, whilst a retail leisure website may not hold any secure transaction data, a hacker could use the data obtained as a stepping stone to other nefarious activities. If the password is only 4 digits for example, then many people’s first thought is to use their bank pin code as it’s something that they’ll easily remember. If this account were hacked then the customer would potentially expose their address, email, phone number and bank code. It’s easy to see the implications of where this may lead.
Over the years there have been numerous attempts to overcome the login issue, from Microsoft Passport to Open ID. None however have reached the tipping point of mass take-up from people, because they’re yet another layer of hassle or are too reliant on a partisan third party to enjoy objectivity.
Facebook has now arrived on the scene and thrown their war chest into the ring. Whilst not appropriate for all, if you’re a brand that is targeting online conversant customers then it is likely that those customers will be registered. According to Facebook there are now 24.5 million Facebook users in the UK (http://cot.ag/ch23vp), whilst it’s safe to assume that not all of these accounts are active that’s still a lot of people using the one platform.
Using the Facebook API (Application Programming Interface) it’s possible to link an account at a website with a Facebook account. This means that when the customer visits your website they can login with their Facebook details, or if they’re already logged into Facebook that they’ll be automatically granted entry. The benefit of this is that customers are more likely to remember their Facebook account details as they login to it frequently. There is another option, whereby a customer when signing-up simply provides their Facebook account details, but this is a more dangerous path as it means that all emails to the customer are routed via Facebook who will add a footer to the message and may obstruct it should they feel fit.If the job of a login process is to make it easier and friendlier for a customer to access the website then the Facebook API shows a lot of promise. Although there are the well commented upon privacy issues with Facebook, and future use of the API which whilst free now may not always be, it seems to me that the benefits are obvious; making it easier for customers to login, displaying greater integration with the leading social media platform and the ability to think beyond your website to the Semantic ‘joined-up’ web.
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