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I'm strongly in favour of OpenID login over proprietary login as a way of controlling site access - it gives users choice and makes their lives a bit easier. In principle, this should, in turn, increase the number of logins - the stumbling block of login is being made more straightforward. Is there a valid reference in terms of traffic impact on the use of OpenID compared to proprietary login?

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Do you mean traffic in terms of visitors to your homepage or conversion after the login wall? – Jimmy Breck-McKye Oct 3 '12 at 12:33
I mean traffic in terms of the number of people who go through the login step. – Peter Oct 3 '12 at 12:38
LifeHacker mentions that Yahoo tested this. That said, it's been 4 years since that article, so things might be better. Probably not much better, though. – Brian Oct 3 '12 at 13:42
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@Brian OpenID has gone from extremely rare and technical to almost the norm, I'm certain it's gotten much better. You can't just say "what's your OpenID" though, you have to present a nicer menu like Stack Exchange does. People don't know they have an OpenID, they know they have twitter/google/yahoo/whatever. It's how you design it. – Ben Brocka♦ Oct 3 '12 at 15:03
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I think any studies would be too strongly influenced by the individual designs / implementations to be really trustworthy. – Jimmy Breck-McKye Oct 3 '12 at 16:35

1 Answer

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I know you are asking in particular about the OpenID implementation but maybe the following article published by MailChimp could help you: Social Login Buttons Aren't Worth It

They say the implementation of social login buttons didn't have the impact they were expecting and that the whole thing is actually not worth it, in their case because it is adding complexity to their login screen (because of additional buttons and options) and because there are other ways to decrease the number of login failures. (The impact of the social login implementation meant login failures dropped 3.48%).

I know a social network that got 20% decrease in login failures just by adding login with Facebook.

In my opinion the impact depends a great deal on the kind of service you are providing with your website. And specially you should think if your users would be willing to login with their private accounts (might not be the case, specially if your website is meant to be used on the working environment).

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Interesting article. One thing I'd point out though is that it only refers to SOCIAL buttons. I personally want very little linked to my Facebook/Twitter. My Google account however, is something I feel comfortable using because it's professional, secure, and I know I'm not just going to ditch it out of boredom one day. – MobyD Oct 5 '12 at 16:11
Exactly that is the point and what we have to take care of at the moment of choosing which buttons we offer to our audiences :-) – Alexis Brion Oct 8 '12 at 9:47

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