SOCIAL SIGN IN

THE GOALS

•  Prevent users from abandoning the purchasing flow when asked to sign in.

•  Reduce password-related calls to customer service.

THE CHALLENGE

Average users buy less than twice a year from StubHub and they often forget their passwords. At best this adds friction to signing in (going through the reset password flow or calling customer service) and at worst causes them to abandon their purchase. 

THE SOLUTION

Allow users to sign in via Facebook so they are perpetually signed in and don’t have to remember a site password. 

That sounds easy enough. However, there were challenges ranging from technical to experiential. If users signed out of Facebook (which is rare) or they accessed their account from a device that was signed in to another person’s Facebook account (like a friend’s computer) they would encounter some friction. 

Internally there was also the temptation to scrape users’ Facebook data (likes, friends lists, etc.). While this data could be useful to the business, it would add additional friction and didn’t offer any immediate benefit to users. To be denied access at the system level would be a major fail. It would be better if we asked users for access on occasions that were in line with their desires or needs. For example, as part of a social networking flow: 

"Want to know if your friends are going to this event? Share your Facebook friends list." 

This approach would also allow us to ask again if users chose “Not Now,” unlike the system option of “Don’t Allow.” 

In addition to working closely with the project manager and development team, I advocated for A/B testing, suspecting users would not want to give up their data (and their friends' data) without receiving something more than a frictionless sign in. Since there wasn't time to test, we didn't ask for users' data. 

In less than eight months 50K users adopted Facebook sign in, including 25% of new users.