The share button allows users to easily distribute content from a website or app to their social networks and contacts. When you click on a share button, you can quickly share the page you’re viewing via email, Facebook, Twitter, and other services without having to copy and paste the link yourself.
Share buttons make content go viral. They remove friction from the sharing process and encourage visitors to spread content they enjoy to their networks. As a result, adding share buttons to your website or app can help increase traffic, engagement, and brand awareness.
Why do websites have share buttons?
There are a few key reasons why websites and apps include share buttons:
- Drive traffic – Share buttons allow visitors to easily promote your content for you. When articles and pages get shared, it can direct new visitors from social media platforms back to your site.
- Increase reach – Social shares expand the reach of your content far beyond just the visitors to your website. Tapping into existing social networks spreads information much farther.
- Build credibility – When content gets shared a lot, it’s a signal that people find it useful. High social share counts lend credibility and authority to pages.
- Encourage engagement – Share buttons facilitate discussion around content. People can provide commentary and feedback when sharing to social networks.
- Improve SEO – Social signals like shares and links are picked up by search engines. Having content shared organically can improve search rankings.
In short, adding share buttons makes it easy for visitors to promote your content for you. This viral distribution allows sites to tap into the power of social networks and existing user bases to amplify their messaging and content.
What are the most popular social sharing buttons?
These social networks tend to get included in most share button implementations:
- Facebook – By far the largest social network with over 2 billion monthly active users. Facebook shares can spread content incredibly far.
- Twitter – A hugely influential network with hundreds of millions of users. Often drives conversation and commentary around content.
- Pinterest – A visual sharing community with over 300 million active pinners. Great for lifestyle, recipe, fashion, and visual content.
- LinkedIn – The largest professional social network. Good way to share business, career, and industry articles.
- Reddit – A collection of forums and communities covering every topic imaginable. Reddit shares can drive targeted niche traffic.
- Email – Allows visitors to share directly with contacts and groups via email.
Beyond the major social platforms, share buttons may also include options for sharing to messenger apps, bookmarking sites, aggregators like Digg and StumbleUpon, and anywhere else that makes sense for the content and target audience.
Share button best practices
To get the most out of share buttons on your site, keep these tips in mind:
- Place share buttons prominently – Put them above the fold near the title/headline so visitors see them right away.
- Use familiar iconography – Stick to well-known logos for each social network to maximize recognition.
- Limit to the most relevant networks – Keep your sharing menu focused on where your content is most likely to be shared.
- Allow control over share content – Let users customize the shared message and media for each network.
- Make them large enough to click easily – Share buttons need to be tapped on mobile, so make sure they are at least 45px wide.
- Track shares and engagement – Use analytics to see which networks drive the most traffic so you can optimize.
By following these share button best practices, you can maximize viral distribution while creating a smooth sharing experience for visitors.
Types of share button implementations
There are a few main ways that share buttons get added to websites from a technical perspective:
Social sharing widgets
Many platforms like Facebook and Twitter provide embeddable widgets that handle the share button functionality for you. These widgets come with predefined code that can be simply added to your site.
The benefit is that widgets handle everything under the hood when visitors click share. The downside is that widgets can be slower loading and aren’t as customizable.
Custom social sharing buttons
For full design control and flexibility, many sites use custom social sharing buttons. These are buttons that trigger JavaScript events when clicked, which handle the process of sharing content.
Custom buttons allow styling to match your brand. But they require more setup work to handle the sharing logic through JavaScript and APIs.
Link sharing
The simplest share button implementation is to just link each button to a prepopulated social sharing URL for that network. When users click, it takes them directly to the sharing endpoint.
Link sharing is fast and easy to add. But the downside is users leave your site to complete the sharing action.
Hybrid approaches
Many implementations use a hybrid approach combining widgets, custom buttons, and link sharing for different networks. This provides flexibility to balance customization with development effort.
For example, Facebook and Twitter widgets could be used since they are familiar, while custom Reddit and email buttons allow styling control.
Examples of creative and effective share button implementation
When implemented thoughtfully, share buttons can become an integral part of the user experience rather than just feeling tacked on. Here are some creative examples of effective share button use:
Contextual and timely triggering
Rather than having share buttons always present, triggering them contextually based on user actions can make them feel more natural.
For example, Medium only displays share buttons on an article once a visitor has scrolled a certain percentage through the post. This indicates they have likely finished and found it valuable.
Scroll-based sharing
The Verge uses a scroll-based share toolbar that sticks to the side as you read through an article. It scrolls alongside the content for easy access to share as you consume each section.
Custom illustrations and animations
Adding custom illustrations and animations to share buttons helps them stand out while improving branding. The animated share buttons on Bad Idea help catch the eye.
Sticky share bars
Sticky share bars at the top or bottom of the screen keep share buttons accessible at all times. Food52 uses a sticky bottom share bar that elegantly slides up from the bottom when you’ve scrolled through half a recipe.
Preview thumbnail sharing
Allowing users to preview exactly what will be shared on each network makes the experience smooth and transparent. Designblob generates custom share previews for major social networks like Facebook and Pinterest.
Tools to easily add share buttons
Implementing share buttons from scratch can be time-consuming. Here are some tools that help streamline the process of adding share buttons to your website:
Social media widgets
As mentioned above, social platforms like Facebook and Twitter provide embeddable widgets that handle sharing with just a few lines of code.
Share button plugins
WordPress plugins like Simple Social Buttons make adding share buttons a matter of configuration rather than coding.
Share button generators
Tools like ShareThis and AddThis allow you to generate and customize share button sets with cloud-based configuration.
JavaScript libraries
For full customization, JavaScript libraries like Social Share JS provide templates to build on for styling your own buttons.
All-in-one tools
Services like Shareaholic offer turnkey solutions for implementing and managing share buttons across sites. This can save development time when scaling.
Leveraging these tools allows adding share functionality without getting bogged down in implementation details. But weigh simplicity against flexibility to find the right balance for each use case.
Conclusion
Share buttons remain an effective yet underutilized way to tap into the power of social sharing. When prominently placed and designed well, they can significantly amplify the reach of content. yet many sites still omit them or fail to optimize their use.
The key is to strategically include share buttons for networks where your audience is active. Monitor metrics like social referrals in analytics to see what’s driving traffic and optimize accordingly. Test different variants, sizes, placement, and contextual triggering to maximize sharing.
With social dominating online discovery and distribution today, taking the time to improve shareability can pay dividends in increased traffic, engagement, and brand awareness. Leveraging tools and best practices makes it easy to experiment and iteratively enhance sharing performance.